In The 50 Most Influential Religious Figures in American History , Joe Carter mentions G. K. Chesterton’s famous description of America as “a nation with the soul of a church. Readers may be interested in the context in which he wrote that.
The famous phrase appears at the end of the first chapter of his What I Saw in America , published in 1922 (the year he became a Catholic). He begins with the story of applying for a visa to come to America and being asked on a form “Are you an anarchist?”, pointing out that a real anarchist wouldn’t admit it. (He adds that in response to another question, “Are you in favour of subverting the government of the United States by force?”, he wanted to write, “I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.”)
He then goes on to reflect on what this kind of thing — asking questions England never thought to ask — says about America, eventually claiming, as “a compliment,” that “the American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.”
America has a creed as the early Church had a creed, which could include all men but excluded a lot of beliefs. America’s creed does that as well. The “great American experiment . . . of a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot,” he continued,
But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship. Only, so far as its primary ideal is concerned, its exclusiveness is religious because it is not racial. The missionary can condemn a cannibal, precisely because he cannot condemn a Sandwich Islander. And in something of the same spirit the American may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.
Other countries weren’t founded on a creed. English forms didn’t ask questions about anarchism because
we have never attempted to have any of that philosophy in England. And, above all, because we have the enormous advantage of feeling it natural to be national, because there is nothing else to be . . . . England is English as France is French or Ireland Irish; the great mass of men taking certain national traditions for granted. Now this gives us a totally different and a very much easier task. We have not got an inquisition, because we have not got a creed; but it is arguable that we do not need a creed, because we have got a character. In any of the old nations the national unity is preserved by the national type. Because we have a type we do not need to have a test.”
Then comes the famous line:
Now I am very far from intending to imply that these American tests are good tests, or that there is no danger of tyranny becoming the temptation of America . . . . Nor do I say that they apply consistently this conception of a nation with the soul of a church, protected by religious and not racial selection. If they did apply that principle consistently, they would have to exclude pessimists and rich cynics who deny the democratic ideal; an excellent thing but a rather improbable one. What I say is that when we realise that this principle exists at all, we see the whole position in a totally different perspective. We say that the Americans are doing something heroic, or doing something insane, or doing it in an unworkable or unworthy fashion, instead of simply wondering what the devil they are doing.
