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« Back to The Rebirth of American Religion: A Conversation with Paul Johnson main page    Transcript for: The Rebirth of American Religion: A Conversation with Paul JohnsonTRANSCRIPTS: PAUL JOHNSON ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, arecipient of the Presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen,bringing better, healthier lives to people worldwide throughbiotechnology. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I'm Ben Wattenberg. On this special editionwe'll be talking one on one with historian and social critic PaulJohnson on America and the American people, this week on Think Tank. Today we are at the magnificent Morgan Library in New York City.Joining us is historian Paul Johnson. He is the author of manybestselling books, including 'Modern Times' and 'A History ofChristianity.' Johnson is now at work on a new book, 'A History ofthe American People.' He recently completed a series of threelectures here at the library entitled 'America, The Almost ChosenPeople.' Paul, what does that refer to? MR. JOHNSON: Well, the phrase -- MR. WATTENBERG: And who said it? MR. JOHNSON: The phrase was Abraham Lincoln's. He used it at aspeech in Trenton, New Jersey in February 1861. And I think what hemeant by that was that the first settlers in America believed theywere the chosen people and that they had a special task, to build acity on a hill, to be a light to the Gentiles everywhere. MR. WATTENBERG: John Winthrop said that; is that right? MR. JOHNSON: Yes, John Winthrop, one of the -- the first governorof Massachusetts said that. And they believed it. And for a long timeAmericans felt they had a special role in the world. And I thinkLincoln believed that that continued, that America did have a specialguiding role in the world. But it had committed the organic sin ofslavery, and that had brought down on them the civil war. So theywere an almost chosen people. MR. WATTENBERG: Right. But Winthrop was talking about bringingsomething to the world that was religious, and Lincoln -- I wonder;wasn't he saying that Americans have a special role in purveying acertain civic religion, of the people, for the people, by the people,the whole democratic ideal that has, in fact, by now sort of swampedthe world? MR. JOHNSON: Of course, he meant that. But I think there was areligious element, too, because one of the most remarkable thingsabout the United States was the way in which religion supportedprogress instead of, on the continent of Europe, opposing it. Soreligion and democracy and religion and republicanism fitted in verywell. MR. WATTENBERG: Did religion create republicanism? MR. JOHNSON: Well, I think you could argue that. I certainly didin my lectures, because I think the Great Awakening from the 1740sonwards, the great religious revival, was the first nationwide eventin American history. You have to remember those 13 colonies mainlyhad contacts with London rather than with themselves, or Liverpool. The Great Awakening, which was a religious event, for the firsttime created nationwide characters like Jonathan Edwards, and for thefirst time began to bring all the states together. And it was a kindof millennarian event. They were expecting something to happen. And,of course, what did happen was the American Revolution. So I thinkreligion was probably the most important single force behind thatevent. MR. WATTENBERG: Yet Lincoln -- somebody told me the story --Lincoln himself was a member of no organized Christian church and didnot attend church. And when he was running for president, I guess in1860 or 1859, was attacked for this and gave one public statement onit where he said it's true, he doesn't attend church, and then inthis wonderful political remark said but he never denied the truth ofscriptures. He didn't say that he believed in the scriptures. He justsaid he never publicly denied it, which is -- so he's already asecular man, I think. MR. JOHNSON: In some ways. I think he was probably, strictlyspeaking, a Baptist. But he didn't belong to an organized church. Wehave his wife's word for that. He believed in providence. Maybe hedidn't know quite what he believed in, but it is very interestingthat one of the most stressful periods of the war he said, 'I amoften asked if God is on our side, and I reply to that that'sirrelevant. God is always on the right side. What worries me iswhether we're on the side of God.' That's a very -- and the practicecontinues. It's perfectly obvious to me that Lincoln believed in something.He wasn't prepared to give it a specific name because he was soattached to the truth. He didn't like to guess. But there wasprovidence in him, and it is very notable the way in which he waitedfor a sign from providence before doing certain things during thosewartime years; for instance, issuing the proclamation ofemancipation. And I think when Lincoln said 'the almost chosenpeople,' that was a meaningful phrase. It wasn't just a piece ofrhetoric. He thought that the Americans were a special people butalso a flawed people. MR. WATTENBERG: Yeah, but, I mean, that whole idea of Americanexceptionalism -- I think most scholars today would say it has to dowith either political or cultural things rather than us beingexceptional as a religious people, because, after all, I mean, thereare a lot of very religious countries around the world; perhaps notin Europe, but elsewhere. And what made -- I mean, when you asked forthe hallmark words of Americanism, you'd come up with democratic andconstitutional and pluralist and upwardly mobile and meritocratic andindividualistic. These are not principally religious ideas. MR.JOHNSON: Well, I would answer that by saying this is a legitimateissue on which we can disagree. But I think America is unique in thisrespect, that it is a very religious country -- MR. WATTENBERG: It is indeed. MR. JOHNSON: -- whose religion is also