Bacevich: Is God judging America?

Prof. Bacevich was my regimental commander when he was COL Bacevich (11th ACR, Fulda, GE), and he was definitely at church every Sunday. It is sad that his stellar military career was cut short, but I think he is serving his country better where is now than had he stayed in and gone on to be a general.

FWIW, I am sympathetic to the idea that was is coming before

I think Bacevich is improperly leap-frogging over Reagan and trying to saddle Sarah Palin with intending Winthrop's words and meaning. Indeed, Palin only attributed the words to Reagan, not to Winthrop. One should ask if she even knows that Winthrop said it. I suspect she thought of Matthew 5:14-16, and the image of the Statue of Liberty raising her lamp beside the golden door that these words can conjure up in Americans' minds. America, a light and a beacon of hope to the world.

Andrew Bacevich analyzes the Palin quote here.

No, he's analyzing Winthrop's statement. Sarah Palin said NOTHING about God in the part of her debate response that Bacevich quoted.

Bacevich pulls a bait-and-switch via his essay. He writes: "In that case, Winthrop, Reagan, and Palin are remarkably presumptuous in claiming to interpret God's purposes and will."

"In that case"? Earth to Bacevich: Your segue from Palin to Winthrop is a tawdry trick.

I suspect Bacevich trying to portray Sarah Palin as using encoded language for America = The New Israel because of her fundamentalist church background. I don't buy it. What Palin said was political rhetoric, not a proclamation of a Divine Manifesto.

Sheesh.

Wow, I've never seen a conservative type who agrees with me on that. However this is a "common idolatry" that politicians of both parties, but particularly Republicans, engage in. I don't like it, but it's so big a part of America's culture I'm skeptical it can go away.

"Have we kept God's covenant?"

We will be told that this is all punishment for homosexuals and abortion. Thus will those who proclaimed that George W. Bush was God's anointed will justify themselves and their policies.

Interesting.

Didn't the Puritans think they were establishing a New Jerusalem? Isn't that essentially how this nation began?

I believe Tom Wolfe wrote something some years back about how it was Protestantism's worldview in establishing such a shining city on a hill that gave America moral force, intellectual energy and more during our first two centuries.

There is a fourth possibility, which I endorse: God exists, and he has no particular interest in the United States of America, BUT he does judge ANY nation that fails to keep his law.

I think of "God's judgment" in somewhat different terms than might others.

For instance, I think of hell as not being for those "condemned" by God, but instead for those willfully choosing to cut themselves off from God through their own volition -- and then experiencing the overwhelming grief, pain and loss of that decision for eternity.

In a similar fashion, if a nation willfully chooses to disregard the moral law, then after a time it simply pays the piper in much the same way that a profligate household or company will go bankrupt eventually. It's not "God's judgment" so much as it is simply the natural outcome of disregarding the moral law.

Isn't there a fourth possibility? What about the idea that God has chosen America, not as a "New Israel" (which you're right, is idolatrous), but as a nation that, at least for a time, is blessed because it serves a special purpose in his divine plan.

For example, the Roman Empire was blessed with great success in large measure to facilitate the spread of early Christianity. The mistake people made, once the empire was Christianized, was identifying it too closely with the church itself. Augustine wrote all about that in The City of God. I don't think there is any contradiction in agreeing with Augustine that the "City of God" and City of Man" are separate and not to be confused, while also arguing that God blessed the Roman and Byzantine Empires in a special way in order to perform certain tasks.

Of course, I'm not trying to argue that this is what Sarah Palin meant. She's just following in a long rhetorical tradition that her speechwriters probably haven't put serious thought into. Politicians are not theologians after all, and the average person sees nothing wrong in believing that their country is special in the eyes of God.

And "they" (the authorities and represntatives of the dominant Institution) asked Jesus what is the most important Commandment.
He said, "Love God with all your heart soul and mind, and to which is added, love your neighbor as yourself"
Then someone asked, "So who is my neighbor?"

If this is all a moral question, we have to look at all the ways we have tried to qualify, add exemptions, and make exceptions to these basic expectations. Our national rpefeence is to demand people explain why we should help, rather than seeing an need and offering help. The $700 Billion would go a much longer way toward helping our neighbors (local and international) than bailing out the reputations of a handful of bankers. That amount of money could deal handily with the debt of 2,400,000 mortgage holders alone, without a penny going to an institution. If the system is corrupt, it will collapse and die. We need to anticipate an new, healthier system and invest there.

