God Bless America
Do Americans tip so generously because of Augustine and Luther? How Puritan theology continues to breed belief in abundance and prosperity.
The Otium Den crosses the Atlantic for the fourth July weekend, with a brief (but relevant, I hope) detour through the Roman Empire and Protestant Reformation.
I use the title God Bless America not just as a paean to the country but also to look at America’s religious foundations.
It manifests today in the slightly woo-woo term of an abundance mentality, an outlook that focuses on possibility and rejects zero-sum thinking. Others’ success doesn’t jeopardise my own.
Pelagius vs Augustine
I need to borrow from Tom Holland’s thesis about Christianity’s enduring influence (that, even subsconsciously, it still guides our values) to argue that it all stems from Puritan beginnings. He was kind enough to recommend a few books (not just his own) on early Christianity. One of these was Peter Brown’s Through the Eye of a Needle, looking at nascent attitudes to wealth.
Brown focuses on the dispute between Pelagius and Augustine in the early fifth century. The British monk Pelagius travelled to Rome as a Jeremy Corbyn-eque figure. He wanted the rich to renounce their wealth. And like Corbyn, he had a lot of high-status followers. They gave up their wealth in a showy fashion, wearing plain rags to emphasise their new-found poverty. (Yet they were suspiciously still able to draw on resources to stay mobile and put on ostentatious displays of generous giving). Meanwhile Augustine was more Peter Mandelson in his approach. “Get rid of pride, and riches will do no harm”, he said. Mean, egotistical attitudes were the problem, rather than money itself.
Pelagius’ outlook is more attractive at first. He emphasises free will and Christians’ ability to live a heavenly life on earth. Augustine, by contrast, is pretty dour. His worldview is coloured by Original Sin. The Fall of Adam and Eve makes humanity irredeemable. It’s quite cynical - “this is pretty shit but let’s make the best of it” (not a direct quote).
It’s counter-intuitive that Augustine’s mentality is behind the sunny can-do optimism of America today. But his sense of separation from God and, therefore rejection of utopian ideals, speaks to a certain divine mysticism. Riches aren’t condemned because their origin is opaque. There is no Pelagian free will to make human action, and avarice, central to accumulation. Fallen people cannot detect a rational order in this world and must instead trust in God’s unknowable providence.
Puritan Persistence
Augustine was loved by Protestant Reformation leaders Jean Calvin and Martin Luther. They, in turn, were great influences on the English Puritans who fled to modern-day Massuchusetts.
These Puritans were all about grace. In a world without free will, one is utterly dependent on first receiving this gift from God. It reclaimed the radical nature of Christianity from the paganism they believed had infiltrated Catholicism in perceived practices of reciprocal exchange (because I do this, God loves me more). This line from John Newton’s famous hymn Amazing Grace encapsulates the Puritan view:
The Lord hath promised good to me.
God’s grace is unilateral and unearned. One is not chosen because he or she is faithful, but faith is itself evidence of God’s choosing. Moral transformations - in Newton’s case, this was a volte face from slave ship captain to leading abolitionist - are fruits of this grace.
Protestant Work Ethic
Sociologists have long debated why this theology tends towards a more capitalist outlook. Max Weber’s famous Protestant Work Ethic argues it is twofold:
Hard work negates neurosis.
Protestants aren’t universalists. God’s grace is only given to his elect. Rather than indulge in this existential angst - am I one of the chosen ones? - best to crack on and distract oneself with hard work
Riches as evidence.
Material prosperity is the best evidence we can see for grace in our limited fallen capacity.
Wealth as a Gift
Early Puritans ran with the second but with a sense of wealth as a gift. It wasn’t, “great, I’m rich. God loves me.” Rather, it’s about wearing wealth lightly because it’s not truly mine. Challenging gospel passages on wealth (e.g. Mark’s sell everything you have and give to the poor) are interpreted in attitudinal terms. The bad rich man is one who focuses on money itself, rather than seeing it as a by-product of living with God’s grace. Wealth, then, is not an extractive or zero-sum game, but a manifestation of divine abundance.
