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Exceptional and Indispensable Nation

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A Pentecostal Political Theology for American Renewal

Part of the book series: Christianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studies ((CHARIS))

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Abstract

Americans think their country is exceptional. Indeed, its leaders from John Winthrop to John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan called it “a city upon a Hill.” America is a beacon of political, civil, and personal freedoms and economic opportunities in a world mired in serfdom and misery. Because America is exceptional, it has an indispensable role to play in world history. It bears the responsibility to direct the arc of history toward justice and progress, according to Barack Obama. This chapter highlights key historical developments in America’s national myth from the Puritan city upon a hill to the exceptional and indispensable nation of the twenty-first century.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    John Winthrop, A Modell of Christian Charity (1630), in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 7, Third Series (Boston: 1828), 47.

  2. 2.

    Richard M. Gamble, In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth (New York: Continuum, 2012), 1–18 and 133. Gamble argues that Perry Miller, Daniel Boorstin, and Samuel Eliot Morison were the key scholars to make the city upon a hill metaphor a primal myth for American political identity (Gamble, In Search of the City on a Hill, 125–40).

  3. 3.

    Godfrey Hodgson, The Myth of American Exceptionalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 2–3.

  4. 4.

    James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (1931; reprint, Garden City, NY: Garden City, 1933), 20–22.

  5. 5.

    John Canup, Out of the Wilderness: The Emergence of an American Identity in Colonial New England (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1990), 8–10.

  6. 6.

    Perry Miller, Errand in the Wilderness (Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1956), 11.

  7. 7.

    Gamble, In Search of the City on a Hill, 38.

  8. 8.

    E.g., Urian Oakes, New-England pleaded with (Cambridge, MA: 1673), 19.

  9. 9.

    J. F. Maclear, “New England and the Fifth Monarchy: The Quest for the Millennium in Early American Puritanism,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 32 (1975): 227. For the turn to seeing this world as the place for God’s coming kingdom, see Ruth H. Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 3–21 and Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), 26–38.

  10. 10.

    Urian Oakes, New-England pleaded with, 17–18.

  11. 11.

    Cotton Mather, A Pillar of Gratitude (Boston: B. Green and J. Allen, 1700), 13.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 22–25.

  13. 13.

    Charles M. Segal and David C. Stineback, Puritans, Indians, and Manifest Destiny (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977), 16.

  14. 14.

    Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 11.

  15. 15.

    E.g., Samuel Danforth likens them to John the Baptist going into the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord. See Samuel Danforth, A Brief Recognition of New-England’s Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: 1671).

  16. 16.

    Conrad Cherry, ed., God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 25–26 and Deborah L. Madsen, American Exceptionalism (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1998), 7–9.

  17. 17.

    Cotton Mather, The Present State of New England (Boston: 1690), 35.

  18. 18.

    He also refers to the great plague among the Indians as a blessing that freed the colonists from their menace; see John Cotton, Magnalia Chirsti Americana, books I and II, ed. Kenneth B. Murdock, with assistance of Elizabeth W. Miller (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), book 1, p. 22.

  19. 19.

    George H. Williams, “The Idea of the Wilderness of the New World in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana,” in John Cotton, Magnalia Chirsti Americana, books I and II, ed. Kenneth B. Murdock, with assistance of Elizabeth W. Miller (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 49. Mather, Magnalia, book I, pp. 2–4.

  20. 20.

    Mather, Magnalia, book I, p. 2.

  21. 21.

    Winthrop, A Modell of Christian Charity, 47. Oakes, New-England pleaded with, 21. Madsen, American Exceptionalism, 3 and 16–36.

  22. 22.

    Jonathan Edwards, A Faithful Narrative, in Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 4, The Great Awakening, ed. C. C. Goen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 353–56.

  23. 23.

    Edwards, Faithful Narrative, 4:354 and 356. Though not mentioning America, Edwards forecast a future reign of Christ that would bring civil and religious freedom to all people of the earth, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 5, Apocalyptic Writings, ed. Stephen J. Stein (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 136.

  24. 24.

    John F. Wilson, “Editor’s Introduction,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 9, A History of the Work of Redemption, ed. John F. Wilson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 92–94.

