Reagan and Myths America Lives By

Was Reagan exceptionally evil or a normal white American in his implementation of the racial wealth gap and racial mass incarceration? I continue my book review of Myths America Lives By by Richard Hughes; it is my impression that the myths Hughes discusses explain Reagan's red-blooded American behavior.

Chapter 1  The Myth of the Chosen Nation: The Colonial Period

Hughes observes:

"Among the most powerful and persistent of all the myths that Americans invoke about themselves is the myth that America is a chosen nation and that its citizens constitute a chosen people. . . . It is one thing to claim that American is exceptional in its own eyes.  It is something else to claim that America is exceptional because God chose America and its people for a special mission in the world."

There was only one chosen people---the nation of Israel.  They were chosen for a specific reason---to be a servant people to bring the Messiah into the world.  Unfortunately, they violated this covenant and moved from being a humble servant people to being a ethnocentric, superior people.  They attempted to make God into their own private God.

As the Puritans saw it, only they and their theology were fully biblical.  Other Christians such as Roger Williams were excluded; he was not one of God's chosen.  The Puritans became religiously ethnocentric and this led to oppression done in the name of God.  Chosenness, ethnocentrism, oppression---a dangerous, demonic mix.  Before long Puritans were paying money for the scalps of Indians.  Allen Carden, an expert on the Puritans, believe that, in the course of American history, the Puritan example legitimated the oppression of Native Americans which eventually led to the near genocide of the Indian population.

To Native Americans and Afro Americans, it often seemed that America was more like the evil city of Babylon than it was an expression of the kingdom of God.  Hughes concludes:

"But when shorn of the notion of covenant and mutual responsibility, the myth of the Chosen Nation easily became a badge of privilege and power, justifying oppression and exploitation of those not included in the circle of the chosen."

Chapter 2  The Myth of Nature's Nation: The Revolutionary Period

During the 1800s, Europe was devastated by religious warfare; "Catholics and Protestant vied for power and control."  An Englishman, Edward Lord Herbert, figured out a way to resolve this bloody religious warfare.  He concluded that the Bible, especially various new translations, was the problem.  It would be better, less controversial, to use a second book that God has authored---the world of nature.  Nature's fundamental truth were self-evident and could be agreed upon by all religions.  Reason and Nature would take center stage; the Bible would be de-emphasized.

Deism, a religious perspective, and the Enlightenment, a philosophical perspective, undergirded the founding of this country:

"In Herbert's zeal to seek religious truths in nature alone, for example, he scuttled all those doctrines that could be known only from the biblical text.  In Deism, therefore, theologies about Jesus Christ as the Son of God went out the window.  So did any teachings about the Holy Spirit.  All that was left was God. . . .  In America, Deism institutionalized itself in the Unitarian Church."

God does not have the same meaning in deism and biblical theism; do not read theistic ideas into deistic statements.  The god of deism is a gutted God, a half God, a depersonalized god.  Mother Nature is a good deistic phrase.  Jefferson regarded the orthodox, biblical teaching of Christianity as "metaphysical insanities."  He argued that his brand of deism "represented the heart of Jesus'teachings and the purest form of Christianity."  He even created a gutted Bible---the Jefferson Bible.

The Declaration of Independence is pure deism: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, . . . . "  Evangelical theists today bring their bible-based, trinitarian ideas of God with them and interpret these beautiful sentiments as Christian, but the original context was deism.

Hughes asserts "that the Declaration made Deism America's national faith."  As the reader may have noted, many American presidents mention God in their speeches, but seldom Jesus Christ.

An Afro American, David Walker, opposed Jefferson head-on.  Jefferson had argued that 'blacks were by NATURE inferior to whites."  This directly contradicted the Declaration of Independence.  Walker believed that Americanized Christianity made Christians more racist, more oppressive:

"American whites were bad enough without their religion.  As Christians, they are ten times more cruel, avaricious and unmerciful than they ever were. . . . "

Frederick Douglas wrote an equally scathing passage:

"Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference. . . . I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whippping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.  Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity."

Some concluding observations by Hughes:

* "I should note that those who absolutized America's national myths were often the powerful and the privileged. . . . "

* "Indeed, I have tried to pay attention to the impact that corrupted and absolutized myths have exerted on the poor and the dispossessed throughout the course of American history."

* "While Americans often absolutize their myths during peacetime, they must absolutize them during wartime."  For extensive documentation, see The Wars of America: Christian Views.

My conclusion:  Reagan was just being a good ethnocentric white American elitist when he initiated the unjust War on Drugs and targeted blacks and Latinos, when the doubled the wealth gap.  The theistic Puritans were ethnocentric and oppressive and demonic; the deistic founding fathers were ethnocentric, oppressive and demonic.  Reagan repeated their wrongs.