Givers, Doers, & Thinkers—A Podcast on Philanthropy and Civil Society · Jeremy Beer

Walter McDougall & the invention of American exceptionalism

·44 min·2 clips

Robert Bellah’s 1967 article and Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration changed how Walter McDougall reads American civil religion.

1. Givers, Doers, & Thinkers turns to Walter McDougall and the approaching America 250 semi-quincentennial. 2. Jeremy Beer speaks with Walter McDougall, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at the University of Pennsylvania, and mentions books such as The Heavens and the Earth, Freedom Just Around the Corner, and The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy. 3. The episode asks whether the United States should be seen through “American exceptionalism,” “American civil religion,” and the country’s future 2026 celebration. 4. McDougall begins with 1976, citing Vietnam, Watergate, Gerald Ford, recession, the oil embargo, and fivefold higher oil prices. 5. He says 2026 could feel more unified than 1976, but only if Americans overcome today’s political division. 6. He then argues that the creation of the United States is “the central event of the last 400 years” in a global context. 7. His time-traveler thought experiment compares 16th-century Europe with China, Japan, India, the Muslim Middle East, South America, Australia, and North America. 8. McDougall says North America would seem most novel to that traveler and calls the continent’s peopling and development “astounding.” 9. He says Americans should feel “extremely humble” and “extremely grateful” when they contemplate that history. 10. He links that humility to speeches by Washington and Abraham Lincoln that use thanksgiving and providence language. 11. McDougall says “American exceptionalism” as a phrase did not exist in the founding era and only became a major motto in the Cold War. 12. He notes that Pope Leo XIII used the phrase negatively in the 1890s in response to Catholic immigrants in the United States. 13. He also says J. Lovestone used “American exceptionalism” to explain why the American Communist Party had trouble organizing workers in the 1920s and early 1930s. 14. In McDougall’s account, Truman and Eisenhower later made the phrase positive to support the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO. 15. He says Daniel Boorstin and others reached back to John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” language to give the idea an older pedigree. 16. McDougall argues that John Winthrop’s sermon was religious, not a blueprint for American politics. 17. He describes Robert Bellah’s 1967 article “The American Civil Religion” and says Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address shocked Bellah into seeing “God talk” as a national pattern. 18. The interview stays conversational and argumentative, with Beer asking pointed questions and McDougall answering in long historical sequences. 19. Listeners interested in American history, religion, and political language. 20. Listeners wanting a short, nonhistorical celebrity interview.

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