Church and Nation: A Credal Nation, Part I
by Scott P. Richert
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In introducing this series last week, I noted that I had been careful in my choice of the title “Church and Nation” rather than “Church and State.” I intend in this series to focus primarily on what are called the “national questions,” as well as moral and social ones, and in my mind, that meant taking as a given the American constitutional system, both historically and in its doppelganger form today.
A number of comments on that first installment, however, have convinced me that I was a bit too optimistic in thinking that I could simply ignore the big pink elephant in the corner. I’m referring, of course, to the common assumption that the American nation is unlike any other; that, rather than being a people bound together by a common language, culture, genetic endowment, homeland, and history (among other things), the American nation is a “proposition” or “credal” nation.
To the extent that this view is true (or even, to the extent that we believe that this view is true), it raises the question that many of the commenters addressed (and that I was attempting to duck): Can Christians (not just Catholics) give their assent to a nation whose essential creed is not consonant with the creeds of Christianity?
The first thing to note is how many of the commenters speak as if America is a credal nation, while giving every indication that they don’t believe that America should be one (or, at least, should not be formed by this particular creed). This, as I suggested in a comment on the earlier thread, is the weak point in the arguments put forward by both John Rao and David Schindler. While neoconservative Catholics such as Michael Novak (Schindler’s bête noire) have been prominent supporters of the credal nation idea, Schindler (and Rao, in his own way) has essentially accepted the basic premise; he just disagrees with the neocon trinity (Novak, Neuhaus, and Weigel) that the particular creed at the heart of the American nation is acceptable to Catholics.
But is America really a “credal nation”? Or, more broadly (yet more to the point), is it even possible to say that any nation can be a “credal nation” without making nonsense of the word nation?
I dealt with a similar claim in my critical essay in the second edition of Justin Raimondo’s Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement
As I wrote:
For the traditionalist, such a claim is bound to bring to mind the “proposition nation” or “credal nation” view of America associated most often with Harry Jaffa, a disciple of political philosopher Leo Strauss, but more broadly with modern neoconservatism. True, the proposition that the Straussians and neocons find at the heart of “the American experiment” is equality, not liberty, but the form—”an abstract and revolutionary idea bound up with the American character”—is the same.
The trouble that traditionalists have with abstract and revolutionary ideas is that they are, well, abstract and revolutionary. Indeed, the more abstract they are, the more revolutionary they are. There is no single “idea of liberty.” I have one; Justin Raimondo has one; and John Podhoretz has one. And I dare say that no two of the three completely coincide (though one of the three may not overlap at all with the other two.) President George W. Bush, in his Second Inaugural Address, may have used the word freedom more often than any other word, and he undoubtedly would regard it as a synonym for liberty; but his vision of freedom is very different from, and less traditionally American than, Justin Raimondo’s understanding of liberty.
[Still] Raimondo, despite his own words, is not really talking about an abstract idea of liberty but a peculiarly American one, rooted in the traditions of the American people, which, however much they may diverge in historical particulars from the traditions of Europe, are themselves rooted in the broader traditions of European (particularly Anglo-Saxon) civilization. We value limited government, for instance, not because it is some Platonic ideal, or because it conforms to the (abstract) libertarian ideal of nonaggression, but because it is part of our historical experience, and our historical experience has shown us its value (even if we have been made aware of its value most often in its absence).
This, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter in any discussion of a “credal nation.” As John Lukacs has repeatedly pointed out, what ideas do to men is far less important (and less interesting) than what men do to and with ideas.
There is no doubt that the idea of America as a credal nation has been used to great advantage by men from Lincoln to George W. Bush. And the fact of multiethnic immigration to the United States (pre-1965, let alone post-) has made it easier to sell the idea that what binds us together is not a common language, culture, genetic endowment, homeland, and history, but an “abstract and revolutionary idea,” whether equality or liberty.
As I have discussed in a number of articles in Chronicles and elsewhere and in two speeches at the John Randolph Club, this idea was used in an Americanization campaign in the early 20th century to strip Continental immigrants (many of them Catholic) of their particular European ethnic identities—all in the name of aiding “assimilation.” While superficially successful (these groups began to regard themselves as fully American to the extent that they rejected their native traditions, language, and culture and subscribed instead to the American “creed”), the process had the opposite effect in the long run. The true assimilation that comes from living together and developing common traditions and a common history—the assimilation that actually creates a nation—was strangled in its crib. (The better route would have been to cut off immigration and to let assimilation occur naturally.)
And yet, despite the obvious effects that policies predicated on the idea of America as a credal nation have had, their success has proved the point: To the extent that we can say that there is an American national identity today, it is in spite of, not because of, the concept of credal nationhood. The nation is not found in the credal capitol of Washington, D.C., but where nations are always found—in the surviving traditions and folkways of people living real, rooted lives on the land where their fathers lived and died.
Having gone on at too great a length already, I’ll save one final point—that “credal nationhood” is, and always has been, more about the state than about the nation—for my next post.
Previous Installments in “Church and Nation”:
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1 Comment by MJK on 30 May 2008:
Scott – a wonderfully balanced and reasoned refutation of both the explicit and seemingly implicit assent given by some to this myth of the U.S. qua credal or propositional nation.
Given our previous exchanges, I particularly appreciate your reference to Prof Lukacs’ important sentiment on ideas: “what ideas do to men is far less important (and less interesting) than what men do to and with ideas. Thanks! Regards, Michael
2 Comment by G.S. on 30 May 2008:
I think “Europe” and “America” are useful if inexact parallels.
Just because one thinks it it means something to be European doesn’t mean one buys into the creed of a united and “progressive” Europe.
“is it even possible to say that any nation can be a “credal nation” without making nonsense of the word nation?”
I agree — to talk about a “credal nation” makes no more nor less sense than talking about a credal family or a credal people.
