Mesjanizm a amerykański misjonizm polityczny

• Authors: Andrzej Sepkowski

Abstracts

EN

Religion is a central part of human experience, influencing what we perceive and react to the environment un which we live. There is no country in the world where the christan religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America – as noticed Tocqueville. America was where good and evil would struggle in a continuing battle for supremacy in full view of the rest of the world. Americans believe that the America’s divine mission would ensure a victory of light over darkness but the various narratives of that mission have been frequently aware of the darkness of failure. Americans prophets located America as the place where God’s plans for the world be realised, where the “sun of righteousness” would shine over a paradise set in wilderness of the West, but the same time they could issue apocalyptic warnings about the over-present threat of hell and eternal damnation. The religious dimension to the story of America where good and evil exist alongside each other has been a pervasive theme in country’s expressive culture, giving it a powerful resonance beyond history of specific churches and often endowing its language with special meaning and force. From this pesrpective religious imagery and religious themes have had a considerable influence on the way Americans have reflected and acted, not only in literatute, but also in political language and rhetoric. Americans is a nation with the soul of church – wrote Huntington and we try to bring nearer this soiul and church. This church have a mission and this mission was truer expansion of national spirit. This was present form the beginning of American history and it is present, clearly, today. It was idealistic, self-denying, hopeful fo divine favor for national aspirations. It made itself heard most authentically in times of emergency, of ordeal, of disaster. Its language was that of dedication to the enduring values of American civilization. Mission was the force that thought to curb expansion of the agressive variety. A sense of missionism to redeem the Old World by high example was generated in pionieers of idealistic spirit on their arrived to the New World. It was generated by the potentialise of new earth for building a new heaven. It appeared thereafter in succesive generations of Americans with changes in the type of mission unaltered. By the time of Jackson it included a concept of democracy greatly widened, by Wilson days it meant Fourteen Points, by the time of second Roosevelt the Four Freedom and by the Bush Junior war with terrorism. In add these enlargments of mission the Goddes of Liberty holding aloft the light to the world seemed to to Americans to be, in reality themselves.

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek
• Journal: Athenaeum. Polskie Studia Politologiczne
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 18
• Pages: 254-271

Dates

published

2007

Contributors

author

Andrzej Sepkowski

Identifiers

DOI

10.15804/athena.2007.18.17

Biblioteka Nauki

11855351