13 purpose to suggest some of the ways in which biblical (and other) imagery has operated powerfully, consciously and unconsciously, to shape the American interpretation of reality and to some extent the actions of Americans in the world.
23-4 did not want English symbols of liberty, so chose Roman ones (republic, president, congress, senate all from Latin). But Bible better known to most, so biblical images lasted. Exodus not Aeneid.
34 Analogy between revolution and constitution on the one hand and conversion and covenant on the other.
36 the covenant ideology completely wiped out native American origin myths - encouraged by ambiguities of "chosenness". Senator Beveridge Jan 1900 justifies American war against Philippine independence movement because God has made America his chosen nation.
43/4 Religious fervour about liberty raised doubts about slavery, but overtaken by creation of national structure.
44/5 Great Revival of 1800. Language remained lukewarm e.g. providence instead of God to avoid any hint of establishment. Revival provided warmth which encouraged unity. This combination of public form (aloof) and private meaning (warm) makes American civil religion difficult to understand.
48 Tocqueville was aware that where the inner control of religious discipline operates the external compulsion of the state is not necessary. Also saw that religion operated privately in a democratic and republican way; and was not so aware that its effectiveness was due not to dogma but to revival.
51/2 Theodore Weld couched abolitionism as conversion.
55 Civil War depicted as epic episode in white history - aftermath self congratulatory - led to sentiments such as Beveridge's. Secular culture remained very close to Protestant culture.
67ff assumption of the existence of a national character, per Erikson. Lawrence's portrayal of Franklin as child or old man, but lacking moral complexity of adult experience. Very crude way of putting it. Blake - single vision sees the world by reason alone; twofold vision sees the depth. America prone to see the world by single vision not clear how the revival psychology fits in here
Religion and wealth gradually come closer together. Denunciations of wealth become more perfunctory. 1854 Matthew Smith wrote Adam was created and placed in the Garden of Eden for business purposes... 76 gospel of wealth disseminated to the millions, including the millions who were neither Anglo-Saxon nor Protestant
79 Erikson notices a distaste of sensuality and an inability to question (possibly the last generation of all-American boys)
83-4 dialectic between liberation and liberty... conversion and covenant. In the pattern of individual life this dialectic takes the form of impulse and control. We have seen how what began as the great Puritan cosmic drama of sin and salation, conversion, new birth and new life, became domesticated into the production of just the right amount of autonomy and guilt, decency and efficiency to run a vast industrial economy
93 in many cultural characteristics Americans of all backgrounds have become remarkably similar. NB this was before 1975 still in the era of the melting pot and before the ethnic mosaic. Question over how deep the apparent assimilation goes.
105/6 Eldridge Cleaver sees white as mind without body and black as body without mind. Deep hostility to body and the unconscious in the American personality so why the enormous popularity of psychoanalysis
113 repression of socialism due to features of the American character and myth that we have been discussing. Terms individualism and socialism invented approximately simultaneously in France. Individuality had negative connotation. In America had positive connotation and socialism therefore seen very negatively. Came to a head in first half nineteenth century well before industrial capitalism emerged in America. not sure about that Early Puritan suspicion of pursuit of wealth in its own right. Jefferson very suspicious of manufacturing: he stressed individual autonomy. Brownson, RC thinker pre-Marx, saw wage labour as slavery and wanted labourers to be independent, in their own shops. In 1880 Whitman was still looking forward to a world of small owners. Socialism seen as a system that crushes the individual.
127/8 Debs the most successful American socialist - presented socialism in American rhetoric - Biblical imagery etc. Socialism as a political force ended by 1WW and Russian Revolution.
132 Bellah's apocalyptic dislike of cities, under thumb of corporations
142 American civil religion an empty and broken shell - an external covenant - which is OK but also needs to be an internal covenant. Even the external covenant has been betrayed post Watergate Tradition is precious, but in many ways is the source of the problem.
145 Southern experience of defeat softened by strategies of sentimentalisation and glorification and also identification with the aggressor - i.e. becoming more imperialist and aggressive than the north.
This is a narrowly centred book - born of American angst - and I have difficulty generalising from it. Also because it works in a tradition of objectification that so obviously doesn't fit the facts - it's not empirically valid. Bellah is angry in this book about the combination of Vietnam and Watergate, I think - and is trying to find a historical path that leads to these. Story of shift from god centred and spiritual motives of Puritans etc to use of the bible as justification for wealth seeking behaviour. Has some interesting history in it, and it's difficult to refute the story but I don't think he shows that religion had all that much to do with it. Focusses so closely on the "American national character", which is essentially WASP and therefore ignores a huge minority and in most times a majority of Americans. And even if you narrow it to WASPs, I can't get on with the essentialism of it. What can I take out of it? An interesting story about civil religion, a case study. That's about it. He seems dispirited in a way - angry yet he has no solution, no counter. Good quote about Tacqueville.
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