Statecraft and Salvation: Wilsonian Liberal Internationalism as Secularized Eschatology

1. From Providence to Progress: Secularization Theory

23 CHAPTER ONE from Providence to ProgreSS Secularization Theory Among the legion of scholars who have written about President Woodrow Wilson, many noticed his deep eschatological convictions , and many others cast his international political thought as a form of utopianism. The former group includes Wilson’s main twentieth-century biographer, Arthur S. Link, and the latter, E. H. Carr, whose realist critique of Wilsonian liberal internationalism in the wake of World War I was outlined earlier. Few if any, however, have done both things at once: interpreted Wilson’s political utopianism as a secularized expression of his eschatological consciousness. This interpretation, along with its various implications, is the principal focus of this study. Unfortunately, as a framework for this interpretation the concept of secularization is neither self-evident nor uncontroversial. On the contrary, different thinkers have understood secularization in different ways, and even where several theorists share the same definition of the concept, more often than not serious disagreements exist among them. Compounding the difficulties is the fact that the shift from religious to modern modes of thought can be narrated using other frameworks entirely; secularization is not the only option available. Alternative accounts have been formulated and are readily at hand. Therefore, it is appropriate to begin by delving into secularization theory in depth in order to specify the meaning of the concept as it is used 24 STATECRAFT AND SALVATION here, differentiate it from other possible definitions, identify its strengths and weaknesses, and assess its analytical scope and applicability. These are the most immediate goals to accomplish. Emphatically, they do not include defending the concept of secularization chosen to serve as the principal optic for the subsequent analysis of Wilson—the secularization thesis formulated by the German philosopher Karl Löwith—from all its criticisms, nor do they necessarily seek to elevate this particular concept of secularization above all the other accounts. It suffices to demonstrate that Löwith’s thesis is well established and that numerous reasons exist to direct it at a heretofore neglected target: Wilson’s progressive diplomacy in the broader context of American liberal internationalism. Secularization as a Contested Concept Although the term “secularization” enjoys extensive popular usage, or perhaps precisely for that reason, its definition is ambiguous and contested : it is a generic concept encompassing a wide range of meanings. If these share anything in common, it is only the broad understanding of secularization as a shift from the religious worldview to the modern one. In sociological literature, the term frequently connotes the decline of religion in the public sphere as one of the distinguishing features of the modern era. This conception of secularization pervades the work of, for example, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, who have described the process as “the progressive autonomization of societal sectors from the domination of religious meanings and institutions.”1 Cast in terms of the separation of church and state performed by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, this definition of secularization is a staple of mainstream American political and religious historiography. A recent contribution to this scholarship thus uses the rubric “secularization” to signify “the loss of visible religiosity, especially in regard to public religiosity, which often is termed or seen as religious deinstitutionalization.”2 Since this definition of secularization does not address the question of private religiosity, however, it does not necessarily mean complete godlessness. This brings up a second, more radical definition: secularization as the extinguishing of all religious faith, including and especially 1 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), 74. 2 Charles Mathewes and Christopher McKnight Nichols, eds., Prophesies of Godlessness : Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization from the Puritans to the Present Day (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 10; emphasis original. FROM PROVIDENCE TO PROGRESS 25 within the individual soul. This definition has its classic expression in Nietzsche’s pronouncement that “God is dead.”3 On this reading, the disappearance of public piety is merely symptomatic of a more fundamental process: the loss of private belief. A third definition of secularization was recently formulated by Charles Taylor in his magisterial account of the emergence of Western modernity.4 This definition notes the resilience of traditional religiosity down to the present day and concerns itself not so much with decline in faith as with changes in its background or pre...