A Destiny Made Manifest:

John Calvin's Notion of Providence in the American Nation, 1620-

1865

Rachel Hekman

Professor McDonald

REL343

December 2012

The idea of America's Christian heritage has become

increasingly controversial in recent years. While the Founding

Fathers did not integrate an explicitly Christian worldview into

the Constitution and government, of course, there is little

public appreciation (or even recognition) of the impact that

Calvinism and its adherents had on the development of the

American psyche. Indeed, American culture comes from a place

steeped in the rhetoric of Reformed Christianity. The first

permanent settlers of North America were John Calvin's

ideological descendants; fittingly, then, the longest-lasting

impact they had on American history was their conception of their

settlements in the New World as being providential "Cit[ies] on a

Hill," an idea first publicly articulated by Puritan John

Winthrop in 1630.1 This seemingly simplistic bit of Reformation-1 John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity," The Religious Freedom Page at University of Virginia, http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/charity.html (accessed 4 May 2013).

1

era theology quickly leaked from the small Calvinist enclaves of

New England and made its way to the untamed wildernesses of the

Old West before the end of the 1830s, deeply influencing the

formation of a Christian theology that was uniquely American.

In this paper, I will illustrate how a minor deviation from

John Calvin's original doctrine of providence led to the all-

encompassing and deeply pervasive idea of American

exceptionalism. Not only did the Puritan notion that God had

ordained their settlements in America influence the growth of the

nation, but it also led to the development of a national optimism

and distinctively providential way of viewing its role in the

world.

I will also explain throughout how such an optimistic

"republican Christianity" led to a breakdown of orthodox

Christian theology. By the mid-nineteenth century, John Calvin's

original conception of the doctrine providence had become so

warped by the crucible of American culture that it ceased to make

much theological sense.

Finally, I will briefly discuss how the Civil War in the

mid-nineteenth century was the pivotal point in the evolution of

2

American civil religion, changing the course of both our

understanding of providence and of western theological history:

during the course of the war, the carefully-balanced construction

of American providence collapsed on itself and proved the war to

be the tipping point not only of government and society, but of

theology and culture.

Any discussion of the Reformed view of providence is

incomplete without a brief explanation of John Calvin's doctrine.

His development of the idea of providence is inseparably entwined

with his conception of God as Creator:

Having found him Creator of all […] [We should]

conclude he is also everlasting Governor and Preserver—

not only in that he drives the celestial frame as well

as its several parts by a universal motion, but also in

that he sustains, nourishes, and cares for, everything

he has made, even to the last sparrow. […All of

history] strives to the end that God may reveal his […]

vigilance in ruling the church, which he deigns to

watch more closely 2

2 John Calvin, "Institutes of the Christian Religion," Vol. I, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960),

3

In other words, having established that God is the "creator of

all," Calvin asserts that, logically, the same God who carefully

designed the universe is also maintaining it. Therefore, "all

events are governed by [his] secret plan."3 Calvin cannot stress

this point enough: in fact, he repeats it several times.4 God's

providence does not encompass inhuman creation alone, however; it

applies particularly to mankind, and this special plan is

"adapted to a definite and proper end."5

The ramifications of this view of God are far-reaching. Note

here that Calvin makes it a point to assert that God has an even

more specific plan for the church; that is, the body of

believers. The ramifications of this view are far-reaching.

Calvin sets the foundation for exceptionalism at large in this

passage: though he was referring specifically to believers, not

to geo-political nations, Calvin allows that God's providence

makes special allowances for and is directed toward a limited group

of people. This point is essential to understanding the evolution

of American Christianity: Calvin asserted that God, while

197-198. 3 Ibid., 199.4 Ibid., 202, 203, 204, 207, etc.5 Ibid., 207.

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directing the fortunes of mankind, "deigns to watch the church

more closely" and that the existence of a divine providence "must

be considered with regard to the future as well as to the past." 6

A century later, the Calvinist early settlers of the

American continent understood their lives in providential terms.