Whether the particular creed or idea or whatever is good and true is not even the point. In rebuking a lazy, deceitful relative Papa Smith may proclaim one day that “Dadgummit, the Smith family stands for honesty and hard-work,” ….. but he hardly means that every single honest, hard-working person on the face of the planet has suddenly been adopted into the Smith family. (Or that the relative in question has suddenly been ejected or disowned.)
If you want to join the Smith family you either gotta A) be born into it, or B) marry into it, or C) get sponsored as an *individual*, on a case-by-case basis, by a Smith who is willing to accept actual personal responsibility for you.
If Americans treated family membership with the same stupid, irresponsible thoughtlessness as they treat national membership, why, the families of this country would swiftly — oh, wait.
Never mind.
3 Comment by Patrick Hall on 30 May 2008:
First, America is not a “nation”, as it is credal. So, no, it is not “possible to say that any nation can be a “credal nation” without making nonsense of the word nation”. Nations are not credal, America is credal, ergo, America is not a nation. To argue otherwise is to make America into something it is not. The very definition of America, from it’s founding, is credal.
Is the United States a “propositional nation”? As it defines itself, yes, it is. Mr Spencer may not define the United States as such, but his opinion means nothing; Mr Spencer doesn’t set United States citizenship policy, the “people”, upon whom the government of the United States is founded, makes citizenship policy. “The people”, speaking through their elected representatives make the policy, and they have decided to accept propositional nationhood.
Remember, the first “multiculturalists” were the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian Democrats. Mr Spencer, in advocating non-credal/propositional nationhood is siding with the “monoculturalists”, the Whigs/Federalists. To the Whig, being an American was being of the same culture as the people of the East Coast (New England, Tidewater Virginia, Coastal Carolinas, etc.). Wiley German and Scotch-Irish settlers in the Mountains weren’t “real Americans”; and especially not those Irish (Catholic) immigrants, nor those French, Spanish, Creole, etc. in the new acquired territories from the French. Mr Spencer is right in opposing the idea that America is propositional, because only a proposition can be exported. However, reality is something quite different. The Jacksonian Democratic ideology of “Manifest Destiny” emboldened the Republican Party (the inheritors of the Whig Party) to consider America’s “Manifest Destiny” not as a multicultural empire of agrarians, but of a monocultural empire of merchants. Thus, the invasion of the South. Over the years, the New-new Democrats idea of radical multiculturalism has taken over the American system, with the idea that such things as “gay rights” can and should be exported around the world. Our monocultural empire has given way to a radical multicultural one. Much in the same way the French Revolution did away with the ancien regime, and created the grotesque Napoleon Bonaparte.
In the end, the United States is a “credal nation” because that is how it defines itself, as the result of historical circumstance, not because it “should” be. Not that the United States is even a “nation”; as correctly stated, nations can not, by definition, be “credal”. This is where American Whiggery falls flat on it’s face, and where Mr Spencer’s problem’s arise: HE wants America to be a “nation”, but America, as defined by it’s very foundation can not define itself as one. Thus, Mr Spencer, if you wish to make the United States into a “nation”, you must first destroy it’s current incarnation.
4 Comment by Michael Kenny on 30 May 2008:
I was tickled by G.S.’s “swipe” at the EU! I don’t think I’ve ever seen an article on this website that some blogger didn’t turn into a pretext for an attack on the EU! It’s a bit like the way the Irish eat potatoes. You can be sure there will be potatoes, it’s just a question of the form in which they are going to be served! It it slightly less off subject here inasmuch as the the founding fathers of the EU, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi, were all pious Catholics!
5 Comment by Juvenal on 30 May 2008:
“In the end, the United States is a “credal nation” because that is how it defines itself, as the result of historical circumstance, not because it “should” be.”
If a member of the Elks Club says that the club is the Society of Jesus, does that make it so? If a majority of members took a vote and agreed with the proposition, would that still make it so? What a lot of unexamined assumptions we have here. Things are not always what they are because someone says they are. Since it seems nearly absurd to speak of America as a nation, it is all the more absurd to describe it as a credal or propositional nation.
6 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 30 May 2008:
Patrick Hall (@3):
Who is Mr. Spencer, and what does he have to do with the article I wrote?
7 Comment by Patrick Hall on 30 May 2008:
Spencer should read as “Richert”.
That’s what I get for reading both Takimag and Chronicles at the same time. It is a bad habit I have; thus the mix-up. I guess I confused “Richard” Spencer with Scott “Richert”. Honest mistake: both have “Rs” and “Ss”.
Anyway:
If a member of the Elks Club says that the club is the Society of Jesus, does that make it so?
The Society of Jesus is an exclusive group which has the ability to deny membership. They don’t have to accept the Elks, nor would they. However, propositional “nationhood” is not an organiziation with the ability to reject members. Belonging to it simply requires ACTING like a propositional “nation”. America ACTS as if it is a propositional “nation”, therefore it IS a propositional “nation”. It doesn’t matter how YOU feel about the situation, or what YOUR opinions are. Your, or Mr Richert’s, opinions are discounted by “the People”, upon whom the government, thus the power, of the United States is founded. The voting population decide whether or not the United States is a propositional “nation”. These voters, in turn, are, obviously, influenced by well funded interests. You must then ask yourself: who are these interests, and why is it they support the idea of propositional “nationhood” in America?
8 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 30 May 2008:
I’d say the US is a credal nation because there is no other way of defining Americans which does not end up excluding tens of millions of people who live in the US, who are citizens, and in some cases whose ancestors lived in the US for several generations. The Declaration of Independence with its “we hold these truths to be self-evident” is definitely a creed. Those who would dispute the “self-evident” truths are to that extent un-American and I would include myself in that category.
That doesn’t mean I can’t be or shouldn’t be a good citizen – paying taxes, obeying just laws, defending my country if it is attacked. But my higher allegiance to God and to his Church (as laid out in the Nicene Creed) require that I work and speak against the false elements of the American creed, that I refuse to obey laws requiring proximate cooperation in grave evil, and certainly that I do not support aggression against other nations to force them to accept the “values” set forth in the American creed.
