>A Harlot Drenched With Blood
We have been discussing the role of the United States in international geo-politics over the past century. We have argued that the US has been particularly militant and aggressive. It has fought wars in virtually every continent. It has been at war every year at some place in the globe for the past fifty years. It has maintained military bases and armed forces all over the world. Yet it sees itself as a nation of peace and goodness.
History has never before seen such a nation: one which in the name of righteousness has killed so many people in so many countries. In the West the bellicosity of the United States has long been tolerated because, by-and-large, the US has been an ally of Western countries. But in non-Western regions, a very different view and perspective of the United States is found.
We have argued that common to all US foreign policy in the last one hundred years has been a deeply and widely held doctrine amongst Americans that the US is a special nation with a Manifest Destiny to take responsibility for the world as a whole, to lead it to better things. It is accepted that the US has a special responsibility to right wrongs all over the world, to intervene on behalf of the suffering and oppressed, to liberate, to uphold, to defend. These “righteous principles” make the US an exceptional nation on the planet–in the hearts and minds of most Americans.
A conversation about the world with almost all American people will quickly establish that they have a deep pride in their nation’s willingness to help others even to the extent of going to war in the name of abstract principles like justice or freedom or liberation anywhere on the globe. “Who else is there? What other nation would be good enough, would care enough?” they wonder. This is the essence of the doctrine of American Exceptionalism.
But–and here is the rub–the naked edge of a very sharp sword lies just beneath the blanket of such ideas. Consider carefully the following quotations from two US Presidents fifty years apart. Firstly, Woodrow Wilson:
Right is more precious than peace and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts.
Secondly, John F. Kennedy:
Any hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed . . . will be met by whatever action is needed.
(Both citations are from a piece by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal.
Think carefully about what is being said–and similar sentiments have been expressed (and acted upon) by every US President since Wilson. Firstly, Wilson asserts that righteousness trumps peace. He commits the US to fighting for righteousness, for moral or civic principles–not for defence of one’s people or citizens against armed aggressors. But–and here is the rub–in a fallen world righteousness is a very scarce commodity. Every year in every continent evil will be being perpetrated by some government, some ruler and Wilson is committing the United States to go to war to fight against evil anywhere, at any time. This is a monstrous, and ultimately very bloody doctrine.
Secondly, Kennedy commits the US to fight anywhere in the world on behalf of any “friendly nation” to provide for their safety and security. That is why the US has been the most blood thirsty nation of the modern era. And President Obama walks, thinks, and acts in the same tradition and stream of thought. His speech at the acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize recently stunned many with his emphatic defence of the prerogative and right of the US to engage in war. But what kind of war, we may ask. Obama leaves us in no doubt that the idolatry of American Manifest Destiny and “the right” being more important than peace has possessed his heart.
Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest – because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.
And again:
More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region.
I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.
Force is justified by a quest to establish righeousness. This is American Manifest Destiny in a nutshell.
We firmly believe that this idolatrous quest for global righteousness through the wielding of a sword–a view deeply and widely held throughout the United States–is the real driver and motivator for recent wars in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It is not, as the Left believes, a lust for money or power or oil. It is due to a false religion, a widely held idolatry about the place and responsibility of the United States in the world.
This iniquitous belief is, sadly, a secularized perversion of the Christian faith–which is to say it arose out of the bosom of the Church. We have traced how, by the end of the nineteenth century, “progressive” clergy were openly teaching that the Kingdom of God was manifested through the economic and technological progress enjoyed by the United States. A new era was dawning, and the United States would lead the world in ushering in a period and realm of peace and light.
Out of this the political ideology known as Progressivism–the belief in progress–was born. If the great progress experienced in the nineteenth century was a manifestation of God and His Kingdom, then it was the duty of all Christians to strive to see more and more progress made in society. Professing Christians quickly found themselves in the vanguard of urging more and more progress to be made in educating, healing, empowering, liberating, clothing, and feeding all mankind. And the United States, because it was exceptional, because it was a city set upon a hill, had to take the lead.
In the eighteenth century, it was the duty of the United States to help peoples everywhere see the advantages and benefits of liberty (on their way to becoming Christianized). But by the end of the nineteenth century American Christian leaders were calling for the United States actually to make peoples everywhere free—to liberate them. The step-shift in one sense was a small one; but in another, it was a giant one. The idol of American Manifest Destiny or Exceptionalism suddenly had teeth. Very quickly, the teeth became bloody. Splendid isolationism was replaced by militant engagement in the name of god and love.