  25. 25.

    Gerald R. McDermott, One Holy and Happy Society: The Public Theology of Jonathan Edwards (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 5–6.

  26. 26.

    Samuel Cooper, “A Sermon on the Day of the Commencement of the Constitution,” in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730–1805, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Indianapolis: Liberty, 1991), 631.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 634–36 and 645.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 644.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., 642 and 644.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., 639.

  31. 31.

    Speaking on the Indian Removal Act of 1930, which would displace the Indians of the American southeast and make room for white settlement in Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama, Jackson praised it as beneficent relative to the earlier practices that often involved exterminating them. See Andrew Jackson, “State of the Union Address, December 6, 1830,” in Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2012), 62.

  32. 32.

    Julian Go, Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 35. Also, Walter Nugent argues that America has a “habit of empire-building.” See Nugent, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion (New York: Vintage, 2008), xiii–xiv.

  33. 33.

    This narrative derives from the following sources: Daniel Walker Howe, What God Hath Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848, The Oxford History of the United States, gen. ed. David M. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2012), 1–38; William Earl Weeks, Building the Continental Empire: American Expansion from the Revolution to the Civil War, The American Ways Series (Chicago: Ian R. Dee, 1996).

  34. 34.

    Ellis Sandoz, A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion, and the American Founding (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 83–84.

  35. 35.

    Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West, 2nd ed. (Cincinnati: Truman & Smith, 1835), 12.

  36. 36.

    Daniel S. Dickinson, “Acquisition of Territory,” The Congressional Globe, Senate, 30th Congress, 1st Session (January 12, 1848): 157–58.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., 158.

  38. 38.

    Thomas Paine, Common Sense, ed. Edwards Larkin (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2004), 62 and Michael Novak, The Universal Hunger for Liberty: Why the Clash of Civilizations is not Inevitable (New York: Basic, 2004), xiii.

  39. 39.

    Max Lerner, America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 64–65.

  40. 40.

    William H. Seward, “Political Equality the National Idea,” in The Works of William H. Seward, 5 vols., ed. George E. Baker (Boston: Houghton and Miflin, 1884), 337.

  41. 41.

    William H. Seward, “Democracy the Chief Element of Government,” in The Works of William H. Seward, 5 vols., ed. George E. Baker (Boston: Houghton and Miflin, 1884), 320.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., 320.

  43. 43.

    This way of seeing the world has long roots in New England. Puritan clergyman, Cotton Mather, divided the world into two realms. Lands where the Gospel of Jesus Christ shine and “Lands” without the “Gospel of our Lord JESUS CHRIST,” which are “Habitations of Devils” (Mather, A Pillar of Gratitude, 14–15 and 17).

  44. 44.

    John Wentworth, “Remarks of Mr. Wentworth of Illinois on the Oregon Bill,” The Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 28th Congress, 2nd Session (January 27, 1845): 135.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 135.

  46. 46.

    Dickinson, “Acquisition of Territory,” 158.

  47. 47.

    Beecher, A Plea for the West, 12, 31–32, and 72.

  48. 48.

    Stephanson, Manifest Destiny, 22 and Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805. Accessed August 22, 2014, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jefinau2.asp.

  49. 49.

    Jackson, “State of the Union 1830,” in Greenberg, Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion, 62.

  50. 50.

    For this history, see Daniel Walker Howe, What hath God Wrought and William Earl Weeks, Building the Continental Empire, 31–58.

  51. 51.

    Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 17 and 21–54.

  52. 52.

    John Edwin Smylie, “National Ethos and the Church,” Theology Today 20, no. 3 (Oct 1963): 314.

  53. 53.

    Cherry, God’s New Israel, 12–13. Sacvan Bercovitch maintains that the fusion of eschatology and nationalism is unique to America. See Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 176.

  54. 54.

    Cherry, God’s New Israel, 13. A representative sermon from the period is Samuel Cooper, “A Sermon on the Day of Commencement,” 631–56.

  55. 55.

    Cherry, God’s New Israel, 12.

  56. 56.

