Americans do not display a crude indifference to the afterlife nor a childish pride in scorning perils they hope to avoid.
Therefore, they practice their religion without
shame or weakness but one generally observes at the heart of their zeal
something so calm, so methodical, and so calculated that the head rather than
the heart leads them to the foot of the altar.
Not only does self-interest guide the religion
of the Americans but they often place their interest in following it in this
world. In the Middle Ages priests spoke
only of the afterlife, hardly bothering to prove that a sincere Christian might
be happy here below.
But American preachers return constantly to this
world and have some difficulty in detaching their gaze from it. So as to touch their listeners more
profoundly, they show them every day how religious belief is beneficial to
freedom and public order. It is often
hard to know from listening to them whether the main intention of religion is
to obtain everlasting joy in the next world or prosperity in this.[1]
De
Tocqueville, Democracy in America,
Vol. II (1840)
[1]
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, tr. Gerald E.
Bevan (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), p. 615 [Volume II, Part 2, ch. 9]. See also Lucien Jaume, Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty, tr. Arthur
Goldhammer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). p. 134.
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