based on individualism.There are other religious countries in the world where there is acollectivist idea behind religion. But America combines extremereligious belief with individualism, and I think that is quiteunique. That, of course, is a great strength. The second point I would make is that Americans have never putmuch stress on dogma. They did at the very early times, but generallyspeaking they haven't. It's not been a dogmatic religion. It's been ahighly moral religion. It's been based on moral theology rather thandogmatic theology. And this moral theology, springing from the TenCommandments, from the decalogue, has been gradually made acceptablenot just to all the Protestants who first created the Americansociety, but to the Roman Catholics, to the Jews and to people ofother faiths and no faiths. They could all get behind this sense of what was right and wrong,which was both the cement of American unity and the kind of fuelwhich fired the melting pot machinery, so that immigrants came toAmerica from all over the world. And, of course, they learned theEnglish language; but more important, they learned to accept theAmerican view of what was right and what was wrong. And that is theessence of the American way of life, with a religious basis. MR. WATTENBERG: And that comes out of the Protestant ethic of the17th and 18th centuries. MR. JOHNSON: That's right, but a Protestant ethic which was nolonger bigoted or sectarian in any way but could be accepted by otherbranches of Christianity, by the Jews and by other elements. MR. WATTENBERG: And this then led to this political Americanexceptionalism. And then one might argue, although we might come outon different sides of that, it led to this remarkable culturalpluralism that we have in this country now. MR. JOHNSON: Yes. When de Tocqueville came here in the 1830s, henoticed the strong connection between American politics, Americanculture and American religion. He came from a society in France wherereligion was always seen as the enemy of progress. He was astonishedto discover in America that religion was one of the forces behindprogress. It was closely associated with progress, that it was part of theculture both of simple people living on farms, but also of highlyintelligent people living in cities. And this struck him as very,very remarkable. He was astonished to find, for instance, that therewas no anti-clericalism in America. He'd been brought up in a societywhere there was fierce anti-clericalism. But here people with theclergy and people with strong religious views were highly respectedcitizens. MR. WATTENBERG: Now, my understanding is you think we have lostour way on that axis in recent times. MR. JOHNSON: I think there is a danger there. And I was concernedin my lecture not to sort of lay down the law but to suggest thatcertain things had happened and that certain things were in danger ofhappening. And one of them, I think, is the growth of ananti-religious spirit in the United States. I think, although Americaremains primarily a religious country -- still more than half thepopulation goes to church or other places of worship regularly --right up to the beginning of the 1960s the kind of acceptance ofreligion, the honoring of religion which was so characteristic ofAmerica, continued. And so did the expansion of religion. In fact, in1960 the highest percentage point was reached of American churchattendance on a regular basis, 69 percent. That's an astonishingfigure. It has since gone down, but it's still -- MR. WATTENBERG: Not very much. MR. JOHNSON: Not all that much, no. MR. WATTENBERG: Right. MR. JOHNSON: But that was actually at the beginning of the '60s. Ithink the '60s in some respects were a very important decade, and oneof the characteristics of American society since the 1960s has been-- during and since the 1960s -- has been the rise of single-issuegroups, rights groups, which have constituted in some respects anopponent of religion, particularly over feminism, homosexuality andother aspects like that. The environmental issues, I think, is perhaps in some ways themost characteristic of the new paganism, whereas the ancient animistsof the ancient world, or in some parts of the world even today, theyworship groves and trees and rivers and streams and pools, and now wehave people who save the whales, save the rain forests; thegreenhouse effect is a kind of hell. There's all kinds of analogiesthere. You may think that's a bit far-fetched. MR. WATTENBERG: I didn't say it was far-fetched. MR. JOHNSON: But you're looking a bit skeptical. MR. WATTENBERG: (Laughs.) They also believe in salvation of somesort. I mean, they -- MR. JOHNSON: Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: In some way you can trace that to Puritan thoughtor something. MR. JOHNSON: Yes, that's right. Well, I often say that, you know,one day's Puritan is the next century's ecological fanatic. That caneasily happen. Fanaticism takes many, many forms. And I think one ofthe interesting things about the 20th century is the way in whichpeople who've lost the traditional religious faith find it insomething else, sometimes in very weird things. G.K. Chestertonobserved very justly, I think, that when men cease to believe in God,they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything. MR. WATTENBERG: You have suggested that there -- I think these areyour words -- that a religious civil war is now being waged inAmerica. Is that an accurate characterization? MR. JOHNSON: There is a danger of that. MR. WATTENBERG: Those are -- MR. JOHNSON: It's taking place in all kinds of ways. It's takingplace over the interpretation of the Constitution, over what shouldbe taught or what should not be taught or what should not take placein the public schools or on public property or in places financed bythe public. It's taking place in the election of members of Congress.And, of course, it's taking place over feminist