    John L. O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity,” The United States Democratic Review 6, no. 23 (Nov 1839): 427.

  57. 57.

    Beecher, A Plea for the West, 117.

  58. 58.

    Beveridge, “The Star of Empire,” in The Meaning of the Times and Other Speeches (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1908), 128.

  59. 59.

    Dickinson, “Acquisition of Territory,” 158.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., 158.

  61. 61.

    Beecher, A Plea for the West, 31–32.

  62. 62.

    Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 317 and 330–36.

  63. 63.

    Frank Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism, Problems in American History, ser. ed. Jack P. Greene (Malden: Blackwell, 2001), 30 and 36–37 Ernest R. May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power (1961; New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1973), 263 and 269–70.

  64. 64.

    Franklin D. Roosevelt, “There Can Be No Appeasement With Ruthlessness …. We Must be the Great Arsenal of Democracy,” Fireside Chat on National Security, White House, Washington, D.C., December 29, 1940, in Franklin D. Roosevelt and Samuel Irving Rosenman, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940: Volume 9, War–and Aid to Democracies (New York: Russell and Russell, 1969), 643.

  65. 65.

    Neil Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 455.

  66. 66.

    Franklin H. Giddings, “Imperialism?” Political Science Quarterly 13 (1898): 590–91.

  67. 67.

    Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Problem of the West,” The Atlantic Monthly 78 (Sept 1896): 289.

  68. 68.

    Woodrow Wilson, “Democracy and Efficiency,” The Atlantic Monthly 87 (1901): 293.

  69. 69.

    Turner, “The Problem of the West,” 289 and 292–94. Also, see Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (1920; reprint, New York: Holt, 1931), 1. Turner regarded the ever-moving frontier across the American West as a colonial project.

  70. 70.

    Turner, “The Problem of the West,” 296.

  71. 71.

    Lori Bogle, “Why T.R. Sent the Great White Fleet,” The Daybook (October 2007): 7–9 and LaFeber, The American Age, 185–87. Roosevelt quoted the saying, “speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far” to an audience at the 1901 Minnesota State Fair (Walter LaFeber, The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 2nd ed. [1989; New York: Norton, 1994], 245). Applied to foreign policy, he meant maintaining a powerful navy that could protect and advance American interests abroad.

  72. 72.

    Giddings, “Imperialism?” 599; Walter LaFeber and Richard Polenberg, The American Century: A History of the United States since the 1890s (New York: John Wiley, 1975), 22–23; and Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism, 9. External events, not avarice for empire, drew America into the world, according to Ivan Musicant; see Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), 3–34. Also see May, Imperial Democracy, 266–70. Other scholars argue that the overseas expansion of the USA that began in 1898 should not be understood as a radical breach with but continuation of its imperial past; see Herring, From Colony of Superpower, 299; Julian Go, American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Culture in the Philippines ad Puerto Rico during U.S. Colonialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 1 and 30–34; Greenberg, Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion, 2–3 and 33–37; and Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860–1898 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963), vii–ix and 1–11.

  73. 73.

    Wilson, “Democracy and Efficiency,” 292–93 and LaFeber, The New Empire, 11.

  74. 74.

    For the role of Protestant churches, especially Baptists, in American imperialism, see Gordon L. Heath, “Canadian and American Baptist Self-Perceptions in the Age of Imperialism,” in Mirrors and Microscopes: Historical Perspectives of Baptists, ed. C. Douglas Weaver (Colorado Springs: Paternoster, 2015), 87–109.

  75. 75.

    Beveridge, “The Star of Empire,” 122–23 and “Our Philippine Policy,” in The Meaning of the Times and Other Speeches (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril, 1908), 78.

  76. 76.

    Albert J. Beveridge, “For the Greater Republic, not for Imperialism,” in ed. Alexander K. McClure Famous American Orators, Past and Present with Biographical Sketches and Their Famous Orations, 6 vols., (New York: F. F. Lovell, 1902), 15 and “The Star of Empire,” 129–30; William McKinley, “Speech at the Auditorium, Chicago, October 18, 1898,” in Speeches and Addresses of William McKinley, from March 1, 1897 to May 30, 1900 (New York: Doubleday, 1900), 131.