"To these men God directed their history, shaped their daily

lives, and would guide their future," just as Calvin elaborated.7

The idea of providence flowed through these pre-colonial Puritan

New England settlements like lifeblood, brought to the western

hemisphere by English Separatists seeking a safe place to develop

their unique vision of Christendom. As ideological descendants of

Calvin, they saw God as all-encompassingly sovereign, exercising

sole authority not only over the process of salvation and

sanctification, but also "over the world as a whole."8 Since the

whole world is under God's jurisdiction, then, human institutions

(seen largely as depraved by Arminians) were open to Christian

6 Ibid., 198, 210, emphasis mine.7 Berens, Providence and Patriotism in Early America 1640-1815 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 14.8 Mark Noll, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 35.

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influence. "The Reformed of every rank in society were expected

to function as theologians."9

Growing directly out of this orthodox conviction of the

subordination of all things under God was the Puritans' somewhat

more unique contribution to western Christianity. As vicegerents

of Christ on earth, the "Puritan community had a special task or

mission assigned it by God."10 Namely, the Puritans had the

responsibility to not only bring witness of Christ's work to the

sinners around them (at this point, the Native Americans), but to

effect the earthly kingdom of God, another Christian belief that,

while Protestant, sprang from Augustine more than Calvin. From

this conviction grew the idea of the "City on a Hill." Not only

had God brought them to a unique geographic location, but he had

given them the unprecedented freedom to become active

participants in the enacting of His will: as a devotional

response and part of their duty as the elect, the Puritans would

develop a community and government so attuned to God and His will

that it would become a paragon of Christian society. The systems

9 Ibid.10 Berens, Providence and Patriotism, 14.

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they set up, then, were largely theocratic, designed not to reach

out to sinners, but to keep them out.

The Puritans' eschatological vision of their new society as

a "City on a Hill" was an essential part of their theology, which

clearly was developing in a different direction than John

Calvin's. While Calvin indicates that church and state should be

in tune with each other and that magistrates should be aware of

their subordination to God, not once does he advocate for what

would have been considered a theocracy in the sixteenth century:

a society dictated completely by the Christian church.11 Still,

the Puritans saw themselves as the Gentile elect, grafted onto

the tree of Israel; the "new Israel." Scott Berens observes that

the Puritans interpreted the Old Testament typographically,

reading Messianic and covenantal meaning out of "the patriarchs

and prophets"; just as God had led the Israelites out of Egypt,

so he had led the pilgrims out of England.12 This understanding

of reality solidified their faith in the providential work of God

and their role as his new chosen people, but most importantly it 11 John Calvin, "Institutes of the Christian Religion," Vol. II, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 1487, 1490.12 Ibid., 16.

7

heightened their expectations of the future: just as God had led

the Israelites to the Promised Land and brought them to

greatness, so God had brought the Puritans to the New World and

would make their society a mighty one. Even at the end of the

seventeenth century, when most of the first pilgrims had died,

their descendants looked back on the original settlements as a

kind of "golden age," the ideal they should be striving for.13

Interestingly enough, though, in their zeal to act out their

Calvinist faith, the Puritans made a crucial divergence from

Calvinism. While they insisted that God's will be done, their

emphasis was that God's rule "should encompass everything," not

that it does.14 Critically, they reassigned agency from God to

elect and focused on the unfinished, rather than on the reality.

In Calvin's understanding, the role of the Christian is to

confess that God has sovereign dominion over everything; in the

Puritans' understanding, the role of the Christian is to bring

about this sovereign dominion. This belief meant an even more

activist position with regard to social and political reform than

Calvin himself had advocated.13 Ibid., 17-18.14 Noll, America's God, 35.

8

Most important, however, was the idea of a "new Israel."

