Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 13

LEO STRAUSS AND THE AMERICAN POLITICAL RELIGION

was modified by the Committee on Style of
the Continental Congress, some Straussian-
influenced scholars treat the Engrossed Copy
as if it had not gone through an important
process of editing from which we can learn
much. The Committee on Style, in fact,
"caught" most of Jefferson's Enlightenment
notions and softened them so as not to offend
the dominant Christian culture of colonial
Americans in 1776. Nevertheless, despite
that evidence, these interpreters of the Dec-
laration pursue an argument that takes them
from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln
and promotes a redemptive purpose of the
American regime.
The Constitution of the United States,
not the Declaration, however, is the govern-
ing document of the American regime and,
before the Constitution was ratified, an
unwritten constitution had developed over
more than 180 years. The American colonies,
collectively and independently, contributed
to the development of a unified consciousness
of America's uniqueness and, ultimately, its
difference and separateness from the mother
country. Although that culture was shaped
by waves of emigration from England, the
colonies' principal motivation was religious
estrangement from the British establishment.
That ensured that the experience of Christian
religion and faith would be a permanent
aspect of the American political order. Ulti-
mately, that spirit led to resistance to both the
king's and Parliament's claim of the power to
rule the colonies without their consent.
One hundred and eighty years of colonial
history, the experience of freedom, the vast-
ness of the American continent, and the
practices of varieties of Christian religion
developed into an unwritten constitution
and culture of folkways that erupted in
a rebellion. That unwritten constitution
became "ensouled" in the "Spirit of '76,"
defined our War of Independence, and, ulti-

mately, determined the framing of the Con-
stitution of the Unites States. The imposition
of a redemptive mission upon that historical
record was a later, ideological development
of humanist intellectuals influenced by
European nationalist uprisings of the 1840s,
liberal Unitarianism, and German ideal-
ism transported to the United States in the
form of American transcendentalism.20 That
"prophetic-utopian" interpretation of the
Declaration is, quite simply, based on ideol-
ogy, not historical evidence.
The heroic efforts of citizen soldiers and
the leadership of George Washington and
his generals are worthy of any country in
world history. Lexington, Concord, Bunker
Hill, Quebec, White Plains, Brandywine,
Saratoga, Monmouth, Valley Forge, Tren-
ton, and, finally, Yorktown resound with the
cries of men willing to sacrifice everything.
Few, if any, examples in the histories of this
struggle and the earlier colonial era, cap-
tured by some of America's finest historians,
support a reductive, Enlightenment interpre-
tation of the War of Independence.21

T

here was, frankly, much more going on
before the first shots were fired at Lex-
ington and Concord than the sound of the
turning of pages of Locke's Second Treatise.
American colonists' growing comprehension
of their existence "apart from" their relation-
ship with England gradually increased as
the American continent grew in territory,
wealth, and self-sufficiency. The historian
Fred Thompson's study of the French and
Indian War also suggests that the American
rebellion, like many rebellions, was inspired
by pride and resentment at the manner the
American "colonials" were treated by what
now were seen as "the British." Many "colo-
nials" who fought alongside the British against
the French walked away from that experience
having decided never again to fight as allies.
13
Modern Age - Fall 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Fall 2014
