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Christianity and US Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective Mike Thompson
But I suspect it has something to do, also, with Christianity. Religion is back in the public square with a vengeance. We sense there is some relationship there between Christianity and US foreign policy. We are familiar with seeing President Bush quote scripture in front of the Statue of Liberty, familiar with his talk of evildoers and lessons on light and darkness; and we are vaguely aware of the political power of a mobilized and evangelical middle-America, to whom the call to vote Republican seems like a tenet of faith (at least since Reagan). So what makes American foreign policy interesting for us is perhaps the convergence of these two factors—the extraordinary military, economic, and strategic pre-eminence of the US, and the rise of an explicitly religious political discourse behind it. These have converged in such a way to produce what I think is a mixture of bemusement and fear on the part of Australians. On one hand, we might find ourselves tempted to be a bit cynical toward the US. Australian political culture has little time for people claiming to be the light of mankind; we want our foreign policy justified in the name of ‘national interest,’ not some vague idea about the remaking of the world. It’s a little too convenient, we might say, to go and fight for ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, just down the road from multi-billion dollar oilfields. We might find ourselves saying ‘this religion thing must just be a cover for something else: what they are really after is just more money, oil, and power.’ On the other hand, it is tempting to find ourselves at times, uncritically swallowing the American vision of the world: we hope for the gradual unfolding and progress of liberal democratic capitalism, for the protection of individual ‘freedoms’ and ‘rights’; and hail the sacralization of consumer choice and individual taste. Moreover, we, children of the baby-boomer generation, have basically learnt to talk, walk, think, reason, and relate against the backdrop of a common repertoire of symbols, archetypes and stories. We learn the art of politics, the art of humor, the art of flirting, dating, divorce and marriage to a Hollywood soundtrack. Yet it’s deeper than popular culture. Our own national security has been inextricably tied to that of the USA since the Second World War, and the subsequent formation of the ANZUS relationship. And it goes beyond mere military cooperation, in the way that we cooperate with say Japan, Germany, or Holland: no, there is a sense in which our own national story and moral identity has become bound up with America’s through conflict, through war, through an articulation, marked with blood, of common values, and common heritage. So if on the one hand, our mistake can be to view the US too cynically; on the other hand, it can be that we engage in no critical reflection at all. In offering an historical perspective, I’m not intending to offer you a story or a chronology, but rather an analysis of some of the main ways in which Christians have thought about foreign affairs in American history. A series of paradigms, if you will. There are three of them: 1) American exceptionalism 2) American Protestant fundamentalism 3) Christian pacifism And then fourthly, I will suggest the contours of a paradigm that doesn’t actually exist, but one that I wish did—a wish-list, if you like. Click here for a print friendly version of this page |
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