  77. 77.

    William Justin Mann, American in Its Relation to the Great Epochs of History (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1902), 224–33.

  78. 78.

    Woodrow Wilson, “Democracy and Efficiency,” 297.

  79. 79.

    Beveridge, “The Star of Empire,” 118–19.

  80. 80.

    Excerpts from the religious press describe America’s colonial mission as fulfilling “divine purposes” and a “high moral duty—one that we owe to God.” See “Attitude of the Religious Press,” The National Tribune: Washington, D.C., Thursday, August 4, 1898, 4.

  81. 81.

    Mann, American in Its Relation to the Great Epochs of History, 231.

  82. 82.

    Woodrow Wilson, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 63, “September–November 5, 1919, ed. Arthur S. Link and J. E. Little (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), 79.

  83. 83.

    Albert J. Beveridge, “Grant, the Practical,” in The Meaning of the Times and Other Speeches (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1908), 37–46.

  84. 84.

    Wilson, “Democracy and Efficiency,” 292.

  85. 85.

    Ibid., 292.

  86. 86.

    “Spoke of Our Triumph: Jubilee Orators on the Glories of War with Spain,” The Washington Post, May 26, 1899. Comments are by Senator Thurston.

  87. 87.

    Beveridge, “The Star of Empire,” 123; “For the Greater Republic, nor for Imperialism,” 8; and “Grant, the Practical,” 42–43. McKinley, “Speech at the Auditorium, Chicago, October 18, 1898,” 131 and Wilson, “Democracy and Efficiency,” 292–98.

  88. 88.

    Herbert D. Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan, 1909), 337–38 and 342–45.

  89. 89.

    Go, American Empire, 32.

  90. 90.

    Richard M. Gamble details the evolution of the idea that America possesses providential destiny to be a redemptive force in and for the world among Progressive Christianity from the late nineteenth century through the post-World War I era. See Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003).

  91. 91.

    Beveridge, “Grant, the Practical,” 44.

  92. 92.

    Beveridge, “For the Greater Republic, not for Imperialism,” 13.

  93. 93.

    Theodore Roosevelt, “Expansion and Peace,” in The Writings of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. William H. Harbaugh (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 30.

  94. 94.

    Croly, The Promise of American Life, 390.

  95. 95.

    Roosevelt, “Expansion and Peace,” 31.

  96. 96.

    Ibid., 32

  97. 97.

    Also see Beveridge, “Grant, the Practical,” 37–46 and “For the Greater Republic, not for Imperialism,” 8.

  98. 98.

    Theodore Roosevelt, “Fourth Annual Message,” December 6, 1904. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29545.

  99. 99.

    Woodrow Wilson, Address of the President of the United States, delivered at a Joint Session of the Two Houses of Congress, April 2, 1917 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, & Co., 1917), 24.

  100. 100.

    LaFeber, The American Age, 302. Earlier Herbert Croly argued that a moral responsibility in the interests of international order and peace-bound America to participate in a general European conflict (Croly, The Promise of American Life, 390).

  101. 101.

    Wilson, Address of the President of the United States … April 2, 1917, 24.

  102. 102.

    Ibid., 24. Benevolence and altruism were foundational motivators for America’s effort to create an international order of peace, according to Progressive political intellectual, Herbert D. Croly. Applying force may at times be necessary, but should be done so multilaterally with other nations. Croly, The Promise of American Life, 375–76 and 385.

  103. 103.

    LaFeber, The American Age, 302–3.

  104. 104.

    Richard M. Gamble, “Savior: Wilson and the Gospel of Service,” Humanitas 14, no. 1 (2001): 8 and Fabian Hilfrich, Debating American Exceptionalism: Empire and Democracy in the Wake of the Spanish-American War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 29.

  105. 105.

    Belief in the superiority of white people and their culture was not new. During the War with Mexico the Democratic Review declared the Mexican people unfit for self-government, requiring “regeneration” from their “indolence” and fecklessness. America, it argued, should supervise this civilizing mission by stationing troops in Mexico. “Occupation of Mexico,” The United States Magazine and Democratic Review 21 (Nov. 1847) 381 and 388.

