Preface (Cont.)

Subsequent emigration, down to the present time, has not produced essential changes in this general mood. Waves of European emigration, despite their apparent heterogeneity, quickly dissolve in the sea of American native population, and over it continues to hover the spirit of Puritanism. The heterogeneity of the emigration elements, in submitting to the dominant mood, nonetheless exerted its own influence on the state of this mood. Left to itself, Puritanism had a strong tendency to degenerate into a dry, harsh, and lifeless system of theological knowledge, without the vitalizing, humane sentiment. European emigration, through its diverse pressure upon it, constantly smoothed its overly rigid and angular features and infused into its dry forms the vitalizing streams of individual religious feeling. From the organic combination and self-limitation of diverse elements is formed the general religious condition of the American people. As the mass of the present American population consists of elements of all possible nationalities settled on the original island of the Anglo-Saxon race, so too the general religious mood of this mass represents diverse features merged under one common covering of Puritanism. Since the principal constituent parts of emigration in recent decades have been German and Irish settlers, these nationalities exert the strongest influence on the cultural and religious character of the country. Hence, beneath the common Puritan spirit in American religiosity, the features of German religious individualism and Irish religious romanticism stand out especially brightly. Thanks to the collision of such heterogeneous elements, American religiosity could acquire the same balanced character that distinguishes the American people in other respects. In it, no one of the three elements composing it could achieve extreme development—neither stern Puritanism, nor extreme German individualism, nor diffuse Celtic romanticism. All three of these elements balance one another. By this equilibrium are explained all the essential features of American religious life. Thanks to the general high level of vital forces in the young American people, their religious feeling is likewise distinguished by fervent vital activity and youthful freshness. In it there is not that weariness and bluntness of feeling observed in the aging peoples of Europe and manifested in the form of indifference or skepticism. Their religious needs are strong and insistent, and they openly and enthusiastically satisfy them. German individualism introduces personal critical self-consciousness into this feeling and gives faith logical meaning, raising it thereby to the degree of clear religious self-consciousness. Celtic romanticism gives religious faith a strong aesthetic coloring, raising it thereby above ordinary logically-acknowledged feeling. Finally, Puritanism, with its strict form, restricts the extreme development of both German individualism and Celtic romanticism, and in this way restrains them within proper bounds, preventing one-sidedness in development. Hence is explained that remarkable fact that the theological thought of the American people constantly works in the realm of religious truths, yet never goes beyond the bounds of faith into the dark realm of skepticism and negation; religious feeling is distinguished by extraordinary energy, yet rarely crosses the bounds of logical coherence; aesthetic feeling plays an important role in religious cult, yet never overflows into excess of external forms. The mark of moderation lies on all aspects of its religious life.[1]

If the general result of the collision of diverse religious elements was the creation of equilibrium in the general religious mood of the American people, then on the other hand the organic interaction of such different elements of necessity had to produce constant oscillation and movement of the religious forces composing this mood. Hence arises that religious ferment which constitutes the most well-known and characteristic feature of American religiosity. Religious forces of the people, finding reconciliation in the general mood, cannot merge into indifferent unity, and therefore the process of ferment and assimilation is the natural and necessary result of the given condition. The character of the ferment process itself is determined by the general state of religiosity. The religious feeling of the American people, as was said above, is distinguished by strong energy. The people are extraordinarily sensitive to matters of religious truth. They cannot regard with indifference the various manifestations of religious truth. They hunger for it in its unmistakable, undisputable, categorical form. Therefore, religious ferment in the American people is precisely a search for religious truth. But to what extent do the given conditions of their religious life correspond to the national striving to find religious truth?

Americans, both by their very origin and by their present predominant character, are a Protestant people. Northern America owes its very settlement to Protestantism, which, fleeing persecution in the Old World, sought freedom for its development in the New. Roman Catholicism to this day remains an exotic plant on American soil and is only beginning to become acclimated to it. Therefore, when considering the religious character of the American people in the proper sense, we must keep in view Protestantism as their general confessional form, as the fundamental principle of their very religiosity. Hence the answer to the question posed can be found in defining the principles of Protestantism and their relation to the fundamental character of the American people.