As someone pointed out in response to Mr. Richert’s first article on this subject, Christians here are in a very similar position to what they were in during the period of the pagan Roman empire except that the US empire relies much more on indoctrination and seduction – at least in the homeland – and less on force.
9 Comment by Juvenal on 30 May 2008:
If Patrick Hall would think before typing, he might be a bit less confused. Let us look at the matter generally. Are you prepared to agree with John Lennon that “It’s all in the mind”? Is nothing true or false but thinking makes it so? And how can one say that a diverse hodge-podge of 300 million people of different races, ethnicities, languages, religions, histories “acts”? Obviously, the lying propaganda of northeastern universities has been making this claim for 150 years. But endlessly repeating nonsense does not make it true. These apodictic utterances mean absolutely nothing.
You seem to be saying that, when roughly 51% of people of the roughly 50% of people eligible to vote cast their vote for one liar or another, they are giving rational assent to some proposition such as “all men are created equal” or “I like Ike” or “It’s time for a change.” Does Mr. Hall really believe that Obama voters know what they are in for? Suppose 25% of eligible voters do really believe that the USA are dedicated to one or another proposition. What about the others? What if only 20% dissents? Does that make them unAmerican? Isn’t there some less childish way to pass the time then to spin endless generalizations in a vacuum of information?
10 Comment by Patrick Hall on 30 May 2008:
“Juvenal”:
When did I say it was “all in the mind”? I stated that America is a credal “nation” because it has defined itself, and acts, as one. There’s nothing “mental” about it: the facts are concrete.
Yes. Indeed they do. They have acted, and the results are valid, as defined by the system itself.
Yes, they really do believe in Obama.
11 Comment by Juvenal on 30 May 2008:
What facts? All you have offered are counter-intuitive assertions. How does a nation “define itself”? If I define myself as a hero, and am not a hero, then it is indeed a mental act. Why is this difficult to understand? There is an ideology we might call propositionalism, but how seriously it is taken by ordinary people is something that remains to be demonstrated. And, let me be a bit too frank, to say that you know what Obama voters intend is both arrogant and condescending. Naturally, black voters are attracted to a black; Bush haters to a Democrat who might win; leftist elitists to someone they think is like themselves; women to someone who seems more compassionate, and even some blue-collar white guys who cannot stand Hilary. There are probably hundreds of reasons, few of them having much to do with any coherent ideological proposition. It does not help Mr. Richert’s discussion at all, however, to propound an apparently endless series of generalizations, backed by neither logic nor evidence but only by another series of generalizations. I apologize to Mr. Richert for helping to perpetuate this distraction when I only sought to end it.
Let me take up Scott R’s final point, which is quite important. He seems to be saying that a true nation is a natural growth, based on shared history and memories. Thus, ideological propositions, which introduce antagonisms and seek to redefine the nation in political terms are really the enemy of true nations just as they are the seed-bed of party states.
12 Comment by Patrick Hall on 30 May 2008:
“How does a nation “define itself”?”
Very easily. It defines itself by it’s actions. The United States acts like a credal or propositional “nation”, therefore it is one.
“[I]deological propositions, which introduce antagonisms and seek to redefine the nation in political terms are really the enemy of true nations just as they are the seed-bed of party states.”
My point exactly. I’m glad to see we both agree, Mr “Juvenal”.
13 Comment by G.S. on 30 May 2008:
For the record, to whom it may concern: From now on I pledge to never again criticize the European Union.
The EU was, after all, founded by Catholics. Can’t argue with that.
Damn. How humiliating. And devastating.
That deft “Irish potato” maneuver really caught me with my pants down.
14 Comment by G.S. on 30 May 2008:
Mr. Hall,
Would you agree that there are certain common threads of culture & language & so forth that run through the various states, *regardless* of whether the denizens of said states acknowledge such threads as meaningful or not?
Don’t take it the wrong way, it’s nothing to me.
I’m not even sure I disagree with you — all else aside, the US is maybe-kinda, uh, * big* to be a nation, if you ask me.
That was why I brought up the European analogy earlier, which gave Tickle-Me-Kenny an attack of the giggles.
In any event, as to Juvenal’s statement:
“There is an ideology we might call propositionalism, but how seriously it is taken by ordinary people is something that remains to be demonstrated…”
– well, I’m as keen on populism as the next guy, yet on this occasion I’m a bit more inclined to be pessimistic about the ordinary people myself.
I encounter regular, working-class folks applying — not just lip-servicing, but *applying* — proposition-style thinking to their life-choices, voting-choices, etc., on more than enough occasions to depress me.
But – Mr. Hall – there *are* at least some real, objective unifying factors — factors which are *independent* of people’s opinions, ideas on the matter, actions, choices, etc…. right?
15 Comment by Patrick Hall on 30 May 2008:
“Would you agree that there are certain common threads of culture & language & so forth that run through the various states, *regardless* of whether the denizens of said states acknowledge such threads as meaningful or not?”
Yes, I agree.
“…the US is maybe-kinda, uh, * big* to be a nation”
That it is, indeed.
“there *are* at least some real, objective unifying factors — factors which are *independent* of people’s opinions, ideas on the matter, actions, choices, etc…. right?”
Yes, there are. The problem is that these “objective unifying factors” are not what public policy makers are instructed to use when determining what makes an “American”. I think we could all agree what makes someone an “American”; I’ll throw out a list of qualifiers:
- “White”; wait, scratch that
- Born in the United States; no not that either
- Protestant; no, of course not
- Believes in the Declaration of Independence; wait, that’s a creed, never mind
- I’ve got it! An American is someone who knows to take off for 1st base if it is unoccupied and the catcher drops the third strike!
But, seriously, there is SOMETHING that makes an American, but that SOMETHING changes in time and place in America. As you stated, America is “too big” to be a “nation”, so what makes one an “American” in Los Angeles is something different than what makes one an “American” in Fargo, ND.
16 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 31 May 2008:
Patrick Hall:
In my first installment, I wrote:
If I didn’t know better, I’d think that you were simply doing me a favor by proving my point.