  106. 106.

    Josiah Strong, Our Story: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York: American Home Missionary Society, 1885), 200.

  107. 107.

    Beveridge, “The Star of Empire,” 128–30 and “For the Greater Republic, not for Imperialism,” 3–4.

  108. 108.

    Strong, Our Story, 175.

  109. 109.

    Beveridge, “For the Greater Republic, not for Imperialism,” 11–12.

  110. 110.

    Beveridge, “For the Greater Republic, not for Imperialism,” 12 and “Our Philippine Policy,” 71–72.

  111. 111.

    Hilfrich, Debating American Exceptionalism, 21–26 and 39–75. Racism also inspired some anti-imperialists. Non-whites were incapable of self-governance. Efforts, therefore, to include Filipinos and Cubans in the republic were futile. Social Darwinism and belief in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race fueled this prejudice. See Herring, from Colony to Superpower, 322 and Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism, 41–47.

  112. 112.

    Julian Go, “Imperial Power and Its Limits: America’s Colonial Empire in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Lessons of Empire: Imperial Histories and American Power, ed. Craig Calhoun, Frederich Cooper, and Kevin W. Moore (New York: The New Press, 2006), 212 and LaFeber, The American Age, 235.

  113. 113.

    Beveridge, “For the Greater Republic, not for Imperialism,” 8.

  114. 114.

    Stephanson, Manifest Destiny, 99. “Hegemonic American masculinity” at the close of the nineteenth century was the product of “antebellum territorial expansionism,” according to Amy S. Greenberg. She also argues the martial masculinity of empire competed with a vision of masculinity that was relatively peaceful and that sought expansion through trade and religion rather than violence. Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Confirming Greenberg’s view, Beveridge declares the sagacity of America’s young men to redeem the world from barbarism and lead the world in the progress of civilization (Beveridge, “For the Greater Republic, not for Imperialism,” 13–14).

  115. 115.

    Beveridge, “For the Greater Republic, not for Imperialism,” 4–7.

  116. 116.

    Henry R. Luce (founder and publisher of Time/Life) prophesied an American century. Paul Kennedy outlines the political history of the modern and future world in this way: The sixteenth century was Spain’s, the eighteenth was France’s, the nineteenth was Britain’s, the twentieth was America’s, and it enters the twentieth first as the “world’s number-one power.” See Henry R. Luce, “The American Century,” Life, February 17, 1941, 64 and Paul Kennedy, “The Next American Century?” World Policy Journal 19 (1999): 57–58.

  117. 117.

    “Text of President Bush’s 2004 State of the Union Address,” January 20, 2004, accessed February 19, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/transcripts/bushtext_012004.html.

  118. 118.

    Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). Although subject to criticism (e.g., Jonathan R. Macey and Geoffrey P. Miller, “The End of History and the New World Order: The Triumph of Capitalism and the Competition between Liberalism and Democracy,” Cornell International Law Review 25 [1992]: 277–303), Fukuyama re-affirms his essential thesis of the end of history—democracy and free markets would prevail over authoritarianism and collectivism in “At the ‘End of History’ still stands Democracy,” The Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2014. Claiming that America is the telos of history is not unique to Fukuyama. Max Lerner describes the American as the “New World man”—the archetypal man of the West.” See Max Lerner, America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 61. Michael Mandelbaum makes a similar case for the triumph of the ideals of peace, democracy, and free markets in The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Public Affairs, 2002). Prime Minister Tony Blair’s address to the Congress of the United States assumed the end of great power rivalry and the triumph of freedom and democracy (Tony Blair, “Blair’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” The New York Times, July 17, 2003).

  119. 119.

    Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs 70, no. 1 (1990/1991): 23–33. John Ikenberry’s 2002 edited volume America Unrivaled takes American unipolarity for granted: G. John Ikenberry, America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).

  120. 120.

    Not everyone was so optimistic that America had entered a neverending period of global primacy. Although recognizing American primacy in military, economic, and diplomatic terms, Richard Haass also warned that it would eventually erode. See Haass, The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States after the Cold War (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1997), 2.

