This is an always interesting, well-written, frequently provocative interpretation of the history of American thought and political movements. It is an ambitious book which might stand on the shelves with Richard Hofstadter's American Political Tradition (1948) and Louis Hartz's Liberal Tradition in America (1955), though it lacks the paradigmatic brilliance of these two great studies. To these one might add Carey McWilliams's The Idea of Fraternity in America (1973), because of his interest in Puritanism, which Hofstadter and Hartz ignore. In the background are the great studies of Perry Miller, though McKenna cannot match the monumental scholarly grandeur of his work, nor his power as a paradigm setter.

McKenna begins with Sacvan Bercovitch's long contemplation of Puritanism as a central unifying factor in American thought and history. Bercovitch detects an underlying ideology that survives all the changes in American society and that, even when used to criticize, reaffirms the culture rather than undermines it. McKenna wonders whether this could be so. “Does every movement, from left to right,” he asks, “get folded into the dominant American ideology which, neutralizing them all, ultimately preserves the ideological status quo?” (p. xii). He concludes that Bercovitch is largely, though not completely, right, though he displays uneasiness about the strongly leftist provenance of his thought, which comes from the “Yiddish-left-wing world of romantic Marxism” (pp. xi–xii). This suggests the possibility of an ideological bias that McKenna largely controls until late in his long book.

While there are Puritan themes that run throughout American history, he rightly stresses that they encompass enormous variations. A major substantive difference is that Bercovitch claims that the United States conflates “eschatology and chauvinism” into nationalism, while McKenna prefers the term “patriotism” to “nationalism.” Even the most radical Americans have an underlying “affection” for America, he claims. When the chips are really down, Americans return to talk of “grace and consecration and sanctification” rather than the language of the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence (pp. xii–xiii). He does not consider the possibility that one could have affection for one's country without being nationalistic or feeling a “my country right or wrong” form of patriotism. Nor does he take up the problem posed by George Kateb, who argues in Patriotism and Other Mistakes (2007) that patriotism is simply a mistake, though probably unavoidable, which can lead to “moral and mental obtuseness” (pp. 3, 3–20). McKenna would do well to remember Dr. Johnson's warning that “[p]atriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”

But, since patriotism is an inevitable sentiment, we need to consider what McKenna takes to be its manifestations in American history. Its roots lie deep in the Puritan tradition. It is good to see a political theorist return to these sometimes neglected ideas. John Winthrop's famous speech aboard the Arbella saying that America would be a “city on a hill” recurs frequently, though McKenna is careful to point out that this was a warning that the world would be watching to see if his colony would live up to its high ideals, rather than, as President Reagan read it, a beacon for the whole world to follow (pp. 18–19, 340). Still, McKenna, too, seems sympathetic to the idea that America has a providential role in history (p. 369). Nonetheless, he offers a solid sketch of the history of Puritan theology, which stresses its variety and complexity, particularly in the seventeenth century.

No one can seriously doubt the importance of Puritan and Protestant religiosity in the history of America. But, as Garry Wills writes in Head and Heart: American Christianities (2007), there is a persistent divide between head and heart in American religious thought. This dichotomy is perhaps too sharp, but it still is a useful organizing device. The Puritans built up a formidable body of theology, which puts them squarely in the “head” category. Evangelicals, though descended from the Puritans, are clearly in the “heart” camp. But others, of decidedly intellectual bent, including such transcendentalists as Emerson and Thoreau, show no signs of evangelical enthusiasm, and there is little to indicate that much Puritan orthodoxy is left in their thought. After all, Emerson's Divinity School Address caused him to be banned from the school for decades. McKenna usefully undermines the Menckenesque idea that the Puritans were hopeless kill-joys, and he provides ample evidence that evangelicals are not always conservative or reactionary, as many assume today. It is important to remember that, though generally politically conservative today, they have historically often been at the forefront of reform movements. Thus, many evangelicals had prominent roles in the abolition movement, and William Jennings Bryan, long before he embarrassed himself during the notorious Scopes trial, was a leading populist critic of the excesses of late nineteenth-century capitalism.

