Constitutional Maintenance and Religious Sensibility in the 1920s: Rethinking the Constitutionalist Response to Progressivism

Abstract

Observers of American politics often have noted and usually derided a so-called “cult of the Constitution” or “Constitution worship.” Supposedly benighted participants in it, especially those of the early twentieth century, are typically treated as Babbitt-like, simple-minded “professional patriots” who “fetishize” the Constitution and need not be taken very seriously.1 To be sure, conscientious believers would not confuse the earthly city with the heavenly city, nor an American “civil religion” (if there is one) with a real religion.2 And we should be ever alert that what is deemed constitutional at any given moment is not necessarily just or pious. Still, the modern condescension toward religiously informed defenders of the Constitution is too easy and too quickly alleges idolatry. It contrasts sharply with the long-established view that maintenance of a political regime involves ideas and sensibilities associated most readily in the Western tradition with religion. Religious ideas and sensibilities were prominent in the 1920s' response of American constitutionalists to the two previous decades of Progressivism. Constitutionalists recognized Progressivism as a major turning point because it attacked or dismissed long-established principles of American thought and politics, including natural rights, limited and representative government, federalism, and the separation of powers. In doing so Progressives prepared the way for the modern liberal order that came to fruition in the New Deal of the 1930s and was elaborated in the Great Society of the 1960s. Those who resisted this trend in the 1920s recurred to religious ideas, some of which can also be described as sentiments or virtues, that included most prominently fidelity (or faithfulness), reverence (or piety), and the conception of man as a created but fallen being in need of restraint.3 Of course scholars have long acknowledged the importance of religion in American political culture. However, its role in early twentieth-century constitutional discourse is only beginning to attract attention,4 despite the revisionist claim that the era's thought was more substantive and principled than allowed by generations of Progressive historiography. This article first briefly surveys some well-known texts in American political thought to call to mind influential figures' emphasis on the connection between religious ideas and the maintenance of American constitutionalism. The analysis then shows in more detail that this connection persisted in the neglected 1920s' discourse of constitutional maintenance that responded to Progressivism and cohered around the journal Constitutional Review. Defenders of the Constitution in this period retained the established, religiously informed perspective and regarded it as a key aspect of their work.