Word: covenanter
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If, then, both behavior and faithfulness left much to be desired, surely the founders' generation had moral absolutes by which to judge themselves and their fellow men? True, to some extent. The nation's shapers possessed as a gift from their own ancestors a sense of a divine...
But in Revolutionary times, the moral absolutes had become a lot less absolute. To the original but fading charter between God and man was added a second covenant, one between man and man: "We, the people ..." This second covenant was drafted by a second, extraordinarily articulate set of "founding fathers...
Along with their inherited covenant and consensus, the founding fathers also still had access to a more intact sense of tradition and tribe. Through these, moral values and norms are transmitted. Tradition and tribe can burden people, but they can also produce an identity and point of reference. Today mass...
In contrast, fusing the first covenant (the biblical) and the second (the Enlightened), early American generations formed a communitas communitatum, a community made up of subcommunities. Within this community they could say, for example, "We hold these truths to be self-evident ..." and thus project some working hypotheses for the...
Belief in God's covenant with America, Neuhaus thinks, leads not to arro gance but to humility, since the nation is continually held accountable to judgment by the Almighty. The covenant idea can also restore the faith in the future that once characterized the U.S. Neuhaus contends that if...