This Puritan theology is evident in the common presidential sign-off, God Bless America. It reflects a deep cultural belief in divine favour, a clear inheritance from the idea that the nation itself is part of God’s providential design. God wishes America prosperity.
Tipping, bankruptcy, philanthropy
Attitudes to that prosperity should reflect God’s own benevolence. And a spirit of abundance persists in America today because of its origin story. Even as the country grows less overtly religious, secular practices reflect its founding narrative:
Tipping culture
Visitors are often aghast when expected to tip 20 to 25 percent on top of any service bill. But Americans embrace this pay it forward mentality.
Bankruptcy
America’s laws are lenient because it’s not viewed as a moral failing. It’s a nod to a spirit of forgiveness and new beginnings. Several of President Trump’s businesses have declared bankruptcy at no detriment to his popularity. It’s a stark contrast to the social stigma elsewhere. For Americans, wealth is easy come, easy go and they love a riches to rags to riches story. It all feeds into the great tradition of American risk taking and innovation.
Philanthropy
Generous benefactors are preferred over government redistribution. Tax-and-spend implies scarcity. Charity implies surplus and gifts of the spirit.
The American Dream
America’s founding story matters. I heard former US Ambassador Anthony Gardner talking about America-China competition in Singapore several years ago. He argued China’s attempts to win influence through infrastructure and loans (The Belt and Road Initiative) would fall short against America’s more ethereal ability to “make people dream.” That dream is rooted in the country’s early theology. A sense that with God, all things are possible.
God Bless America also implies resilience. It stems from that cynicism, which we first note in Augustine. It breeds stoicism. Bad things happen in a fallen world. But these can be positively reinterpreted through the mysticism of God’s providence. That’s how America’s can-do attitude survives setbacks. Things are messy but I trust God to guide me through. The country refuses to internalise a narrative of decline.
Pelagians are more prone to solipsistic frustration - I want this, I have free will, why haven’t I got it? It must be the fault of someone else. What first appears as the more optimistic vision - The only stopping you is you! - turns into a blame game. You see it in the DEI beliefs that focus on human-engineered injustice at the expense of meritocracy. If we can just right these wrongs, everything will be better. It’s why cynical conservatives tend to be better humoured than sanctimonious socialists seeking out a guilty party for the ills of the world.
Correlation or Causation
I’m aware of the causal fallacy risk here. In the early years of Christian Rome, its bishop Damasus suggested to the pagan high priest Praetextatus that he should convert to Christianity. “Make me bishop of Rome, and I will instantly become a Christian,” Praetextatus replied. It’s easy to preach from a position of privilege, enjoying all the benefits of one’s belief system. If I live in the richest country on earth, I’m more likely to have a relaxed attitude about money - to see it as abundant.
But that views America’s rise as inevitable, that other material factors of geography and resources would always drive it to such success. If that’s the case, why didn’t other settler nations - e.g. Argentina, Australia, Canada - also blessed with size and resources, but without the same radical Puritan outlook, prosper in the same manner?
Complacency
Perhaps more pertinent is the question of whether the same attitude that drives America’s success could also be its undoing. Is the growing federal debt also a product of an easy come, easy go attitude to wealth? As abundance persists in the appetite for US Treasuries, few sound the alarm that America is living beyond its means. America has already been burnt on an individual level in the Great Financial Crisis, where people borrowed on the assumption of perpetual growth.
Belief in abundance can breed complacency. In its limitlessness, it threatens to ignore trade-offs. Just a decade after Augustine’s death in Hippo (modern day Algeria), Germanic Vandals captured nearby Carthage and ended Roman rule in his North African homeland. That empire believed it was eternal until it wasn’t.
But it’s a lot healthier than stewing on everything that is wrong. Puritan beliefs are the foundation of American exceptionalism that fuel its optimism, resilience and culture of risk-taking. God Bless America remains a powerful cultural force.