Puritan Civic Tradition

In general terms, we can see the Puritan civic tradition as an acclimation and intensification of the older theology for the New England context. Yet it was this intensification which eventually made the Puritan canopy unsustainable. Puritan preaching in the mid-18th century reveals a growing sense of despair at the perceived declension of social morals. The body politic was failing to live up to the terms of the “special commission” which had originally established the American Christendom. Even after the initial wave of religious revivals in the 1730s, Jonathan Edwards lamented “the moral and religious state of these American colonies,” which now suffered from “wild and extravagant notions, gross delusions of the devil, and strange practices.” Perhaps most interestingly, Edwards targets this onslaught of vice as advancing “under a pretext of extraordinary purity, spirituality, liberty, and zeal against formality, usurpation, and conformity to the world.” Edwards, like the Puritan civic tradition as a whole, perceived the rising tide of Enlightenment rationalism and unbridled individual liberty as a threat to the old political order. This moment of crisis called the fundamental legitimacy of Puritan society into question. How could American Christendom continue in its current form if the populace as a whole was not attentive to the moral claims of the civic order? Some voices in the early 18th century had called for a relaxation of the formal requirements for membership in the ecclesial-civil commonwealth (among them, Edwards’ grandfather, Solomon Stoddard). However, by the 1740s, the Puritan leadership was increasingly embracing even more rigorous requirements for moral purity.
In all this, it is perhaps best not to view these latter days of the American Christendom as a decisive break with the old European reformers, but rather as evidence of the early Protestant civic tradition in extremis. In order to save New England society from the flood of unbelief, Puritans like Edwards did not lessen their demands for spiritual piety, but rather hoped and prayed that the Spirit of God would work moral renewal in the commonwealth. Despite his doubts for the immediate prospects of a covenantal renewal, Edwards clearly had the union of a faithful society and a pure congregation in view. Even “when the day is so dark here in New England,” Edwards wrote, there must be hope for a renewal of the earthly people of God as “one holy and happy society,” united in mutual affection and service of God.
In effect, while the earlier Protestant tradition often defined civic society in pedagogical terms, as a distinct preparation for an eternal citizenship, Puritan civic perfectionism tended to collapse the action into one juridical moment. (This is not to say that elements later embedded in the Puritan tradition were not present in earlier generations. In particular, the political contributions of the Zurich school of Ulrich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger had a lasting effect on the developing strand of Reformed “federal theology.” See Charles S. McCoy and J. Wayne Baker, Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenantal Tradition.) If it is true that a political community can only enjoy divine favor by demonstration of true submission to divine lordship, then the proleptic nature of political engagement becomes rather irrelevant; something more immediate and explicit is required. The New England experience indicated to the Puritans that Christendom – in name only – was not sufficient to protect civic virtue. (A very similar point is made repeatedly in the political writings of the reformer Martin Bucer [1491-1551]. In his counsel to the Protestant King Edward V, Bucer presses his argument that even in a formally Christian state, moral persuasion more effective than edicts; see Bucer’s De Regno Christi. In Virtue Reformed, Stephen Wilson suggests that Bucer served as an early model for the Puritans’ “higher expectations for renewability in the ecclesiastical and civic spheres” and requirements for “visible sainthood.” However, Bucer’s practical concern for persuading the citizenry of the goodness of political reforms strikes a different note than many of the Puritan calls for moral purity.) At the same time, heightened rhetoric calling for a renewal of the moral basic for Christendom only contributed to the formal dissociation of civil and spiritual society in the American republic. As a result, there was less room for a natural or pedagogic conception of civil society. If that foundation were to exist, it would have to be supplied by other, less theological, means.
The dissolution of Christendom in the New World proceeded along many parallel lines. In his brief account, O’Donovan recognizes several operative causes, including: the growing complexity of the American religious demographic, the rise of heterodox doctrines which relativized the social importance of true worship, as well as the Puritan emphasis on the personal ministration of the Holy Spirit in individual believers. O’Donovan suggests that “all these factors coincided to support the disestablishment thesis.” The First Amendment was not intended to prosecute religious belief or even participation in politics; however, it provided the conditions for a subsequently “anti-religious line of interpretation.” In effect, the American civic tradition committed a kind of “heresy.” While “the creed asserts: cuius regni non erit finis; and the apostle, that ‘at the name of Jesus every knew shall bow.’ The First Amendment presumes to add: ‘except….’”
Even in its largely symbolic and attenuated form, this critique of the American civic tradition remains persuasive on many points, and certainly provides one means to account for the subsequent assimilation of theological concepts into the democratic tradition. However, while not trying to demand too much of O’Donovan’s brief account of American civic theology, two paradigmatic questions arise when considering the antecedent history of the Puritan Christendom. First, how explicit can secular testimony to divine lordship be without straining tensions to the point of breakdown in the social order? Second, after the fall of Christendom pro forma, in what way must individual Christians participate differently in the structures of political authority? Does the absence of public testimony to the lordship of Christ detract from a pre-existing theological confession that the kingdoms of the world have in some sense already been given over to Christ?