  121. 121.

    Mandelbaum, The Ideas the Conquered the World, 1–13.

  122. 122.

    The end of the Cold War did not usher in the prophesied period of global peace, but of “unprecedented interventionism” in places such as Somalia, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Yemen (Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism [New York: Metropolitan, 2008], 1). John J. Mearsheimer points out that “The United States has been at war for a startling two out of every 3 years since 1989, and there is no end in sight.” John J. Mearsheimer, “Imperial by Design,” The National Interest 111 (Jan/Feb 2011):16–17.

  123. 123.

    The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: The White House, September 2002), opening letter from President George W. Bush, accessed August 3, 2012, http://nssarchive.us/NSSR/2002.pdf.

  124. 124.

    Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama and President Sarkozy of France during Joint Press Availability,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, March 30, 2010, accessed August 3, 2012, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-and-president-sarkozy-france-during-joint-press-availabilit.

  125. 125.

    Graham Ward, The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens, The Church and Postmodern Culture, ser. ed. James K. A. Smith (Grand Rapids: BakerAcademic, 2009), 167–80.

  126. 126.

    Referenced in Pat Buchanan, “America needs no more Neo-Imperial Nonsense,” Financial Times, July 23, 2012, accessed August 3, 2012, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e52c592a-d4ad-11e1-bb88-00144feabdc0.html#axz22VGVaWHC.

  127. 127.

    Collin Powell was the key architect, along with neoconservatives such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, of a world order dominated by overwhelming American military power. America would be, according to Powell, “the bully on the block.” See Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana (New York: Routledge, 2004), 33 and 37.

  128. 128.

    President Bill Clinton, “Second Inaugural Address of William J. Clinton; January 20, 1997,” The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, accessed September 10, 2012, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/clinton2.asp.

  129. 129.

    Mearsheimer, “Imperial by Design,” 18–19.

  130. 130.

    Bacevich, The Limits of Power, 51–58.

  131. 131.

    Madeline K. Albright, “Interview on NBC-TV ‘The Today Show’ with Matt Lauer,” U.S. Department of State Archive, February 19, 1998, accessed September 4, 2012, http://secretary.state.gov/www/statements/1998/980219a.html.

  132. 132.

    O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity,” 426 (emphasis original).

  133. 133.

    Madeline Albright, “Remarks at Town Hall Meeting,” Ohio State University, February 18, 1998, U.S. Department of the State Archive, accessed October 22, 2014, http://1997–2001.state.gov/www/statements/1998/980218.html. Though George W. Bush is now infamous for indicting Saddam Hussein on developing and possessing weapons of mass destruction, Albright asserted the same as justification for American intervention in Iraq. She stated, “risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face. And it is a threat against which we must, and will, stand firm” (Albright, “Remarks at Town Hall Meeting,” Ohio State University, February 18, 1998).

  134. 134.

    Englishman Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” (1899) was a call on American’s to civilize the Philippines. Stephanson, Manifest Destiny, 87. For the poem, see Rudyard Kipling, Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling (New York: Doubleday, 1920), 215–17.

  135. 135.

    “President’s preface,” National Security Strategy, 2002 (Washington, D.C.: The White House, September 2002), np.

  136. 136.

    Neil Smith argues that despite tactical differences (e.g., the intensity of the application of military power) between the neoliberalism of the first Bush and Clinton presidencies and the Neoconservatism of George W. Bush’s policy after September 11, 2001, they are fundamentally the same. They promote economic and political globalization. See Smith, The Endgame of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2005), vii–ix.

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    Bacevich, Limits of Power, 56. For the text of the act, see H.R. 4655—Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, sec. 3, accessed September 6, 2012, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.4655.ENR.

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    George W. Bush, “Remarks by President George W. Bush at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy,” National Endowment for Democracy, November, 6, 2003, accessed September 12, 2012, http://www.ned.org/george-w-bush/remarks-by-president-george-w-bush-at-the-20th-anniversary.

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    George W. Bush, “Elections in Iraq: Speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center,” Washington, D.C., December 14, 2005, accessed February 19, 2015, http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/12.14.05.html.

