Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Sunday, October 17, 2021

De Tocqueville on religion in America: warnings?

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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