This idea of providence as a Judeo-Christian God distinctly

favoring Anglo-Saxon America endured long after the end of the

seventeenth century. After 1740, the "theology of covenant" was

no longer property of New England theologians who had developed

the worldview, but it "became the glue that held the colonies

together," due to the unifying nature of the Great Awakening.15

As I alluded to above, the story of New England's bold stroke for

religious freedom "became the official story of America's

origins. The lack of an ancient history with its accompanying

myths forced Americans to scrutinize their recent past for

evidence of an emerging story."16 The driving need for an

overarching narrative coupled with a deep sense of religious

pluralism led to the inevitable linkage of faith and freedom in

the development of an American colonial identity. Soon,

"providence turned into patriotism as the cause of liberty became

identified with the cause of God."17

15 Stephen H. Webb, American Providence: A Nation with a Mission. (New York: Continuum, 2004), 33.

16 Ibid.17 Ibid.

9

The idealization of America had already become a prominent

feature of colonial society by the start of the Revolutionary

War. Though it was quickly on its way to evolving into a concept

of providence completely different than John Calvin's own, this

tendency towards the glorification of society was temporarily

held in check by "the jeremiad tradition," which reminded its

more theologically astute congregations of the duties and

temptations of election.18 Stephen H. Webb sees this movement—one

of fire and brimstone—as a major contributor to the "religious

calm" that existed during and directly after the formation of the

United States as a nation; the continent was "caught between

revivalistic storms."19

It was in the early nineteenth century, the United States

after the Second Great Awakening, in which the most troublesome

aberration from John Calvin's notion of trust in a sovereign God

took shape. Now informed by Enlightenment confidence in human

reason and ability, Americans combined their "religious

conviction" with "widespread self-confidence. The result was a

18 Ibid., 34.19 Ibid.

10

flourishing of providential reasoning."20 In other words, not

only did God have an end to which he was directing the world, but

also Americans had the ability to see clearly what that end was:

and it was American supremacy. In the 1820s,

America reinvented Calvinism by connecting providence

to an optimistic expectation of whether the

Constitution was written to expedite the spread of

Christianity. […] Augustine had drawn a fine but

straight line between the City of God and the City of

Man, and Calvin, who was no fan of apocalypticism,

traced this line in his own interpretation of

predestination, but Americans smudged that line with

abandon.21

The line was smudged in the name of Manifest Destiny. Coined in

the 1830s by literary critic John L. O'Sullivan, the label

described "the belief that God had revealed that it was his will

for the United States to spread across all of North America."22

20 Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 75.21 Webb, American Providence, 36.22 Adam Gomez, "Deus Vult: John L. O’Sullivan, Manifest Destiny, and American Democratic Messianism," American Political Thought, Vol

11

The Puritan tendency to emphasize the work of the elect in

accomplishing God's will was completed; the American tendency to

replace Christianity with civil religion was at its peak. Just as

God had brought the pilgrims to New England, so God had given the

United States the continent of North America: so, under the

banner of Manifest Destiny, Americans had every excuse to conquer

the continent and, by extension, its inhabitants. It was no

accident that painters and politicians alike described (and

justified) the winning of the West in crusade rhetoric, pitting

white Protestant settlers against dark-skinned savages in a

contest of culture and religion.23 Assured of their success as

God's chosen nation, adherents to the American civil religion

consequentially expanded into the west not merely out of economic

and political need, but largely out of a sense of divine

entitlement.

Clearly this bastardization of providence was a far cry from

John Calvin's original, Protestant, intent. Providence is a

humbling doctrine of comfort and reassurance, a source of quiet

1.2, 236-262.23 For an excellent discussion of race and religion in early nineteenth century painting, see Matthew Baigell's article "Territory, Race, Religion: Images of Manifest Destiny."

12

strength for the elect: but nineteenth century "neo-

providentialists" had given it a Roman Catholic imperialist

shape, ironically one very similar to that which they had fought

so hard to free themselves from not fifty years earlier. The West

was expansive and open, but the precious commodity of space was

immediately exclusivized, barring Americans of certain creeds and

races from taking advantage of it. Already, God's "chosen people"

were committing Calvin's cardinal sin, deciding who the "elect"

were and weren't: and they most assuredly were not African.

By the 1850s, the fault lines were showing: "the issue of

slavery had already unraveled the evangelical family by sundering

the Methodists and Baptists along sectional lines."24 Historian

of Christianity Mark Noll notes that the prevailing Christian

hermeneutic of the generations just prior to the Civil War was

that of literalism; the crucially individualistic nature of the

American people led to a culture of hermeneutical

antitraditionalism that would have alarmed John Calvin: "What

Scripture meant was exactly what it said."25 Consequentially,

24 David Goldfield, America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 6.25 Noll, America's God, 379-381.

13

American theology, now directed by lay literalist interpretations

of the Bible, was completely unable to satisfactorily address

"the reality of black chattel slavery."26 The faith that informed

the nation seemed to condone slavery; the republican ideals that

the nation had embraced did not. The stage was set for the

theological crisis that was the Civil War.

