A Historical Exception by Jim Kenaston

What is American Exceptionalism? We hear the phrase from time to time. Is it an idea that we should embrace?

One view of American Exceptionalism is that the writers of the Constitution sought to limit our government’s power over the governed. They attempted this through a system of checks and balances to avoid centralization of power. They looked to the British example from 1215 when King John signed the Magna Carta, a charter that protected the rights of English barons who challenged the “divine right of kings.” It may have meant nothing for the average citizen of 13th century England, but in time the Magna Carta would become an important symbol of liberty for all.

Likewise, though the United States Constitution meant nothing to slaves in America at the time of its signing, it pointed toward the need for change in their status. And it unquestionably limited political power under the control of cultural elites, breaking significantly from prevailing European norms of the time.

It was a historical exception. It is what many modern Americans think of when we hear the phrase American Exceptionalism.

Some Americans, however, understand American Exceptionalism in a less limited way. An alternative view looks back to John Winthrop and his 17th century conception of colonial America as a “city on a hill,” a bright light to other nations. This view seems to conflate the role of the church with that of civil government.

But if we merely understand American Exceptionalism as an experiment in limiting centralized power, we must recognize it has worked only to slow the growth of such power. As early as 1803, Thomas Jefferson expanded the country’s power base — and the federal government’s reach — with the Louisiana Purchase, through which the United States acquired from France all or part of what have now become 13 southern and midwestern states.

One could argue that if the land were for sale, it was bought from the wrong seller for the wrong reasons. The payment allowed Napoleon to pursue his campaigns throughout Europe while American Indian tribes got the short end of the stick. If our nation were a “city on a hill,” this and slavery are two examples in which our supposed moral light had been dark. And our system of limiting the power of centralized government proved to offer little light of its own.

The growth of our federal government and its power has led to mixed results. A positive result was the end of slavery, though at the cost of over 600,000 lives. We still wonder if there might have been a better way to resolve this problem of our collective past. Much later, a greatly strengthened central government, along with cultural change, led to the end of Jim Crow laws.

Meanwhile, on the negative side of our race relations, a strong central government has fostered unending entitlement programs that have created crippling dependence among the people our government elites have claimed to serve.

Nonetheless, our system of checks and balances has helped slow the accumulation of power in any one place. Even now, the inordinate expansion of entitlements, and government overreach in general, is kept at least somewhat in check by the system we inherited from our founders.

A third view of American Exceptionalism is one of nationalistic pride that has followed our nation’s growth and its successes, such as our contribution to the allied victory in World War II. We are, supposedly, an exceptional class of people on the world stage. This is an especially chauvinistic and nationalistic understanding of the term. If we learn anything from history, we should know that such pride precedes a fall.

A further corrective to this mindset, one of inordinate pride in ourselves, is offered by Jack Bamford, a teacher and preacher in Athens, Georgia, as part of a recent sermon. To quote him at length:

“In a culture that has made a mantra of the word identity, the people of God must resist the cultural pressure to think of ourselves and understand ourselves by any identity other than our identity in Christ. We are not more honored or more valuable because we are Americans, because we are white, or black, or brown, or some mixture of those things, because we are of European, Asian, African, or native-American heritage. We are not more worthy to the kingdom of Christ because we work in a profession or a trade, because we have a graduate degree, or an undergraduate degree, or a high school diploma, or a GED, or none of these. We are not more important because our income puts us in the target group for the president's new tax plan, or in a category that pays no taxes at all. We are not better in the kingdom of Christ because our kids go to public school, private school, or home school, or because we trace our religious roots back to John Calvin, John Knox, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Saint Augustine, or Billy Graham. That is not to say that we are anti-American or non-patriotic. We say the pledge, we stand for the national anthem, we respect the offices of the public officials who rule over us, and we obey our laws, but we understand that loyalty to the nation, where God has by His providence placed us, is always subordinate to our loyalty to the kingdom of Christ.”

Bamford’s sermon was based on Colossians 3:12, which reads, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”

This applies to all Christians, regardless of their nationality or system of government. American Exceptionalism? In the body of Christ, there are no exceptions, historical or otherwise.

[Articles by others here.]