Well, we survived August 29th, 1997. Apparently we must be doing something right.

In all seriousness, though...America is the product of fallible men; therefore I am unsurprised that she, too, possesses flaws. But from where I stand, the good continues to outweigh the bad.

Given that America's current troubles at home & abroad seem quite explicable via incompetence in both foreign policy & economic policy, I don't find it necessary to invoke divine wrath when seeking the source of said troubles.

"We are not perfect as a nation. But together, we represent a perfect ideal."

I get where you're coming from, Rod, but when she says this (what I've quoted), I'm heartened a little. Depends on what the second part of the sentence means.

Hey Charles! Happy Hour isn't till 5 O'clock!

Rob - In "Terminator 2", August 29, 1997 was termed "Judgment Day". It was the date of the nuclear holocaust which set the stage for that story's future history.

Just goes to show how much of a nerd I am....

If the Bible and Christian tradition are authoritative, America is just a nation among nations, "a drop in the bucket" before God, one that will rise and fall like all others have and will.

Only Israel is a "chosen" nation by God, and that means a lot of different things, even in the Bible. Christians need to remember that our only true home is heaven and that is where our true citizenship lies. We should try to do what we can as pilgrims passing through a foreign land, but the U.S., or any country, is no true home to us.

Idolatrous patriotism also sickens me, especially since ours is a country where killing unborn children at any time for any reason, up to and including the moment of live birth, is the law of the land, and that has been true for over a generation now. We are ruled by unelected judges, thus we are not even the vaunted democracy we claim to be. Whatever judgement God visits on us we deserve, and in spades.

Seemed appropriate:

"If you are a Christian, no earthly city is yours. Of our City ‘the Builder and Maker is God.’ Though we may gain possession of the whole world, we are withal but strangers and sojourners in it all. We are enrolled in heaven: our citizenship is there! Let us not, after the manner of little children, despise things that are great, and admire those which are little! Not our city’s greatness, but virtue of soul is our ornament and defence. If you suppose dignity to belong to a city, think how many persons must partake in this dignity, who are whoremongers, effeminate, depraved and full of ten thousand evil things, and at last despise such honour! But that City above is not of this kind; for it is impossible that he can be a partaker of it, who has not exhibited every virtue." + St. John Chrysostom

Well, we're debating Wright's words over on the Wright and Ayers thread, but here's my response to assertions like Rod, from that thread:

I consider Jeremiah Wright a heretic, along with a vast majority of American protestantism. I'm happy to spend hours - and have - slicing apart the failings in his theology, or any other heretic's. But as a political matter, the fact is that the specific quote by which people are defining Wright is simply not to anyone with basic reading comprehension skills "preaching malice" or "begging" God to damn America. Here's the quote:

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

This is really just logic 101; it's an "if/then" statement. IF America is killing innocent people and treating citizens as less than human and acts like she is God and is supreme, THEN God should damn America. Especially once you add that last one, would you honestly say that you disagree with this statement? I don't. I assume you and I both believe that Wright is wrong about the facts. But what's so exceptional about that?

Believe me, I can dig up hundreds of quotes from saints and pastors from the past 2000 years that would support my assertion that this statement is completely unremarkable in the annals of Christian anti-war polemics.

"[T]he average person sees nothing wrong in believing that their country is special in the eyes of God."

Thus leading the 'average person' to be more than willing to not question their leaders when they use this idea to shape national policy.

Nope! Nothing wrong at all!

I didn't say there was "nothing wrong" with it. I said that the average person sees nothing wrong with it. I also said she and her speechwriters probably haven't put a lot of thought into it, because it is merely following in a long American tradition that starts with Winthrop, continues with the founding fathers citations of "Divine Providence", Lincoln's recruitment of God as being on the side of the north during the Civil War, etc. Feel free to object to the tradition all you want. My only point in my third paragraph was that I think it reflects less a sincerely held belief than a common rhetorical device widely accepted by the majority of Americans. I think the only reason we notice it in her speech more than others is the idea (fair or not) that she takes her faith more seriously than McCain, Obama, or Biden.