issues, over sexualdeviation; above all, over abortion. The abortion issue has come and gone, and some people have said,'Oh, it's dead,' and then it's reappeared again. And, of course,exactly the same thing happened with slavery in the 19th century.They would from time to time patch up a compromise, and thecompromise would work for a time and it would disappear from the --the issue would disappear from election rhetoric and then suddenlysomething would ignite it again and it would flare forth. Andeventually, because it was unresolved, it produced civil war. And I think one of the other interesting points to be made aboutslavery and abortion is this. The reason why slavery didn't disappearand why it eventually became an overwhelming issue was because theslave was humanized. Originally a lot of people in the north didn'tsee slavery in human terms. They were against it, but it was more amatter of statistics and economics and because most of them had neveractually seen a man in a position of slavery. And then along came books like 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and a lot ofthe propaganda produced by the northern emancipationists, whoactually portrayed the slave in human terms. And once you can see theslave in human terms, you really can't tolerate slavery anymore. AndI would say that similarly a process is going on over the abortionissue; that because of the advance of medical science, we now know toan increasing extent what actually takes place in the womb. So we know that there is a creature in there, that it lives andbreathes and exists, and that an act of abortion is something verybrutal in itself. Now, you may say it's still defensible, but it isbeing humanized. The fetus is being humanized, just as the slave washumanized. That is why I don't think this issue is going to go away. MR. WATTENBERG: What is your view of, in shorthand, the Americanpopular culture? I mean, do you think this has become so obscene andso vulgar that it is working against morality? We hear a great dealabout the sex and violence on television and in our movies and so onand so forth. Is that --are you concerned about that? MR. JOHNSON: I am concerned about many aspects of American life,yes, because I regard America as the most important country in theworld. And if things go badly wrong here, then we'll all suffer. So Ido take these things very, very seriously. However, it is verydifficult to generalize about America. America is an enormouscountry, a hugely varied country. It's a very individualisticcountry. And when you say that American culture is being vulgarized and isgoing into decay, then I answer by saying I go constantly toAmerica's more than 3,500 universities. You've got the bestuniversities in the world. Some of them are better than they've everbeen. The work of culture which is going on in this country, in itslibraries and museums and concert halls, in its universities andschools, is absolutely tremendous. And on this trip I had the privilege of spending two morningsteaching youngsters, high school youngsters, in one case from a veryprivileged school, in another case from a group of public schools,some of them from poor areas, and I was agreeably surprised and verypleased to find what splendid youngsters they were. They wereknowledgeable, they were argumentative, and they're great fun to bewith. So the great heart of America, I think, is still beatingstrongly. MR. WATTENBERG: Paul, the history of America, as you areinvestigating it, it is not all --while it's a great story, it is notall sweetness and light. I mean, you've got slavery and Jim Crow andthe exclusion of Asians. And it's -- how do you balance that out withyour idea of this sort of greatness? MR. JOHNSON: America is a country that commits crimes, sins,whatever you like to call them, but it's also a country that repents.It's got a self-correcting mechanism in it because it's a verydemocratic country and it's a republic. So I never worry too muchabout it. I think America makes mistakes. There's a strain offanaticism in America. There is a strain of extremism, so mistakesare made. So mistakes are corrected, and America usually gets the thingright in the end. It took a whole century to get -- end slavery, butshe did so in the end. And I'm perfectly certain, or at least I'mreasonably confident, that all the evils and weaknesses of America atthe moment will be, in the end, eradicated, as they have been in thepast. MR. WATTENBERG: How does the rest of the world see America? Imean, I know it's an overgeneralization, but is it a positive view ora negative view? MR. JOHNSON: I think it's a positive view because it may be that alot of governments find it convenient to criticize America. TheFrench, for instance, are always criticizing America. And there areother cases. But in most countries in the world, in most capitalcities, if you look down from a high building on the streets, yousometimes see a (crew of?) people and you say, 'Who are those people?What are they doing? What are they in line for?' And they say, 'Oh,well, the American embassy or the consulate is around the corner.They're trying to get an entry visa.' And all over the world, ordinary people, as opposed togovernments, vote with their feet. They want to come to America.America somehow has remained the great magnet to millions andmillions of people throughout the world, particularly the poor, butthe industrious poor. That is the place they want to go, because theyfeel that there they're going to be free, they're going to have areal chance to better their condition, and they're going to acquirewhatever happiness is available in this world. It still has thismagic. So whatever the governments say, the people take a differentview. MR. WATTENBERG: We went through a spasm, mostly in the 1980s, ofsaying that America was in decline and this was the last Americancentury. I think there's been some change of views on that, as