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Response to William A. Clebsch, “;America's ‘Mythique’ as Redeemer Nation”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Sacvan Bercovitch
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Extract

Whether or not we can look forward to a humble America, William Clebsch has done a splendid job of subduing the American mythique. And has subdued it, appropriately, by dividing it into four parts, a strategy that not only improves upon Caesar but evokes the prophet Daniel. It's the right blend for the occasion: secular and spiritual progress entwined, empire wedded to apocalypse. Except, of course, that we end up in the realm of irony and common sense, a most un-American millennium. And isn't an un-American millennium, like a humble America, a contradiction in terms?

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 4 , October 1979 , pp. 95 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

NOTES

1. Mather, Cotton, Theopolis Americana (Boston, 1710), pp. 43–44Google Scholar; Sherwood, Samuel, The Church's Flight into the Wilderness (New York, 1776), p. 22Google Scholar; Austin, David, The Millennium (Elizabeth-town, N. J., 1794), p. 415.Google Scholar

2. Paine, Thomas, Common Sense, ed., Adkins, Nelson F. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), pp. 3, 21, 27.Google Scholar

3. Increase Mather as paraphrased in Middlekauff, Robert, The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596–1728 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), p. 138.Google Scholar