In the past decade or so, the connections between religion and politics have become increasingly important in political science. Andrew R. Murphy's A Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11 is a significant contribution to the historical account of the role of religion in American politics. More specifically, Murphy focuses on the unique way in which religious jeremiads have influenced American political development. In the process, he documents that “[f]rom John Winthrop to Jerry Falwell, the jeremiad represents one of the most enduring and deeply rooted ‘sacred stories’ in the American repertoire. Understanding such stories is key to understanding the ways in which any community creates its self-image, and the United States is no exception” (p. 119).

Murphy's book is divided into two parts. The first consists of detailed accounts of three separate jeremiads that have played significant roles in American political development. Jeremiads get their name from the book of Jeremiah, in which the prophet warns the Israelites that their failure to live up to the covenant with God will result in serious punishments for the nation as a whole. He warns them against moral backsliding and the need for moral reawakening to avoid divine punishment. As Murphy's analysis shows, jeremiads consist of three elements. First, “[j]eremiads identify problems that show a decline vis-à-vis the past” (p. 7). This decline is interpreted as a serious moral decline on the part of the community. Second, they “identify turning points” (p. 7), i.e., specific times when the decline began or was initiated. Finally, they “call for reform, repentance, or renewal” (p. 9). What is distinctive about the American jeremiad is a kind of exceptionalism, i.e., the idea that America is a chosen nation, the city on the hill (Winthrop), or the best hope for republican government (the Federalist Papers, Lincoln), or the bulwark against communism (the religious right), or the best hope for civil rights (King). In short, the “story of the jeremiad in America is the story of Americans' faith in God's providential oversight of human affairs, and more particularly of American affairs” (p. 11). Moreover, as Murphy stresses, its rhetorical power lies in the tension of both despair and hope: despair over the depths to which the nation has sunk and hope that it can retrieve the ideals that the jeremiad narrative identifies with the origins of the nation.

Murphy focuses on three specific periods in American history in which jeremiads played an important role in setting the political agenda. These are not, of course, the only occasions, but he makes a convincing argument that they are the most important, covering the early foundations of the American jeremiad, the antebellum period leading up to the Civil War, and the emergence of the Christian Right in the late twentieth century.

The jeremiads of the early days of the founding are perfect examples of the combination of despair and hope. The second and third generations of the New England colonists lamented what they saw as a turning away from the ideals and values of the early years of the colonies. But they never despaired completely, always holding out the hope that religious and moral renewal would restore them to their favored status. As Murphy puts it, “[t]he power of the jeremiad always lay, in part, in the way it expressed both a sense of chosenness and a deep anxiety about the prospects of continued blessings, and tied the hope as well as the anxiety directly to the American experience” (p. 39).

A similar tension between hope and despair characterized the jeremiads that emerged in the antebellum period over the issue of slavery. Defenders of the institution of slavery argued that abolitionists were undermining the moral order that slavery supported and that abolitionism was a turning away from God. Abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, on the other hand, argued that the promise of the Declaration of Independence was violated by the continuation of slavery. But more importantly, it was in violation of the divine mission for which God had selected the United States as a chosen nation. But whether they were employed in defense of slavery or in opposition to it, they reinforced the sense “that the United States was not just another nation but, in some way, acted on God's behalf. This sense of national mission was rooted in the book sacrifice of half-million young Americans” (p. 76).

The final example that Murphy offers is the emergence of the Christian Right. Rooted in the early evangelicalism of the twentieth century, the Christian Right became mobilized over issues such as anticommunism, promiscuous sex, and the rise of secularism. But most important, as Murphy illustrates, “[i]n the eyes of the public spokespersons for the Christian Right during the late 1970s and early 1980s, perhaps the most significant change in American morality concerned understandings of human sexual activity and appropriate sexual behavior” (p. 89). Indeed, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson infamously attributed the attacks of 9/11 to sexual promiscuity, gay rights, abortion, and the collapse of traditional sexual roles. Not surprisingly, “[s]ince much of the Christian Right jeremiad focuses on human sexuality, its call to national repentance naturally highlights the importance of a restoration of traditional sexual mores” (p. 99).

To help understand the different narratives in which competing jeremiads have interpreted American politics, Murphy divides jeremiads into two types, traditional and progressive. Traditional jeremiads, found in the early Puritans, the pro-slavery South, and the Christian Right, emphasize the need to be true to the intentions of the founders, relying on their actions and behavior as guides to what those intentions were. Hence, supporters of slavery often cited the fact that most of the framers of the Constitution were slaveholders to demonstrate their intention to oppose abolition. Similarly, the Christian Right emphasizes the religious professions of the founders as evidence of their intention to found a Christian nation, emphasizing “both that the founders themselves were men of Christian faith, and that Christianity has been intertwined with American public life from the earliest days” (p. 112). But one of the major challenges facing the traditionalist jeremiad is the growing pluralism of America. “At the heart of the Christian Right jeremiad … lies a deep unease with pluralism and diversity as it has come to exist in the twenty-first century” (p. 112).

Like the traditionalist jeremiad, the progressive version draws on the past and the founding period for its inspiration. But in contrast to the traditionalist, it stresses the promise of the founding and the principles articulated in the past rather than what the founders actually did. Perhaps the best example of this is Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which stresses that the Civil War is a fulfilling of the promise made in 1776 (not 1787). As such, they provide for a more expansive and inclusive view of American politics and culture. Whereas the traditionalist jeremiad is imprisoned in an exclusionary vision that downplays the diversity and difference that has developed in the United States, the “progressive jeremiads have urged the nation on to new understandings of the bonds (and responsibilities) of American citizenship” (p. 169).

Murphy has provided us with a thorough analysis of the ways in which American jeremiads have helped shape contemporary American politics. To my mind, two questions remain. In describing the Christian Right idealization of the 1950s, he says at one point, “[W]e find Christian Right Jeremiahs taking great pains to distance themselves from the segregationist elements of the very time period they are valorizing, and to endorse rights for women and minorities that were not honored until the 1960s or after” (p. 106). Later, he claims that “[f]ollowing traditionalist calls for reform that evoke a simpler, earlier time of virtue, on the other hand, threatens to undo many of the important twentieth-century advances made by women and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities” (p. 169). But surely those traditionalists realize the exclusive nature of their agenda. One has to ask exactly how high on the list of priorities is their desire to distance themselves from the injustices that characterize the very decade that they see as a kind of golden era.

The second question is one of emphasis. In discussing the traditionalist concern for changes in sexual behavior, I believe he could have emphasized the extent to which the policies favored by traditionalists would mostly restrict women's choices rather than those of men, including greater opportunities in the workplace, as well as greater reproductive freedom. Murphy alludes to this, but a greater stress on the extent to which these would have greater impact on women than men would have pointed to another weakness of the traditionalist agenda.

These two points do not, however, detract from the detail, the balance, and the scholarship that Murphy's work demonstrates. Moreover, it helps us understand the extent to which we are historical beings, i.e., that our present is always in part defined by the history we inherit.