11 'Is it the end of faith?' Greg Clarke at Melbourne Uni
11 'Does faith make sense?' Greg Clarke at Retro Cafe, Fitzroy
12 'Bash a Christian' Open Forum with Greg Clarke at Melbourne Uni
13 'Atheism & Belief: the difference Jesus makes' Greg Clarke in Melbourne
15 'Is Christianity the one true faith?' Greg Clarke debates Dan Barker at UOW
16 'Is the Bible an acceptable guide for morality?' Greg Clarke debates Dan Barker at UNSW
17 'Can you believe in God and Science?' Panel discussion in Melbourne
18 Philosophy in a Pub: 'Does God exist?'
Watch interview
Christianity and US Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective
Mike Thompson
I recently gave a talk on ‘Christianity and US Foreign Policy’ to
a group of city workers in Sydney. It was well attended - the level of
interest reflecting what we see in bookstores and in documentaries
around the world.
Had I been giving the talk on New Zealand or Danish
foreign policy, I suspect the audience may have been considerably
thinner. So what is it about the USA that generates such interest?
Perhaps it’s that in looking at the US we are looking at the largest
concentration of wealth, might, and power of any state in the history
of the world. Perhaps it’s because we see the USA and its relationship
to the world in a moment of flux; a time in which the rules are being
re-invented.
our mistake can be to view the US too
cynically; or we engage in no critical
reflection at all.
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.