Both Juvenal and G.S. have understood my point. Juvenal writes:
Exactly. Mr. Hall’s flippant response–”I’m glad to see we both agree”–proves the point of this second installment: that “many of the commenters speak as if America is a credal nation, while giving every indication that they don’t believe that America should be one (or, at least, should not be formed by this particular creed).”
In other words, people who should know better have accepted the assumptions of their enemies. Mr. Hall (perhaps following John Rao) insists that “Nations are not credal, America is credal, ergo, America is not a nation. To argue otherwise is to make America into something it is not.” Yet to argue so is to accept the premise of those who insist that American should be a “credal nation.” And that premise begins with a conflation of nation and state (which I’ll take up in the next installment).
17 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 31 May 2008:
The acceptance of the “credal nation” proposition by those who do not believe that America should be a “credal nation” reminds of those libertarians who insist that all government of any sort is illegitimate but then use their adherence to this libertarian creed to absolve themselves for sitting in offices on the campuses of state-funded colleges and universities, drawing salaries and benefits paid for with taxpayer funds. Of course, they then publish articles in taxpayer-funded journals criticizing those conservatives who believe that some (limited) government is legitimate.
Reducing real life to abstract theory is incredibly liberating. It removes the necessity of grappling with reality, either intellectually or morally. Rather than talking about our responsibilities, we can simply disclaim any.
18 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 31 May 2008:
Kirt Higdon (@8):
You’re familiar enough with things I’ve written here and elsewhere to know that I’m not an apologist for our current regime. But the point of these articles is not to examine “Church and State” but “Church and Nation.”
Again, I have to raise the question: What does it say about the current state of our discourse (let alone our historical condition) if even those who understand the distinction between nation and state continue to conflate them?
Part of the problem–perhaps the central problem–is that even those of us who know the value of everything that makes up a nation find ourselves separated, to various extents, from all of it. A lack of rootedness, for instance, makes it hard to have any attachment to a particular place or to develop a shared history with our neighbors. Even if we stay in one place, the movement of others around us has a similar effect. (John Lukacs told me recently that, 30 years ago, he could recognize, at least by name, approximately 3,000 of the people in his township; today, he knows very few.)
In this, Juvenal’s early point–”it seems nearly absurd to speak of America as a nation”–is well taken. Various factors (especially war and immigration), throughout American history, have weighed against the crystallization of an American national identity. (On this point, John Lukacs’s Outgrowing Democracy, reissued in recent years as A New Republic, is indispensable.) And the size and scope of the geographic area encompassed by the United States raises the question of whether such an American identity could every coalesce. On the other hand, we Americans are an impatient people, and we expect in 300 years of tumult and restlessness to have developed a national identity that it took most European nations much longer to develop.
So we have trouble, because of our own lack of experience, to comprehend what it means to be a nation, but that doesn’t fully explain (much less excuse) our inability to distinguish between nation and state.
19 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 31 May 2008:
Mr. Richert, you can count me as one who considers the US a credal nation, but would prefer that it was not. But for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that it is not and that I don’t so consider it. How does that in any way change my obligations as an American? I’m still obliged to obey traffic signals, drive on the right side of the road, pay taxes, and defend my country if it is attacked. I’m still obliged to oppose aggression against other nations, imposition and export of American contraceptive porno-culture, abortion etc. It’s still up to me whether or not I want to like such aspects of American pop culture as football or rock music.
Our allegiance to the nation, whether credal or organic, are secondary not only to such higher allegiances as to God, the moral law and the Church, but also to such more local ones as family, friends, and the local community. So in terms of practical human conduct, exactly what is this argument about?
20 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 31 May 2008:
Mr. Hall, way back up @3, illustrates a point I made a few comments up: “Thus, Mr [Richert], if you wish to make the United States into a ‘nation’, you must first destroy it’s current incarnation.”
Setting aside the conflation of state (United States) with nation (the American nation, the term I used), Mr. Hall, because he believes it is self-evident that America is a “credal nation” has presented us with two options: We can either give our assent to that “credal nation” (in which case, Mr. Hall, on the basis of his comments here and on the previous thread, implies that we cannot be Christians–an implication I would agree with, if I accepted his false dichotomy); or we can work to destroy the United States.
The question, of course, is which of the two courses Mr. Hall is taking. As a committed Catholic, he doesn’t seem to be taking the first. Perhaps he is taking the second, though from what I know of him I don’t really see him engaged in the sort of insurgency implied by that option, either.
Or perhaps he’s taken neither of the courses that he has suggested, and he’s simply staked out a position that allows him to criticize others without taking positive action of his own–much like the state-funded libertarian critics of the state.
21 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 31 May 2008:
Kirt Higdon (@19):
The obligations you keep returning to are our obligations as citizens. Yet citizenship is not a constituent part of nationality, properly understood. (Nationality, however, may be a constituent part of citizenship, depending on the citizenship laws of the state in question.) To state it succinctly: Citizenship pertains to the state, not the nation.
The question, as I stated in the first installment, was raised by the increasing number of people, both non-Catholic and Catholic, who have been suggesting that being a Catholic is somehow incompatible with being an American–not just with giving assent to the current regime, but in the sense of saying that Protestantism is inherent in the American national identity (which I shouldn’t have to repeat, but now feel I must, is something separate from the government of the United States).
Obviously, this presents a problem. If Mr. Hall or Mr. Ronduck, for instance, is correct (from opposite points of view), then we Catholics are indeed strangers in a strange land, and we have some tough choices to make—not the least of which might be whether we have to leave the land of our birth.
Yet, as I tried to show in the first installment, there’s no particular reason to believe, on the basis of the Catholic Church’s understanding of nationality (as an extension of family, and emphatically not as a “creed”), that Mr. Hall or Mr. Ronduck is right. And that means that to begin each discussion of national questions with the assumption that Catholics cannot be Americans is, as I have stated, a way to avoid serious discussion of those questions.