we'veseen, kind of Japan and Europe going to the tank on a number ofthings. But how do you see America in the next century? I mean, arewe going to be number one in the world, or has our writ run? I mean,after all, it was not that long ago when people from the BritishIsles thought they were -- the sun never sets on the British empireand so on and so forth and there were all those pink spots all overthe globe, and that's kind of gone. Is -- MR. JOHNSON: Well, yes, you could argue that every country has acentury of its own. The 15th century was the Italian century; the16th century was the Spanish century; the 17th century was the Dutchcentury; the 18th century, the French; then the 19th century, theBritish and the 20th century, the Americans. It doesn't mean to saythat America isn't going to be a very important and rich and powerfuland significant country in the 21st century. In the first place, it's the most capitalist country in the world.It has the best free enterprise system. And that, of course, is aself-correcting mechanism in itself. So one year you hear IBM has gotinto trouble or General Motors has got into trouble, but then youlook at the latest figures and you show they're getting out oftrouble. And I think that -- MR. WATTENBERG: They either get out of trouble or go out ofbusiness -- MR. JOHNSON: Or indeed go out of business. Well, I mean, Iremember Pan American was the best airline in the world, and then itwent out of business. Other countries -- other companies redeemedthemselves and bound forward again. And from what I hear among mybusiness friends, American, particularly the high-tech industries,making a tremendous comeback. And I think so long as you have a free people, a vigorous peopleand a big people like the Americans, you know, 250 million people anda system which allows the best to come to the top and so forth, Idon't -- I think you'll be right in front of the race for theforeseeable future. Of course, this is not to deny that somethingquite extraordinary is happening in the Far East. For the first timein half a millennium, it looks as though peoples of non-Europeanorigin are going to be the top dogs, as it were. It looks as thoughit is, but it isn't by any means a certainty. MR. WATTENBERG: Not culturally. I mean, you go to Japan and youlook at the advertisements on the trains or on the kiosks and half ofthem are of European models. And, I mean, this -- MR. JOHNSON: Or American models. MR. WATTENBERG: Or American models. The top hit movies there areall American. I mean, it's a -- and yet there's a lot of antipathytoward America. But one does not get the sense that Japanese is goingto become the next universal language the way English or, as we've -- MR. JOHNSON: No. On the contrary, I suspect that the Japanese willfinally abandon Japanese except for cultural purposes and willembrace English. I think a lot of countries are going to do that overthe next 20, 30, 40 years, countries like Sweden and Holland and soforth. And indeed, I write regularly for the Japanese newspapers, andI wrote an article there saying that the Japanese ought to thinkabout doing precisely that. And I got a surprisingly favorableresponse. It's the sort of thing they might well do. So I'm prettysure that English is going to become the world language in the firsthalf of the 21st century. MR. WATTENBERG: We call it American, not English. MR. JOHNSON: Well, you can call it what you like, but it's thesame language. We're talking it, right? But so I don't write off thepossibility that America will remain the number one (spot?) power forthe whole of the 21st century. If anything, if I had to put money onit, that's what I would bet. MR. WATTENBERG: Now, let me, just to wind this up, let me go backto one question on the religious topic that we began with. Is there acontradiction between firmly held religious beliefs and civictolerance of other religions? Because that has in world history beena sticking point. I mean, people say, 'We're very religious,' andthen it immediately kind of slops over to, 'Well, let's get rid of Aor B.' Is that something you see in the American -- MR. JOHNSON: Well, you've touched on a very sore point becausethis actually does worry me, and I think there's some truth in whatyou say. It is an -- it's an extraordinary fact that if you arehighly tolerant of other people's religion, it usually means thatyour own faith is not particularly strong. And the stronger yourfaith is, the less likely it is you are going to be tolerant. And, of course, one of the strongest faiths in the world at themoment is the Islamic faith, which is totally unreformed and totallyintolerant, much more intolerant than they're usually prepared toadmit, at any rate in public. So you have got that dilemma. And Ithink my only answer to that is that the true thing, the trulyreligious man or woman, can hold their faith with terrific intensityand at the same time extend tolerance to other people and people ofother faiths or no faith. That is a saintly equality. And we're notall saints, but we can become saints. MR. WATTENBERG: We will work on it. Thank you very much, PaulJohnson. And thank you. We enjoy hearing from our audience. Please sendyour comments and questions to New River Media, 1150 17th StreetNorthwest, Washington, DC, 20036. We can also be reached via E-mailat thinktv@aol.com. For Think Tank, I'm Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, inassociation with New River Media, which are solely responsible forits content. 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, bringing better,healthier lives to people worldwide through biotechnology. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. BEN WATTENBERG Return toThinkTank Online Home Page Think Tank ® is a Registered Trademark of BJW, Inc. All Content © Copyright 1995 New River Media, Inc. Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. 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