Protestantism, as a religious system, is founded on two main principles, from which all its content logically develops. As a negation of the system that had carried external church organization to the point of suppressing all personal initiative, it began to teach that the church is only an invisible society and that members can be joined to it only by the most general principle, namely only by faith—so that anyone who believes they are redeemed by Christ is thereby a member of the church, whatever their particular opinions on all other matters. Second, in opposition to the Roman Catholic system, which denied to the individual their own participation in determining true doctrine, it rejected the authority of the church and determined that every person, through their own reason based solely on sacred Scripture, can and should determine what their religious teaching and their moral code should be. The logical and necessary consequence of these principles was that each person became wholly responsible for themselves in the matter of religious and moral teaching. With the rejection of the church as a visible society and teaching authority, there emerged extreme individualism, in which the entire burden of responsibility fell upon the individual, who solely through their own forces had to build their salvation. Such a system, considered psychologically, corresponds to the national character distinguished by critical independence of thought, preferring its own independent judgment to any public authority. It corresponds best to the mental constitution of the German people, and hence the extreme development of Protestant ideas in them, which at the same time take weak root among Romance peoples having an opposite mental constitution. If salvation indeed depended only on faith alone, human consciousness could easily reconcile itself to this fundamental principle of Protestantism. But faith itself, if it possesses vitality, must of necessity express itself in a certain form, upon which in turn depends the more or less true observance of it. By virtue of unlimited individualism, faith had to assume many forms, expressing its content in various ways. With such diversity, the question naturally arises: which of these forms represents the most adequate expression of one common truth of faith? With weak sensitivity to religious truth, this question would not be important, and people would be satisfied with the general content of the form. But with strong energy of religious feeling, it becomes of enormous importance. The people search for such a form as would more fully and truly express the faith they hold, and cannot be satisfied with a form that in their opinion is not adequate to the content. It is with such energy of feeling that the American people are distinguished, and hence in them that religious ferment which constitutes the characteristic feature of their religious life. In this search for truth, by virtue of the fundamental principle of Protestantism, each individual is presented exclusively to themselves. They have no such greater and firmer authority to which they could turn for help and upon whose decision they could rely. Hence religious thought passes through many forms and is in constant oscillation and doubt concerning the result of its logical work. The result of this ferment is that fragmentation of religious forms in which American religiosity is manifested. This fragmentation itself, together with the instability of forms, is clear proof of the inadequacy of individualism in finding the form that would fully express truth. Such a form can be only one. Awareness of this truth might find a counterweight in intellectual individualism, but as soon as the force of intellectual individualism proves not developed enough to sustain the weight of responsibility, the principle of Protestantism can only be a burden for the religious consciousness of the people, and sooner or later it will attempt to shed this burden and find a principle more corresponding to its character.

If we compare these fundamental principles of Protestantism with the fundamental features of the American people’s character, it will appear that despite their apparent correspondence to each other, there is an essential difference in them. The fundamental feature of the American character, as shown above, is healthy mediocrity, which is conditioned by the state of self-limiting elements and forces. By virtue of this healthy mediocrity, as an expression of the equilibrium of forces, the American character is foreign to extremes. It is distinguished by independence, yet at the same time it loves moderation. It will not tolerate any external restriction, but at the same time it imposes on itself such restrictions as might seem to be constraints for less freedom-loving characters, and it submits to them with amazing precision. Discipline nowhere attains such broad development as in America. In schools it reaches the degree of military precision and is applied with equal severity to both male and female institutions. Public opinion nowhere exerts such power over individuals as in this land of freedom, and violation of established social rules is punished with pitiless severity. Both in social and especially in religious respect, the character of the American people shows traces of strict Puritanism, which gives everything a strict disciplinary stamp. Clearly, such a character does not correspond to the unlimited individualism presented by Protestantism, and this discrepancy is clearly revealed in the history of the development of American religious consciousness. The first stage of this development was recognition of one exclusive, unchanging form of doctrine, outside of which everything was condemned as impious and harmful, and the system itself was raised to the degree of an infallible church authority, though this was obviously in open contradiction to the fundamental principles of Protestantism that lay at the base of this system. Such was the era of the dominion of the initial, pure, strict, and exclusive Puritanism. With time, out of necessity this exclusive system had to yield in part to new incoming elements that brought with them the features of German freethinking and Romantic sentimentalism. This collision of opposite elements resulted in such an oscillation of forces that beneath the apparent general cover of Puritanism the actual center of religious consciousness was lost, and religious ferment began. Religious consciousness became fragmented, the people lacked one common guiding principle of faith, and relying solely on their own forces, gave themselves over to the search for religious truth. With the intensity of religious feeling, the ferment was strong; sects arose and disappeared, religious consciousness now intensified, now weakened. By force of inertia, the process of centrifugal development reached its highest point; sects not only fragmented into the smallest units but also became extremely intolerant of one another. Fine confessional polemics became the dominant mood of preaching and theological literature. This process reached its extreme development before the Civil War, when it at the same time found correspondence in the process of political decentralization. At that time the country presented a chaotic mixture of both religious and political opinions. When the process of political decentralization reached an extreme development followed by a crisis that gave opposite direction to the people’s political consciousness, this crisis was likewise a turning point in the people’s religious consciousness. The heavy blow of war shook the national organism to its very foundations, and a terrible abyss opened before the people’s consciousness—the abyss to which the process of decentralization had brought them. As if frightened by this abyss, the people’s consciousness abruptly turned in the opposite direction; a rapid process of centralization began. With such a reverse process of political consciousness, religious consciousness could not continue along its former direction. The crisis and the turning it produced penetrated so deeply into the inner life of the people that it exerted an irresistible effect on all national forces and gave them all a new direction. The idea of national unity began to strengthen in the people, and the political party representing the principles of decentralization increasingly began to fall. In religious matters, the new process made itself known in the fact that religious ferment began to weaken, religious consciousness, exhausted by fruitless searching for truth according to the principles of individualism, began to seek for itself a more firm and reliable support, and therefore small sects began to group themselves around larger communities.