Paul Johnson And The American Patriots:
"A History of the American People"

by DW
(Oregon)

In his portrayal of the American patriots, it may not be entirely fair or accurate to describe Paul Johnson as a “Christian Federalist.” There are points in his best selling “A History of the American People” (HarperPerennial, 1997) where he betrays a misunderstanding of Christian orthodoxy.

Misunderstanding
Orthodox Position

For example, he explains the crux of Anne Hutchinson’s dissent in the Massachusetts Bay Colony as arguing “that redemption was God’s gift to his elect and could not simply be earned by human effort…the logic of this doctrine was subversive” (p.51). On the contrary, that was in fact the orthodox position of the Puritan authorities in Boston, not Anne Hutchinson.

Johnson asserts that the “biggest formative force” of the American patriots in drafting a new Constitution was “financial need” (p.180) and that “They believed in government deliberately creating the framework in which the economy could develop….” He attributed this to Adam Smith by way of Alexander Hamilton.

But the theory for a centralized economy – an advanced banking system, managed credit, and tariffs – did not arise from the free market theory of Adam Smith. On the contrary, the old mercantile system, so recently laid to rest in the American Revolution, was revived in the person of Alexander Hamilton. Smith had argued against it in defending the American patriots.

The torch of centralization lit by Hamilton flickered dimly at first, but was then fanned to life by the “American System” of Henry Clay and triumphed at last in Lincoln’s War of Aggression on the South.

The American
Enlightenment

However, Johnson does a good job of capturing the temper of the times in which the U.S. Constitution was forged by the American patriots. First, he asks the all-important question: “How came it, then, that the Constitution of the United States, unlike these early documents in American history, lacks a religious framework, as well as a religious content?” (P. 205).

The answer he provides I believe is to the point. “As it happens, by a historical accident, it was actually drawn up at the high tide of 18th-century secularism, which was as yet unpolluted by the fanatical atheism and the bloody excesses of its culminating storm, the French Revolution” (p.205). He goes on to note that “Within a very few years, this tide began to ebb, and the religious spirit to flood back.”

This was the beginning of the romantic and transcendental revolt from the dead rationalism of the Enlightenment. It was reinforced by the religious enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening at the dawn of the 19th Century. Liberty of conscience was enthroned and Christendom as a socio-political construct was banished.

Johnson recognizes what most of today’s “American Christian history experts” do not. That is, the ground work for the demise of Christendom was laid in the U.S. Constitution itself. It was handsomely disguised by the American patriots in the trappings of religious liberty or toleration.

In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the antinomian individualism of Roger Williams finally triumphed over the covenantalism of John Winthrop. As Johnson points out, Williams did not believe “that God covenanted with a congregation or an entire society. God, he held, covenanted with each individual” (p.47).

“…every man had the right to his individual conscience, guided by the inner light of his faith,” according to Williams, “In secular matters, however, he must submit to the will of the majority, determined through institutions shorn of any religious content” (p.48). That, in fact, was the system institutionalized in the U.S. Constitution of 1787.

Johnson also expresses a realistic view of the religious views of the American patriots. Of Washington he notes, “He regarded religion as a civilizing force, but not essential. Later hagiographers, such as Parson Weems…tried to make out Washington as more religious than he was…” (p.206). “Washington served for many years as a vestryman in his local Anglican church,” Johnson notes, “believing this to be a pointed gesture of solidarity with an institution he regarded as underpinning a civilized society” (p. 208).

Including end material, Paul Johnson’s work is a full 1088 pages of 9-point script. We simply cannot do it justice in this short review. We have only enough space to make the point that Paul Johnson -- not claiming to be explicitly Christian – has a far more realistic view of the American patriots and their Constitution than all of the “American Christian history experts” combined.

The "American Christian history experts" all have a lot to learn from Paul Johnson, the Brit. The British view from outside the “goldfish bowl”, is much less distorted than that of all the poor fish trapped inside.