  140. 140.

    National Security Strategy 2002, 3.

  141. 141.

    “From Thomas Jefferson to George Roger’s Clark, 25 December 1780,” Founders Online, National Archives (http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-04-02-0295 [last update: 2014-09-30]). Source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 4, 1 October 1780 –17 24 February 1781, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), 233–38.

  142. 142.

    Governor George W. Bush, “A Distinctly American Internationalism,” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California, November 19, 1999, accessed September 20, 2014, https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/wspeech.htm.

  143. 143.

    Haass, The Reluctant Sheriff and Condoleezza Rice, “Promoting the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs 79 (2000): 50.

  144. 144.

    Condoleezza Rice, “US must recall It is not just any Country,” The Financial Times, July 26, 2012.

  145. 145.

    Ibid.

  146. 146.

    Ibid.

  147. 147.

    Barack Obama, “Renewing American Leadership,” Foreign Affairs 86, no. 4 (July–August 2007): 2.

  148. 148.

    Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama and President Sarkozy of France during Joint Press Availability,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, March 30, 2010, accessed August 3, 2012, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-and-president-sarkozy-france-during-joint-press-availabilit.

  149. 149.

    National Security Strategy (Washington, D.C.: The White House, May 2010), 1, accessed August 29, 2012, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf.

  150. 150.

    Paul Lewis, Spencer Ackermanm, and Dan Roberts, “Obama: Russia’s action in Ukraine put Putin on the ‘wrong side of history,’” The Guardian, March 3, 2014.

  151. 151.

    Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks on United States Foreign Policy,” Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., September 8, 2010, accessed September 7, 2012, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/09/146917.htm.

  152. 152.

    “News Conference by President Obama,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, April 4, 2009, accessed February 19, 2015, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/News-Conference-By-President-Obama-4-04-2009.

  153. 153.

    Barack Obama, “Official Announcement of Candidacy for the United States Presidency,” February 10, 2007, accessed February 19, 2015, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/Barack%20Obama%20-%20Announces%20Candidacy.pdf.

  154. 154.

    For Obama’s redeeming political mission, see Stanley A. Renshon, Barack Obama and the Politics of Redemption (New York: Routledge, 2012). For a critical and sympathetic assessment of the Obama presidency, see Gary Dorrien, The Obama Question: A Progressive Perspective (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).

  155. 155.

    “Barack Obama’s Feb. 5 Speech,” The New York Times, February 5, 2008.

  156. 156.

    National Security Strategy (2010), 1–2, 10, and 36–37.

  157. 157.

    Barack Obama, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 2014, accessed August 22, 2014, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/obama.asp.

  158. 158.

    “Remarks by the President in Arnold, Missouri Town Hall,” April 19, 2009, accessed February 19, 2015, http://barackobama-2012.blogspot.com/2009/04/remarks-by-president-in-arnold-missouri.html.

  159. 159.

    Obama’s secular political rhetoric is not necessarily a reflection of the importance of religious faith in his personal life.

  160. 160.

    Obama, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009.

  161. 161.

    ISIS is also called ISIL and IS. The final “S” in the acronym refers to the Arabic word “al-Sham,” which can mean the Levant or Syria. “L” in ISIL refers to the Levant. Given their aggressiveness, al-Sham probably indicates the Levant. I use the acronym IS since it is the preferred term in media and political discourse and IS means Islamic State and is the group’s preferred self-description. For background on the terminology of IS, see Ray Sanchez, “ISIS, ISIL or the Islamic State?” CNN, January 23, 2015 and Nick Logan, “Iraq crisis: ISIS or ISIL—what’s in a transliterated name?” Global News, June 19, 2014.

  162. 162.

    Barack Obama, “Statement by the President on ISIL,” September 10, 2014, accessed September 11, 2014, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/10/remarks-president-barack-obama-address-nation.

  163. 163.

    Barack Obama, “Statement by the President on ISIL.”

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    Steven M. Studebaker

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Studebaker, S.M. (2016). Exceptional and Indispensable Nation. In: A Pentecostal Political Theology for American Renewal. Christianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48016-3_2

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