E Augelli and C Murphy Ideology C mn Sense in America Denominational religion American destiny isolationism evangelism and crusaderism Of course long before many Americans turned to science to provide answers to ultimate questions most Americans had perfectly serviceable answers provided to them by their religion The particular faiths of the early European colonists still influence many Americans today even many in that minority of Americans who are not religious Colonial religion can be understood as the source f three sets of ideas that are common sense to most Americans One idea has to do with identity with who Americans are with the view that many American s have df their own exceptionalism and destiny the ides of Americans as a chosen people Me second has to do with how to deal with dissent how to deal with people whose views differ from your own For irtany Americans the only ways to deal with people whose ideas differ from your own is to isolate yourself from them or them from you convent them or destroy them This impulse has its roots in the religious philosophies of the dissenting Protestants who first isolated themselves in North America and employed all three means to deal with dissent in their own society Finally we look at the limited American idea of charity which is bound up with assomp tions about the exceptionalism of the American people Relatively few Americans reject the ides of American exceptionalistn Me colonial faith s most pervasive legacy is the American sense of national destiny In his recent investigation of the cultural sources of the American war in Vietnam Loren Baritz states that a single sentence wrirten by one of the country s most respected novelists su mmarizes all that it is to be American In Whitejackei Herman Melville said 38 I DEOLOGY COMMON SENSE IN AMERICA we Americans are th peculiar chosen people th Israel of our tinte we bear th ark of th liberties of th world 39 Baritz along with most of th historiens of th consensus school traces messianic American nationalism back to th experience of th first European Protestants who settled in New England in th seventeenth century Yet of course th contemporary transcontinental industrial nation hardly resembles th underpopulated and rough agrarian societies of th early Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies at least on th surface Evert th id ologies of government are quite diff rent While th Plymouth Colony of 1620 may have been a place that was unusually democratic and tolerant in comparison to Britain at th time New England quickly became a land of religious oligarchies suspicious of foreigners with diff rent beliefs and completely intolerant of any internal dissent The modern American republic gives a much higher propor tion of th population some access to political power and it awards more signi ficant legal protection to dissenters than th Puritan settlements in North American ever did More than a century ego and more than two centuries after th foundation of th first European colonies in New England Karl Marx even used th United States and even New England s New Hampshire in particular as examples of th most advanced form of religious toleration in th world 8 And in America today th nemesis of New England s Puritans th Roman Catholic Church has th largest following of any faith Yet th sedimentations of seventeenth century dissenting Calvinist Protestantism make up th deepest strata of th common sense of many Americans Central to th doctrine of th New England Puritans who left England because of their dissent from th established Protestant Church is th Calvinist notion of th Elect God has chosen ome people to enter th Kingdom of Heaven while others th vast majority suffer preterition They have been passed over In th Massachusetts Bay Colony th most successful of th early dissenter communities in America th idea of God s lection of individuels was transformed into a belief in his lection of a whole people th New England Puritans became th new Israel Even before th American colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776 New England s Puritans had modified their own self assured belief that God had only saved a few and that their leaders were surely among th elect To perpetuate th oligarchy front generation to generation Puritans began to allow th presumption of lection to pass from parents to children From there it was only a short step to accepting th possibility that th King dom of Heaven might be open to all or at least that all should be encouraged to act in this life as part of th Elect by being good members of th faith I Me New England Puritans replaced their old r view of personal salvation individual membership in th Elect with an understanding of their community as Elect th idea of a collective covenant The notion of Puritan New Englanders and later of all Americans as an Elect people lived on long after th original historical philosophy began to be forgotten Many reasons can be offered for th persistence of th idea American history has been marked by periodic religious revivals when new usually Christian Protestant and Calvinist denominations are created assuring that at all times there are at least some Americans whose self assurance about their own position as th Elect is as great as that of th seventeenth century Puritans Perhaps even more signifi cantly American politiciens novelists poets song writers playwrights and scholars have consistently identified th United States as an exceptional society a society of destiny or th new Israel What began as th core concept of a specific religion in th English colonies of North America became th code of a civil religion that every American is exposed to throughout his or her life Baritz ends his book on Vietnam by quoting California Governor Ronald Reagan s set speech from his first triumphant campaign for president y1Cs Reagan s themes and many of his phrases were th saine as those used by th first governor of Massachusetts to his own people there and a half centuries before when th Bay Colony settlers were th first Americans to be told that they were God s chosen people and that their nation must be a City on th hill a new J rusalem What common exp riences do so many Americans have that would make it reasonable to continue to think of themselves as a chosen people a new Israel or an Elect What real events do politiciens and writers play upon reaffirm and help explain Perhaps th most important exp riences are those that make up