The Church of America and the Heresy of Peace

Abstract

America, said G. K. Chesterton, is a nation with the soul of a church. It is a sacred community commanding sacrificial loyalty. It is also a violent and weapon-loving civilization, in which force is tethered to patriotism and national identity. American culture is at once militarist and theological, Christian and violent. How can this paradox be explained? This article discusses the role of New England puritanism in establishing a providentialist nationalism that would define war as a theological prerogative and non-violence as heresy. It shows how theologians such as Cotton Mather identified the emerging nation of America with the sacred vessel of the Christian church to the point that ‘chosenness’ or divine election represented a blank cheque for military adventure. It also shows how theologies of peace and restraint were anathematized as not merely heretical but a form of spiritual violence against the American project. In this sense, American nationhood functions as a controlling consideration akin to an institution, and Christian pacifism serves as a charismatic critique – or inspiration. To what extent were attitudes to violence framed by models of salvation? How did identity or chosenness trump ethics or the duty of love in the puritan imagination? The article concludes with more recent observations about the relationship of the ‘institution’ of nationhood to the troublesome, fissiparous energies of peace.