The earlier sectional split in Christian denominations led

(only somewhat indirectly) to the split in American politics that

sundered the nation in 1860. This disunity was the natural

consequence of blurring the line between religious and national

identities as the Americans had done: religion was the glue that

held society together, and it had begun to dissolve between North

and South decades before Fort Sumter.

By no means did secession break the link, however: rather,

Americans on both sides of the sectional divide retained their

religious rhetorical and ideological manner of understanding

society. Southerners in particular embraced the idea of

exceptionalism. A prominent southern religious editor, merely

echoing the sentiments heard from many pulpits, wrote:

26 Ibid., 385.

14

It is not often in the history of the world that such

great criseses [sic], involving the very fundamental

elements of truth, conscience, and manhood, are allowed

by Divine Providence to occur […] Such was the position

of the Hebrew nation in the midst of the Gentile world;

such was the position of the martyr church of Christ

[…] Such is our position now.27

Others insisted that it was clear that God's providential plan

included the existence of two American nations.28

Having grown out of the same Puritan origins, the North and

the South continued to utilize the rhetoric of providence in

discussing the war. Northern Protestants saw it as "God's

judgment against a nation that had turned its back on its divine

origins" and took steps to reintroduce Christianity into Unionist

government; Southern Baptists emphasized their loyalty to the

Confederacy rather than their loyalty to Christianity, seeing the

two as largely interchangeable.29 On both sides, "theologians

turned instinctively to God as the one who would decide the 27 C.C. Gillespie, cited in Lambert, Religion in American Politics: A Short History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 71.28 Lambert, Religion in American Politics, 72.29 Ibid., 72-73.

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outcome."30 Northern Presbyterians saw the war as God's judgment

against a nation that had turned its back on its divine origins,

and they accordingly took steps to reintroduce Christianity into

the Union government by inserting explicit references to God and

Christ in the Constitution. On the other hand, Southern Baptists

emphasized their loyalty to the Confederacy rather than their

loyalty to Christianity, seeing the two as largely

interchangeable.

Critically, these theologians, informed as it were by the

lay methods of Biblical interpretation, almost unanimously

applied their own political lens to Scripture, attempting to

wrestle providence into spaces suitable for their own purposes.

The result was a loud insistence on both sides that they were not

only in the right, but that God would vindicate them in the end.

In its first years, Northerners saw God chastening them

for their disobedience when the armies of Burnside,

McClellan, Hooker, and Mead faltered; Southerners saw

the hand of God mighty to save in the exploits of Lee

and Jackson. After Grant took command of the Army of

30 Noll, The Civil War, 75.

16

the Potomac, God's designs changed, and now it was the

South that endured his cleansing wrath and the North

that received the smiles of providence.31

Interestingly, Abraham Lincoln demonstrated a firmer grasp

on the complexities of divine providence, and therefore

understanding Calvin's finer points, than most of his

contemporaries. In late 1862, when God's favor had apparently

abandoned the North (the Army of the Potomac had not yet won its

narrow victory at Antietam that September), Lincoln wrote a

"Meditation on the Divine Will," which he never intended to show

to anyone. Mark Noll describes it as "the most remarkable

theological commentary of the war," and it is worth quoting at

some length:

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party

claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both

may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and

against the same thing at the same time. In the present

civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is

something different from the purpose of either party—

31 Noll, America's God, 425.

17

and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as

they do, are of the best adaptation to effect his

purpose. […] He could have either saved or destroyed the

Union without a human contest. And yet the contest

began. And having begun He could give the final victory

to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.32

It is clear that the mournful reflection of this meditation in

1862 led to Lincoln's hopeful, yet eminently humble, Second

Inaugural Address in 1865. "Both [sides] read the same Bible and

pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

[…] The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither

has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."33

The Civil War marked the beginning of the end of the idea of

American providential exceptionalism. The Union's victory was a

bittersweet one, as Lincoln predicted in his Second Inaugural;

both sides had failed at bringing about God's kingdom on earth

through the American way. Suddenly, Christians and adherents to

the civil religion alike were faced with the possibility that the32 Abraham Lincoln, cited in Noll, American God, 431.33 Abraham Lincoln, "Second Inaugural Address" (speech, Washington, D.C., March 4, 1865), Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov.