22 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 31 May 2008:
I find it fascinating, Mr. Higdon, that you chose the word allegiance in this context. Allegiance does not imply simply loyalty or duty or responsibility but, in the modern world, has an explicitly political dimension. It’s a further illustration of the phenomenon that I have mentioned above, of conflating state and nation–or, in this case, thinking even of such things as the Church, family, and community as somehow on the same plane with the state.
23 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 31 May 2008:
Mr. Richert, I was using the term obligation in the sense of moral, not legal obligation. And I deliberately included elements of popular moral conduct and popular culture so as to make it obvious that I was not just referring to the state – although we clearly don’t have separation of state and nation in this country.
I do think that Catholics and indeed Christians in general are strangers in a strange land in the US of today. No Christian should feel comfortable in this society and in this culture. Whether or not one should physically emigrate or just undertake an internal emigration is a prudential question based on the obligation to avoid proximate occasions of sin. I don’t see where it is influenced by whether or not the US is a credal or organic nation.
24 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 31 May 2008:
Kirt Higdon (@23):
Because, in fact, Patrick Hall is right about his conclusion, if we accept his wrong premises: If we Catholics cannot be part of an American nation at all and remain Christians, then we have not real choice but to destroy the American nation or to leave the land of our birth.
And that makes Mr. Ronduck’s suspicions justifiable, and it justifies those who believe that Catholics should be excluded entirely from any discussion of national questions, such as immigration, because our participation in them can never be as Americans, but only as Catholics.
25 Comment by Edward on 31 May 2008:
How about, for clarity’s sake, we attempt to identify what exactly the American ‘creed’ is?
The question being discussed in these articles, I think, can quickly become religious in nature. Protestantism cannot hold a candle to Catholicism when we are talking about historical and traditional depth. Catholics have a deep rootedness and a continuity that no other Christianity, save Orthodoxy, can claim. This is especially true of ‘Bible-believing’ Protestant churches (ecclesiastical communities) that spring up everyday in America claiming the mantle of Christianity even though they were started by individuals who have absolutely no authority whatsoever. When this kind of Christianity becomes accepted as the norm then it is easy to be suspicious of Catholicism because of its comparatively deeper history and tradition. Obviously, though, Catholics can be loyal and patriotic Americans without it conflicting with their faith. The problem is that most Protestantism in America has been watered down and now has a particularly ‘American’ flavor.
Also, Protestants, in saying that they only refer to the Bible as the source of their Christianity, make themselves immune from this same question because they have, in principle, no human authority (like the Magisterium). This is why Catholics can be accused of having “double loyalties” while Protestants cannot.
26 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 31 May 2008:
I take it Mr. Richert is suggesting that there is no problem for a Catholic in loyalty to the real America as opposed to the credal fantasy. The seems to me self-evidently correct. In Chronicles a few issues back I made the point that America is not and cannot be a “credal nation” even though it has been governed by a credal regime.
27 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 31 May 2008:
In fact, no loyal American and no Christian can give allegiance to the credal abomination.
28 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 31 May 2008:
Loyalty to the credal abomination means that one is willing to sacrifice the blood and treasure of one’s fellow citizens in dubious aggressions to promote abstract fancies. No patriot can be guilty of this.
29 Comment by G.S. on 31 May 2008:
Great topic, BTW. I’ve wanted to get insight into the Rao v. paleo Catholic question for sosme time.
“If we Catholics cannot be part of an American nation at all and remain Christians, then we have not real choice but to destroy the American nation or to leave the land of our birth.
And that makes Mr. Ronduck’s suspicions justifiable…”
Or in other words, based on this logic Catholics are put into the position that anti-Semites assume Jews are necessarily in.
Which is a pretty loathsome stereotype to embody. Two-faced and double-dealing — or in a state of permanent if muted war with one’s Protestant neighbors, living in a puritanical manner, aloof and un-neighborly.
Yet as a Catholic who accepts Church teaching, then obviously I can’t just shrug off the differences I have with Protestants — because the difference is not just btwn them and me, but btwn them and the Truth. And glossing over the Truth inevitably leads to ugly consequences down the road.
Yeah, this is pretty tricky stuff.
Scott, could you elaborate on your all’s differences some more?
By and large, I’m extremely impressed with Rao’s writing — the stuff about Pluralia is pretty brilliant — and have wondered for some time about the differences btwn his perspective and that of various Catholic writers at Chronicles.
Since encyclicals & political philosophy aren’t my strong points, where you all part ways is rather hard to discern.
The extent of “paleo” alienation from the current status quo — whether credal or not, the nation we live in *has* executed more innocent people than Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia put together — makes the distinction btwn that alienation and Rao’s condemnation of the American order somewhat difficult to identify … for me, at least.
I mean, both Dr. Rao and most Chronicles writers regard as equally absurd the question “Who are you going to vote for, Obama or McCain?”
Where the rubber meets the road, obviously, one obvious difference I can pick out is that Dr. Rao seems extremely skeptical of any Catholic-Protestant cooperation.
I wonder what his take is on immigration; although quite possibly he doesn’t have a strong opinion on it either way.
Even if one thought that such actions would justify the unprovoked invasion and conquest of Protestant territory (I do not), I suspect Rao is a bit too intelligent to buy into the fatuous suggestion that Mexicans are coming to the U.S. in order to set up Tridentine parishes and counterconsumerism distributist shires.
30 Comment by Polites on 31 May 2008:
Mr. Richert,
I haven’t thoroughly read through all the comments to your post, so this may have already been brought up. My admittedly simplistic take on this question is that this country’s founders envisioned these United States to be a confederation of largely independent states who would function essentially as nations (in the proper sense of that word), bound by “traditions and folkways”. Lincoln’s War marked a radical departure from that vision. His aim to “save the union,” in effect, was a demolishing of these little nations and their assimilation into one that could only be bound by abstractions.
