Eisenach joins the fray. Sharing with both Universalists and Restorationists a sense of impending disorder, he develops the case for a new “National Political Theology,” another in a series which, he insists, has identified and dominated American political life from its beginnings. A new “Religious Establishment,” however, requires something that neither of the alternative formulations he explores can provide. Universalists, seeking to be “free from nationalism, racism, sexism (and every other contingent boundary they happen to reject) that stands in the way of full equality” (p. 101), developed a rhetoric that was increasingly abstract “while the concrete interests and groups they in fact represented appeared increasingly fragmented, particularistic, and demanding.” They fail to understand that their “standards of equality are historically articulated” and, in the process, prove incapable of developing the “narrative” of American life necessary to the establishment of a new American identity. Though much of this provided an easy target for conservative Restorationists, they also have failed, Eisenach argues, to take their complete case to the American people. Successful in implementing economic and tax policies, with their emphases on deregulation and cost benefit analysis, efficiency, and social cost measures, Restorationists have had far less success “in the areas of social values, intellectual culture and education” (p. 103). Insightfully, Eisenach reminds us that “economic conservatives, insofar as they adhere to neo-classical or libertarian values, do not share with moral conservatives an inner imperative to reform culture” (p. 104). But, the intramural conflict does not end here, as “some moral conservatives fear that the positive Restorationist projects led by the national government (e.g., national school standards, media censorship or control, the funding of religiously committed academics) require the active assistance of the federal bureaucracy and other national institutions dominated by their opponents” (p. 104).

For Eisenach, however, all is not lost. The moral vacuum left by these multiply-contending forces has produced “Third Way” alternatives, both “Liberal Nationalism” and “Pluralist Communitarian” in substance. From Richard Rorty and E. J. Dionne, Jr., on the Liberal Nationalist front to Charles Taylor and Michael Sandel among the pluralist communitarians, he finds the beginnings of a more satisfactory encounter with our contemporary dilemmas—an unwitting reconstruction of a national political theology. However, in the absence of “a common faith,” even these alternatives will founder in contemporary America. Though he finds the bases of that faith, in a “common democratic faith” of Liberal Nationalists and Communitarians, Eisenach seeks to anchor that “faith” in the American political tradition, in Western political thought beyond America, and to recover in the process an American “experiential foundationalism” (p. 130).

Looking to the Progressive Era, Eisenach echoes Herbert Croly's “promise of American life” and its “national cohesion … dependent … upon fidelity to democratic principle” (p. 8). While cautious not to elide intervening American history, Eisenach finds much to recommend in this era and its “pragmatism.” Indeed, the writings of John Dewey serve not only to define an earlier “religious establishment” (pp. 89–92) but to mark boundaries of the new regime of “civility and citizenship” that Eisenach propounds in his conclusion (p. 148). Likewise, “the shared German or Hegelian or historicist spirit [that], he claims, pervaded the American university well before the Civil War” (p. 86) is revived in Eisenach's call for “a new American narrative” (p. 138). Closing with a plea for toleration, civility, and citizenship embedded in a new American political story, Eisenach's own story ends with a reshaping of “the legacy of American pragmatism into the beginnings of … a political theology for the next American establishment” (p. 149).

In its critical spirit, Eisenach's argument is reminiscent of Elshtain's Democracy on Trial (1995), but his self-proclaimed “prophecy” places a faith in the American university past and present that is more in the spirit of Dewey. He trumpets “the success of the American university as a powerful and unified set of national institutions independent of both church and state” and explores the possibility that it “might be understood as the authentic national church of voluntary religious establishments” (p. 75). At the same time he understands the dangers of abstraction, distance, and arrogance: The antidemocratic temptations of the academy. Much as Tocqueville did, he attempts to comprehend the essence of politics as theory and its relation to political action. He knows, as Tocqueville taught us, that “the political sciences form a sort of intellectual atmosphere breathed by both governors and governed in society, and [that] both unwittingly derive from it the principles of their actions” (See Alexis de Tocqueville, 1852, “The Art and Science of Politics,” Encounter XXXVI, 6 [January 1971]: 27–35).

Still, there is something puzzling about his reliance on American intellectuals and the university. He seems to understand with Tocqueville that the political sciences (Tocqueville's use of the term is closer to our understanding of political theory) are not always clearly understood, that the “intellectual atmosphere” may become polluted, leading to unintended consequences, even to the contradiction of stated goals. Tocqueville's warnings here about the intellectuals in politics may be more apposite than Dewey's principles, for though Tocqueville admired the pragmatic spirit of Americans, he knew first-hand of both the importance and the difficulties of integrating “political art” and political theory. “Authors,” he thought, had been responsible for the self-consuming ideology of the French revolution. Democracy was fragile for Tocqueville, requiring attention to both theory and practice and the endlessly complex relation between them. Eisenach's turn to Dewey, Rorty, Taylor, and others suggests less than a full appreciation of the complexities of the very problem he addresses. It may be that more attention to Tocqueville on both France and America would have helped shape this argument.

Eisenach's reliance on the university, furthermore, confronts dangers beyond those of which Tocqueville could imagine. While our interest in “service learning,” for example, seems to harken back to Dewey, our fascination with “distance learning,” in particular, as a source of revenue, should give us pause. Within our discipline the spirit of “economism,” alive and well despite the contrary signals of the “perestroika” exchanges, suggests yet another problem for Eisenach's “prophetic” message. The reestablishment of a “national political theology” may be responsive to his twin demons, but it is important to recognize that there are aspects of the “atmosphere” he hopes to freshen, quite apart from Universalism and Restorationism, in need of careful attention as well. This said, Eisenach's jeremiad is both provocative and useful for our time and may well stir the fruitful controversy he admittedly seeks.