18

United States might not be God's chosen people after all.

Furthermore, the work of providence appeared to be more elusive

than previously thought, "obscure, difficult to fathom, hedged in

by contingencies, or otherwise not open to immediate

understanding and manipulation."34 Though Lincoln's

contemporaries largely continued to adhere to their "thin, simple

view of God's providence and a morally juvenile view of the

nation and its fate," the first seeds of doubt had been

planted.35

"Perhaps as a result [of the war], it became easier for the

great majority of Americans who retained traditional beliefs to

view religion as a personal matter rather than claim its

effectiveness in […] the marketplace of ideas."36 As close as it

could be, this general shift of exhausted theology moved closer

to John Calvin's original intent: Lincoln indicated a good

balance between faith in the effectiveness of God's providence

and a thoughtful agnosticism about the details of his workings.

34 Noll, American God, 431.35 Ibid., 434.36 Noll, The Civil War, 93.

19

Therefore no one will weigh God's providence properly

and profitably but him who considers that his business

is with his Maker and the Framer of the universe, and

with becoming humility submits himself to fear and

reverence.37

But the failure of providentialist Protestantism in such a

public arena spelled the end of civil theology's effectiveness.

While Reconstruction saw a deflation of providential thinking

closer to the level of John Calvin's original doctrine, civil and

political morality took its place. This shift in itself was the

death knell for Puritan Calvinist influence on American culture:

Protestantism remained divided along sectional lines (in large

part, it still does), and the majority of social reforms in the

postbellum years were accomplished by democracy. Likewise, with

providentialist and covenantalist Reformed Christianity fallen

from favor, the stage was set for another dominant form of

Protestant Christian thinking to rise to popular acceptance:

dispensationalism, which led to the rise of modern

fundamentalism.

37 Calvin, "Institutes," 212.

20

We have seen how a minor but crucial deviation from John

Calvin's original doctrine of providence justified an all-

encompassing and deeply pervasive American worldview of

exceptionalism; how such an optimistic "republican Christianity"

led to the breakdown of orthodox Christian theology; and how the

Civil War in the mid-nineteenth century was the pivotal point in

the evolution of American civil religion. Put briefly, the

doctrine of providence led to the secularization of American

politics and culture. Providential thinking, though it had deeply

influenced the development of the nation in various bastardized

forms, fell by the wayside; today, the word "providence" is used

flippantly as a synonym for "chance, "fate," or even "God." The

Puritans, in setting a firm Christian foundation for a powerful

nation-state, also built into it the means by which Christianity

was stripped from that very nation. However, remnants of it still

remain. The idea of American exceptionalism is deeply engrained

in the minds of Americans of all religions, and some Christian

denominations still teach that God heaps favor and blessings on

the United States.

21

American patriots [profess] a national faith in their

country's unique importance, destiny, and mission. The

sanctification of American nationalism in the years

after 1789 was one guarantee that even in secular times

American nationalism would constitute a virtual

religion.38

The doctrine of providence itself, however, is now only a

Christian, and largely Reformed, idea. "In fact, one of the great

projects of modern theology has been the problem of figuring out

how to defend human freedom by limiting the power of God."39

Attempts to integrate religion and government are met with wrath

and lawsuits, and the unity that Christianity had in the

antebellum years is a thing of the past, with evangelicals as

divided over cultural and political issues as non-Christians. The

memory of government and religious conviction working in such

close quarters as it did prior to the Civil War is a distant one;

however, the lessons to be learned from it are vast and

encompassing, and we would do well to remember it.

Bibliography38 Berens, Providence and Patriotism, 6.39 Webb, American Providence, 9.

22

Baigell, Matthew. "Territory, Race, Religion: Images of Manifest

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T. McNeill. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960.

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Goldfield, David. America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation. New

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Gomez, Adam. "Deus Vult: John L. O’Sullivan, Manifest Destiny,

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23

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