31 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 31 May 2008:
#24 and #29 – I’m pretty much in agreement with what G.S. says. And of course I never made the claim that Catholics could not be members of the American nation at all. De facto, we are and we are in no position to destroy the American nation if we wanted to. I am saying that we, and not just Catholics, are obliged to determine our own terms of engagement with the American nation according to our faith and the moral law. If I were a contemporary Frenchman (and I think most would agree that France is an organic and not a credal nation), I’d be faced with the same problems, given only minor variations. I certainly don’t claim that Catholics cannot under any circumstances cooperate with Protestants or, for that matter, even with non-Christians. I supported and voted for the Baptist layman Ron Paul in the primary election and hope to vote for the Baptist pastor Chuck Baldwin in the general election.
32 Comment by Patrick Hall on 31 May 2008:
I would like to comment upon the conflation of “nation” and “state”, but since Mr Richert indicated that to be a future topic, I will wait.
However, I will tackle some of the other issues:
“In the context of policy discussions or questions involving American national sovereignty, the mention of what some Catholic traditionalists and even conservative Novus Ordo Catholics call “America’s Original Sin” becomes simply a convenient way of not discussing the issue at hand.”
I am willing to discuss “the issue at hand”, however, we must not forget the fact that the foundation of America IS “fundamentally flawed”. The foundation of the United States is the Enlightenment, and it is fundamentally flawed, at least from the perspective of the Church.
The question is: Is America a “credal nation”? Of course it is, as I have already pointed out. Does it have to be? Of course not. American CAN be a true nation, that is, it can become something a person is “born” and does not require a set of philosophical beliefs. For example, to be born a Bavarian is possible – but it is not possible to become one; no one contemplates the possibility of, say, a Mexican becoming a Bavarian. There is no concept of such a thing as “Mexican-Bavarian”. The concept of a “Polish-American”, however, is something quite ordinary. The reason? Quite frankly, America is a country of immigrants, for immigrants, run by immigrants. And I’m not saying this as an immigrant, or the descendant of recent arrivals – my entire family has been in America since before the American Revolution.
Yes, there is a “nation” in America, behind all of these various immigrants and the “American creed” that is the foundation of the State (more on the separation between the two in Mr Richert’s next installment). However, this American nation is something not easily grasped, especially given the mixed race nature of America itself. Someone on the outside would wonder at the similarities between Southern Whites and Southern Blacks, and the differences between Southern Whites and Northern Whites. This is why American nationalism is not and CAN NOT be “racial”. Nor can it be religious; so, then what can it be? What makes the American nation? I believe the answer is the willingness to defend America from outside attack; the American Nation was built on December 7th, 1941. It was reinforced throughout the years, most recently on September 11th, 2001.
33 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 31 May 2008:
I have noticed that many libertarians, knowingly or unknowingly, drift towards propositionalism, which is probably an unbridgeable chasm that will always remain between traditionalists and libertarians.
34 Comment by Caper on 31 May 2008:
Dear Mr. Richert,
You sent me an email, but I made a mistake and deleted it before I had a chance to read it. Please send it to me again. Thank you for replying to me.
If it regards the message I left on Mr. Zmirak’s “thread,” that was yet another asinine, intemperate, and inaccurate post you can chalk up to me. I really need to stop blogging, for it is a definite occasion of sin for me. I apologize unreservedly for that and past instances when I overstepped the line and acted dishonorably toward you. I shall not be posting under this or any other pseudonym in times to come. I thank you for past prayers which you promised to extend to me, for God is calling me to my senses.
Thank you,
“Caper”
35 Comment by JSBolton on 31 May 2008:
Is it known to be more than a false dilemma, that we have only the choices of [1]‘propositional nation’ and [2] folk-language-customs-ethnic-relatedness, as the basis for a nation? Why not loyalty to fellow citizens over against the foreigner, or one not of our nation, who enters in a way that increases the level of aggression here? That would fit with the minimum functions of a nation, but loyalty to universal propositions doesn’t even discriminate between citizen and foreigner. No one loses or gains American citizenship by their acceptance or rejection of any such propositions which are more cosmopolitan than the one specified above. That is, loyalty to fellow citizens relative to others. Universal ‘nation’-al loyalties as equal to honestly-so-called national loyalties, generates an immediate contradiction-in-terms.
36 Comment by Patrick Hall on 31 May 2008:
I have been contemplating all evening on what to write, with draft proposal after draft proposal, and I have finally come to a conclusion:
The American STATE is “credal” (a topic for a later time, Mr Richert appropriately deems), the American nation is something heart-felt among the Americans, but impossible to identify from the outside.
You see, I am an outsider, but an “American”, by political appointment, nonetheless, ergo I experience the credal American state only. I was born to American parents in a foreign country, raised there, and have no real “love for America”, only the region from which my culture springs, given to me by my parents. Imagine, for example, an American Cajun couple, raising a child in France, among other Cajuns, visiting Louisiana periodically. That child would grow to be an adult with no real connection to “America”, but wholly “Cajun”, as much as one can be a “Cajun” without being an “American”. That is my situation.
Meanwhile, my counsins (once removed) have joined the US Marine Corp, fighting for this “America” that I find foreign, but they identify as local. America, to the “Americans” is thier own locality; when this “America” was attacked on 9/11/01, they had no real way of seperating their own locality from New York City and Washington City. “America”, as they define it, was “under attack”. New York city is populated by hard working folk just like them, they figure. My problem with this line of thinking is that I realize that New York City is a world away from their lives. Mr Richert, on the other hand, sees the similarities. Hence, he sees an American “nation”, I can not.
37 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 1 June 2008:
Perhaps it would be helpful to separate the question of credal nation from the question of the ongoing moral and cultural collapse of the Western world. The non-credal European nations seem to be experiencing this collapse as well as credal America.
Some discussants, I think, conflate America’s moral collapse with the credal nation fallacy. The latter is evil enough in itself, but is not necessarily the cause of, for instance, abortion. In fact, we might usefully attack the question of the centralised state which enforces the values of the Northeastern elite onto the whole territory.