As Richard Gamble expresses it:
Thus, in the progressive clergy’s interpretive framework, events in America’s national life assumed a cosmic significance; each step in the nation’s journey led inexorably to the City of God. Infused with such transcendent significance, what had been, for example, simply mundane politics or commonplace matters of foreign policy became, to the progressive clergy, theological events in a redemptive history. And this pervasive spiritualizing or sacralizing of matters of statecraft and public policy—a habit of thought and speech that appeared repeatedly among politicians, academics, and newspaper editors—held deep consequences for the direction of American policy as the Great War approached. For, as historian Richard Bishirjian has observed, ‘if salvation is thought to be intramundane, political life takes on new historical importance as it becomes enveloped in the history of salvation; and politics becomes the field of prophecy.’ Certainly, by the time of the war, the progressive clergy were adept at practicing politics as prophecy. At the most fundamental level, they merged politics and religion. (Richard M Gamble, The War For Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2003), p.36f) http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1932236163&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
To all intents and purposes in the mind of the progressive clergy, the Government of the United States had become the representative and servant of the Messiah whose duty it was to bring the Kingdom of God to pass upon the earth. The idolatry of American Manifest Destiny was taking a new, more deadly, form and shape. The “progress” the progressive clergy ardently sought and insisted upon was for the Government to advance God’s Kingdom—but what the government does, it does by force, sanctioned in the final analysis by the sword.
In the end this idolatry of the Progressives, which has dominated both political parties for over one hundred years now, would have the government sit astride the Potomac not as an eagle, but as a huge harlot, drenched in the blood of sacrifice. It would demand sacrifice from its citizens in the relentless pursuit of righteousness upon the earth throughout the twentieth century, sending them forth to countless holy wars—wars to establish peace in our time, wars to tear down tyrants, wars to liberate the oppressed, wars to make the world safe for democracy. It would sacrifice over forty million of its most innocent and defenceless upon an altar of worship to human rights, in this case, so-called women’s rights. It would do this unspeakable thing in the name of justice and righteousness and a god in which it trusts.
But at the turn of the twentieth century, that was all yet to come. However, very early in the piece the progressive clergy demonstrated that if necessary blood had to be shed. Judgment had to be brought down. For example, Gamble, discussing the teaching and writing of Shailer Mathews, one of the most influential of the progressive clergy, writes:
Although the progressive clergy offered a gospel imbued with brotherhood and a loving Father, they retained a strong sense of divine justice and of the inevitability of such judgment in a morally rational universe. In a striking comment, Mathews summarized the progressive’s view of God: ‘It is sometimes said that modern thought is removing the punitive God from His universe. It seems to me, on the contrary, that it is bring that God into the universe and even more into human life . . . more a God to be feared than even the Jehovah of the prophets.’ (Gamble, p.63)
Progressive clergy began to call for a crusade to rid the nation of evil (which was essentially social evil, not the sins of individual souls). Once this was underway, America could then redeem the whole world, serving as God’s historically prepared nation, “through which the Eternal shall proclaim his will to all the sons of men.” (Gamble, p.63, citing New York congregational pastor, Charles Jefferson, in sermon delivered in 1904.)
Progressive social scientists and academics at the beginning of the twentieth century openly espoused the notion that God’s redemptive purposes were to be achieved essentially and primarily through the state. One of the most prominent was Richard T. Ely, an economist who taught political science at Johns Hopkins University. One of his students was Woodrow Wilson (later to become the first overtly Progressive President). Ely was the economist most often cited by progressive theologians. He argued that God worked primarily through the State to achieve His ends. It was the duty of the Church to see that the State was carrying out its duties to God. Others taught that the Kingdom of God could only come through the agency of the State. (Gamble, p.64)
It is important to remember that at this time the pulpits of the land were far more influential than is the case in our day across the West. This was no abstract theological debate amongst fringe denominational theologians. The United States at the time overtly and institutionally professed Christianity. The sermons delivered in the big city church pulpits were regularly reproduced and discussed in newspapers and universities were largely staffed by people who regarded themselves as Christians, albeit modern or progressives ones.
The progressive clergy were introducing changes and falsehoods that would be quickly be accepted as mainstream in the life of the nation, and would result in a rapid secularization of US society, on the one hand, and the rise in belief in the State as the key institution to advance God’s Kingdom, on the other. That is why the true ideological heirs and descendants of an overtly professing Christian president such as Woodrow Wilson is a Franklin Roosevelt or a George W Bush, or a Barack Obama.
For them, to advance the power of the State in an attempt to “make things right” was to be Christian, pure and simple. It is a faith they all hold in common, regardless of what other accoutrement’s their respective religious beliefs might hold. Wilson would have agreed with them all. Personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in this rapidly morphing idolatry, was an optional, unnecessary extra. If it was to be held at all, it was to be strictly a private matter.
In sum, America’s ceaseless military engagement around the world is the result of substituting the State for the Church, the Eagle for the Cross. It is a terrible blasphemy and a wicked perversion of the Gospel of God. It is a false god from which American Christians must repent thoroughly and completely.
I don’t know who first said, “Behind every apparent double standard lies an unconfessed single standard” (and as far as I can tell, neither does the Internet), but whoever did was onto something. 
contracelsum 