But the Scopes trial proved to be a watershed event. Following George Marsden's Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (1999) and Fundamentalism and American Culture (1980), McKenna gives a useful account of the theological struggle between liberalism and fundamentalism. A “great reversal” took place. Significant numbers of evangelical Christians began to become fundamentalists, defined as evangelicals who were mad at something. Initially what they were mad at was liberal theology, the belief in secular progress, a stress on ethics rather than supernatural religion, and a turn away from doctrine toward feelings (p. 230). In Protestant thought, premillennialism rather than postmillennialism became the evangelical default position. The latter was a gentler doctrine, which held that there would be a thousand years of peace before the millennium, while the former predicted horrible deaths for those not saved as the earth was “swept clear for the return of the godly” (pp. 234–35). The distrust of liberal theology led to a distrust of liberal politics as well. At the same time, a geographical and demographic realignment also emerged, and McKenna provides a useful discussion of some of the major forces in recent American politics. Fundamentalists became concentrated in the southern and border states. Soon the virulent, long-standing Protestant hatred of Catholics was patched up, and fundamentalists and conservative Catholics began to form a voting alliance. By the end of the sixties, the nation was “under judgment” (p. 309), and if anything, the moral decay McKenna sees in the seventies was worse. But Ronald Reagan, though not a Puritan, led a revival of “old fashioned American patriotism” (p. 339). Then came George W. Bush and 9/11. The “gravitas-challenged candidate and lackluster president, suddenly sounded like a credible leader.” The “former bibulous frat boy” made himself “into something of a Puritan” (pp. 361, 363). Still McKenna does note that “American providentialism has its ups and downs” (p. 372) and that the contemporary dynamics of American politics might lead to its decline.

McKenna displays a tendency to stretch the meaning of Puritanism beyond what the seventeenth-century divines might accept. Just about anyone of whom he approves seems to qualify for the label. For example, he sees the American Revolution as steeped in Puritanism, in spite of Jefferson's deism, Paine's skepticism, and the general belief of the Founders that religion in some general sense was a good thing. Puritanism, in this context, seems to replace the once-fashionable theory of civic republicanism, which in turn had, in some minds, replaced natural rights liberalism, about which we hear very little in this long book. McKenna's discussion of the late eighteenth century is interesting but does not convince. Puritanism is also extended to cover Abraham Lincoln. In spite of his law partner William Herndon's testimony about his skepticism toward vital Christian doctrines, we are told that Lincoln was moving toward “hard shell” Calvinism late in his life (pp. 158–63), a view hard to sustain even when McKenna encloses the term in scare quotes. The Second Inaugural Address was certainly the product of a deeply religious sensibility, but not one that can be squeezed into any orthodox mold. Even FDR, according to McKenna, was a Puritan in spite of his decidedly non-Puritan lifestyle, because he called America to sacrifice for a higher moral purpose (p. 238).

McKenna's narrow focus is sometimes illuminating, but he leaves out a good deal. There is little consideration of race, so correspondingly little attention is paid to the question of whether, for example, the southern turn toward the Republican right was motivated by something more than purely theological considerations. It would also have been helpful if he had engaged Hartz and Hofstadter, who so clearly make capitalist political economy and the liberal consensus that supports it the focus of their works. Theology aside, too little attention is paid to the American liberal tradition. Notably, he has too little to say about Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln so revered. Nor does he bother to discuss Max Weber's great, though controversial, thesis about the relation of Calvinism to capitalism, which seems to me necessary in a work on this topic. McKenna is troubled by the excesses of Gilded Age capitalism, but he ignores the new gilded age we live in because of his zealous commitment to the international policies of the Bush administration, which he sees as a rejuvenation of American patriotism. But that rejuvenation led to the disastrous war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo. This is a high price to pay for a patriotic revival.