38 Comment by Joel on 1 June 2008:
I have a serious question:
If I come to accept that the rootedness advocated by Chronicles is correct – and I go back and forth on that currently – should I:
a. Stay where I am now?
b. Move to where I grew up?
c. Move to where my grandparents lived?
I ask this in all seriousness.
39 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 1 June 2008:
#37 – I agree with the first paragraph of Dr. Wilson’s post above and I’ve been trying to make the same point myself. But that raises the question of what we are really discussing here that is beyond merely academic interest. Mr. Richert seems to think that if Catholics think America is a credal nation and they can’t accept the creed, then they have no choice but to try to destroy America or to leave. What???!!! Does anyone other than a handfull of eccentrics really think that way? Other than a handfull of race/nationalists of various races, I can think of no one who wishes to destroy America. And these are mainly just talkers, as are those (more numerous) who seek to bring down the regime. As to those who plan to leave or have left, most do so for immediate economic reasons, some because they dislike some aspect of the popular culture, some because they dislike or fear the regime and some who fear some economic or military catastrophe in the near future. I’ve yet to encounter any specific person or even hear of one who has decided to leave the US and live elsewhere just because he considers the US to be a credal nation, but doesn’t accept the creed. Such people may exist, but I think they are very rare.
40 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 1 June 2008:
Kirt Higdon (@39):
You’ve misunderstood my point. I’m not saying that people are following through on the logic, but simply that this is the logic of the claim that a) America is a “credal nation” and b) it is a creed that Catholics cannot possibly assent to while remaining Christian. To do otherwise would be (according to the logic of the claim) to cooperate in evil.
There are many reasons that people who believe this don’t either leave or work actively to destroy the American nation (as Mr. Hall suggested). But perhaps the most important reason is a certain split-mindedness: Their actions don’t reflect their stated beliefs because, on one level, they don’t actually believe it.
They know from their everyday experience that there is something more to what they share with their relatives and neighbors than merely a “creed.” Like Mr. Hall, their families may have been here for centuries; they may even have been on the same land, among the same families, for long lengths of time.
These are the ties that create nations organically, and while they can be attacked by those who wish to transform America into a “credal nation,” to the extent that they continue to exist, they undermine the claims of those who say that America is nothing but a “creed.”
41 Comment by robert m. peters on 1 June 2008:
The notion of the “credal nation” is destructive in two ways: those who consciously use it to destroy the institutions of family, Church and local community and those who actually subscribe to it as a or even “the” way of social identity and being and thereby aid and abet that destruction as a noble cause. The latter, it seems, will be surprised to find how banal and essenceless their notion of the credal nation is once the real life-giving institutions are completely gone.
42 Comment by JSBolton on 1 June 2008:
Without inquiring, one knows that the cornerstone of the L.A. Cathedral is not going to say ‘for Gunnar Myrdal and the UN’. So much for the “American Creed” as a fundament commanding a thorough institutional consensus. Research has yielded a classification of moral feelings under the headings of equality, compassion, loyalty and purity. Equality and justice appear to get routinely confounded. The relevant dilemma here is one of assuming that national loyalty has to be about purity; about the pursuit of ethnic purity even beyond what has ever existed on a large scale. Is that known to be more than a false dilemma though, that national loyalty has to involve such a concern with purity? If one allows hostiles to set up American or European dilemmas, won’t this involve a terrible betrayal?
43 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 1 June 2008:
#40 – I think the dissenters from the American creed don’t follow through on the logic because that is not a logical conclusion. Despite a powerful propaganda apparatus, no one is compelled to accept the creed and hence forced to either submission, exile or rebellion. Rejecting the creed basically just means accepting a certain degree of marginalization which has little impact on everyday life. On the other hand, just having friends, neighbors and relatives doesn’t make the US an organic nation. Were this the case, every society ever known would be an organic nation and any definition that broad is completely useless.
The main problem for Americans is what Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn used to call “practical atheism” – living as though God does not exist. But this seduction, as many have pointed out, is present in nations throughout the western world (and now a good part of the eastern world as well) and is unrelated to whether the US is credal or organic as a nation.
44 Comment by Mike Ezzo on 2 June 2008:
I find myself in agreement with many of the opinions expressed here, expecially KH (31), GS (29), etc. Mr. Hall, I have spent a lifetime wondering why I cannot (like you) feel (more) patriotic towards America. I love the place I was born (actually inside America) and the people around whom I was born. But at the level of the country, my love tends to thin out, and I have always felt guilty for that, even though I cannot believe that my relatives don’t share it.
To Joel (38) : I have asked myself the same question many times. As you say, in complete seriousness. The answer is what Dr. Fleming has reiterated a few times : just stay put and learn to love the place you are in right now; or else move to another place that you CAN love. (And stay put there as long as possible).
I chose the former (I cannot go “back home”; it’s priced for Bill Gates, not me) and so far it has worked out pretty well. It is interesting how things change once you start taking an interest in your surroundings. Go out and pick up trash along your street, and notice how all of a sudden people from the neighborhood start saying hello to you and appreciating you, whereas before they totally ignored you. Brighten the corner of the world in which you live. Chronicles (and Fred Chappell — author of the book of roughly that title) taught me this. I am forever in their debt. Moving back to grandma’s neighborhood is useless without this lesson being learned. You can be a good Christian anywhere in this world as long as you ==live the Faith in your daily life==. The martyrs and saints proved that.
45 Comment by Joel on 2 June 2008:
Thanks for the response Mike. It makes sense to me. I’d like to see more advice on how to practically put this into practice – maybe on this blog.
46 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 2 June 2008:
I agree with Mike Ezzo’s answer to Joel (@38). One problem with the world today is the lack of any desire to put down roots. Mobility is regarded as a virtue.
In the past, of course, men had to leave the place where they were born, for a variety of reasons. But the idea that it is always desirable to do so–that not to do so, in fact, is a failure of sorts–is very recent.
The antidote is to put down roots, wherever one finds oneself. Don’t treat the place where you live as someplace you’re just “passing through” (except to the extent that we, as Christians, are always just “passing through” this world).
