A More Protestant America?

Recently the Catholic editor of a religion journal suggested to me that there be an article on how to make America more Protestant. His point was that America was historically Protestant, with even Catholics becoming to some extent Protestantized. So, a spiritually revitalized America will need to be more Protestant.

It’s an interesting point. In recent years there has been a Protestant “ressourcement” of Reformed thinkers who advocate a Protestant America, often with some version of church establishment. Soft versions advocate a return to Blue Laws (mandatory commercial Sunday closings). Harder versions want Christian doctrine inscribed into civil law or even a state church, if only in the local community. Their argument is that establishment is essential to historic magisterial Protestant teaching, which is true prior the late 1700s.

Of course, established churches are not really part of the post-independence American tradition, except a few New England states for a few decades. Arguably Protestantism was established in the United States unofficially through manners and customs. Public schools included prayers and Bibles. Laws included widely Protestant ethical assumptions without citing specific doctrine. American civil religion was mostly a Protestant project but was sufficiently elastic to incorporate Catholics, Jews, and other theists. Hence, “In God We Trust.” The Trinity and Christ were not specified in public documents.

Strong vestiges of civil religion continue, although the newly elected president is the first chief magistrate in our history who does not commonly employ it. Others certainly will. Protestant assumptions remain pervasively embedded in our culture, unstated but still powerful. Our Constitution and laws, premised on republicanism and a division of powers that distrust human nature and centralized power, remain.

We as Americans assume that each person has a sovereignty and political authority, entitled to voice and vote, which is thoroughly Protestant. Our culture similarly assumes a preference for the outsider, the downtrodden, and the dissident. Rules are respected, but not entrenched hierarchies. The powerful are deemed to be corrupt. Our democracy is a constant state of revolution, overthrowing incumbents in favor of successors who also will soon face revolution. The very wealthy and showily indulgent might gain admiration for a season but usually are ultimately discarded. We generally admire the self-made entrepreneur over inherited privilege.

All these Protestant customs and attitudes likely will continue long into America’s future. But how to make America more Protestant? Church establishment or confessionalism by statute of any sort is foreign to our democratic American tradition. It also is increasingly unlikely with declining church participation. One third of Americans are now religiously unaffiliated (though many of them are still “Protestant” in spirit). Protestants have fallen below fifty percent of the U.S. population. And many if not most of them do not self-identify as Protestant. American Christianity has become post-denominational, with fewer American Christians identifying with any denomination or tradition. Yet, without knowing it, they are Protestants, perhaps more Protestant than ever before. They respect no religious hierarchy but determine beliefs on their own.

So how can America become more Protestant? That project is not mainly political or even cultural but evangelistic, ecclesial, and catechetical. Churches will need to focus on making new converts, reclaiming lost converts, and teaching their own flocks about the Protestant tradition. They will have to be less afraid to identify as “Protestant” or as some particular Protestant tradition. Nondenominational churches, whether they admit to it or not, are part of a tradition, usually Baptist. They should acknowledge it.

There will also need to be a renewed focus on Protestant intellectual life beyond the narrow strata of intense Calvinists who are part of the ressourcement. Post denominational Christianity chiefly focuses on the pragmatics of the local church. It is less interested in abstract theology and even less on the academic field of Christian ethics, beyond practical biblical moralism. I am told that evangelical schools are less and less inclined to hire Protestant Christian ethicists. This situation seems ironic. Much of evangelicalism bemoans the state of morality in America but is unwilling to nurture serious intellectual resources to address public morality.

A more Protestant America will need a more confident Protestantism rooted in longstanding institutions, not just informal networks, or online communities. Apocalyptic Evangelicalism, much of it fueled by Dispensationalism, became dominant in the latter twentieth century. Dispensationalism is now declining but the propensity to live in crisis mode, with a siege mentality, continues. A more Protestant America will not fear every negative trend in culture, knowing that every time and place in fallen humanity’s troubled history includes hostile trends. Amid such trends, confident Protestants assume, God’s Kingdom is prevailing. A confident church cannot obsess over a hostile culture. Every generation contends against the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world in a sense is always “negative” towards the church but cannot prevail against the church. And the church is always infected by the spirit of the world, if in different ways at different times. 

In a more Protestant America, Protestantism will not be defensive or tribal. It will not desperately seek life rafts. It will understand itself to the chief life raft, the ark, offering refuge to all who seek God’s mercy. It will not be angry or fearful.

As to a more Protestant America’s political witness, it will not seek to reenact Prohibition and related unsustainable social experiments. Protestant America will understand human nature, even in a majority Christian culture, is always fickle and prone to wandering. No nation is comprised of sanctified saints. Even in relatively religious nations, the truly pious are always a minority. What can be imposed by statute is always limited.

A more Protestant America will be providential and realist. Protestantism, whatever its past, has a long trajectory towards liberty. Protestant America won’t expect a confessional state, which God’s sovereignty does not need or desire. And it doesn’t require a Protestant shariah that tries to compel what even pious Protestants usually fail to uphold among themselves. Broadly, a more Protestant America supports our republican institutions and our Constitution, which already assume a Protestant sensibility. Protestant America will shun overly centralized power, ideological dogmatism, charismatic political movements, and apocalyptic polarization.

Everybody except misanthropes gains from a more Protestant America because a truly Protestant America wants prosperity, freedom and decency for all.

A more Protestant America will not seek superficial social conformity. It will advocate dignity, legal equality, and justice for all. It will advocate decorum in public life, the rule of law, civic righteousness and some level of social harmony, absent which peace and justice become unattainable. Protestant America will protect religious freedom and conscience rights for all because they are divine gifts to all humanity whose violation is tyrannical and threatening to all.

Does a more Protestant America require that everybody or nearly so be Protestant? No. But a more Protestant America requires a more vigorous, patient, and faithful Protestantism that serves society and does not just defensively self-protect. It will think and act long-term. It will extend mercy no less than it has received it. It will trust that a Kind Creator ultimately superintends the nation’s life. And it will warn against divine judgment for the nation through awareness that judgement begins in God’s church. For the nation to be a city on a hill, the church must itself shine within the city.