This is, by the way, a constant theme (even when not explicitly stated) of my column in Chronicles.
47 Comment by NGPM on 2 June 2008:
“Having gone on at too great a length already, I’ll save one final point—that “credal nationhood” is, and always has been, more about the state than about the nation—for my next post.”
Messieurs Higdon, Ezzo, et. al. have articulated much of what I was thinking, to which I can only add this:
If there is some sort of tradition, some sort of heritage, some sort of cultural nuance that binds together “Americans” that is not an entirely political and credal construct, might we be privileged to know what that is?
48 Comment by G.S. on 2 June 2008:
@47 NGPM:
“If there is some sort of tradition, some sort of heritage, some sort of cultural nuance that binds together “Americans” that is not an entirely political and credal construct…”
Though no longer a devotee of the Cult of Science, I still think a sort of quasi-materialism often provides a useful perspective — instead of trying to pin down any one unifying cultural, or religious, or philosophical element, what about plain old, simple geography as a unifying element?
When I think of “America” quite frankly I don’t think of either creed or even cultural heritage — but a big lump of land stretching from sea to shining sea, occupied by various people, critters, and plants.
I mean, the existence of *that* “America” is a plain, material fact. And it has naught to do with creeds.
One of the few useful graduate English courses I took was on the history of the English language — covering the conquest of the Britons by the Angles and Saxons and Frisians, then the emergence of Old English, then the arrival of the Normans.
One important point for understanding how these various threads were woven together to form English identity is the recognition that identity is partly a function of physical boundaries.
When we paleos critique propositional nationalists, one of our main attacks is that human peoples are not disembodied intellects, but cultures of embodied creatures of flesh and blood.
Moving on from that, although heritage is obviously of tremendous importance in understanding identity, it might be equally important to remember that the embodied people who participate in a culture have to, well, live *somewhere*.
In the case of English, the seemingly ho-hum, arbitrary geographic boundaries of the British Isles served as a means for weaving into existence the English people.
Probably I’m not expressing my point very well — which is (I think) less flippant & trite than it probably sounds — but I’d contend that at the very least American identity has something to do with physical habitation of the American continent.
Of course contra this is the point that if, say, all the French had to evacuate France and migrate to a Moon colony, they’d still be French — bound together by language, culture, history, etc…
I agree, but I can’t help but think the French would have lost something essential in the process. Can’t imagine the sidewalk cafés in the Sea of Tranquility could ever be quite the same as those in Paris.
A people who have lost their land are, maybe, like the sociopolitical equivalent of a ghost, haunting the living peoples who do have homeland?
American Indians, pre-20th Century Zionists, modern Palestinians?
49 Comment by Joel on 2 June 2008:
Thanks for the advice gentlemen. Do you have any thoughts about creating intentional communities – where like minded Christians deliberately move to the same location in order to try and wield greater influence and build cohesion?
50 Comment by Mike Ezzo on 2 June 2008:
Joel, there may come a day where we have to do just that. But for now — without attempting to speak for Chronicles — I think I can safely say that they would rather you “let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew, ch. 5). It’s a tough line to draw, so please take what I say in very general terms. Each man has his own threshold for just how much godless pagan humanism he can countenance (mine’s really really low). The world needs the front-line warriors, and the secluded monks, and all the rest of us in the middle. The trick is to know which camp you fall into (probably the third, like most of us), and then go and do it with all your might (and don’t feel guilty if you can’t be all three).
51 Comment by T. Chan on 3 June 2008:
Mr. Richert and Dr. Wilson,
What sort of “national” identity did the citizens of the United States have in the 18th and 19th centuries? Was it one based on a common English roots and patrimony? Common Christian belief? If they thought of themselves as “Americans,” was this identity based upon being a member of a federal union, through being a citizen of their states? A mediated identity/membership, and not a ‘direct’
one?
52 Comment by Frank on 3 June 2008:
Not regarding any of the comments, which I have not yet read:
Mr. Richert, I applaud you on the adequate definition:
And I appreciate your efforts with this series thusfar.
(Not that my praise is important, but, humbly, I’m moved to give it.)
53 Comment by John Willson on 3 June 2008:
Sorry to get to this very good discussion so late, but here is another angle of vision: If one were to do actual research instead of making proclamations, one would find that Americans who were trying to figure out why they were Americans and what being American meant, one would discover that the entire first two generations (roughly 1760-1820) understood “liberty” to mean, “but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid.” (Micah 4:4) The evidence is overwhelming. Does this sound “propositional?” By the way, this was not just a Yankee thing, but both northern and southern, and it was used by men who supposedly were “enlightened.”
54 Comment by Ronduck on 4 June 2008:
51T. Chan
Mr. Richert and Dr. Wilson,
What sort of “national” identity did the citizens of the United States have in the 18th and 19th centuries? Was it one based on a common English roots and patrimony? Common Christian belief? If they thought of themselves as “Americans,” was this identity based upon being a member of a federal union, through being a citizen of their states? A mediated identity/membership, and not a ‘direct’
one?
I think you already have the answer. If you read Alien Nation by Peter Brimelow you find that the majority of the free people were White, Protestant and of mainly British descent. But I welcome you as an American.
55 Pingback by Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture | Your Home for Traditional Conservatism » Church and Nation: A Credal Nation, Part 2 on 5 June 2008:
[...] the end of my last installment, I noted that credal nationhood has always been more about the state than about the nation [...]
56 Pingback by Eunomia » “Just” Loyalty To A Place On The Map on 30 June 2008:
[...] at the heart of “credal” or “propositional” nationalism, and reveals the land-plus-ideals patriotism to be a [...]
57 Pingback by Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture | Your Home for Traditional Conservatism » Church and Nation: A Credal Nation, Part 3 on 3 July 2008:
[...] recently by Dr. Fleming and Dr. Trifkovic) lies the concept of credal nationhood. In the previous two installments of “Church and Nation,” I have mentioned that credal nationhood makes no [...]