Essay 71: How Americans Apply The Doctrine Of Self-Interest Properly Understood To Religious Matters (Vol. 2 Pt. 2 Ch. 9)

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The essays in our study reference the following edition of Democracy In America: University of Chicago Press – 1st edition translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Today’s essay references pages 504 – 506 (stop at chapter 10 heading) of this edition of Democracy in America.

De Tocqueville has already explained the danger of individualism in the democratic social state as well as the likelihood that these dangers are mitigated in America by the doctrine of self-interest well understood. Why does De Tocqueville now apply the doctrine of self-interest well understood to matters of religion? He has already emphasized the importance of religion in America, and the reader can easily begin to imagine the potential utility of religion in further protecting the people from individualism. De Tocqueville’s framing of this chapter suggests that his contemporaries often regarded religion as a support for duty, which they pitted against utility or interest, so it may have been important to show how religion and self-interest are harmonized. De Tocqueville also raises the possibility that a conventional understanding of self-interest sans religion would fail to sufficiently remind those tempted to timidity or motivated only by self-preservation that death is not the worst outcome.

In the first part of the chapter, De Tocqueville reconciles the doctrine of self-interest to religion, or, rather, he shows how Christianity has long reconciled itself to the doctrine as a means to bring the mass of people into its ranks. For the adherent, according to De Tocqueville, it would satisfy self-interest well understood to persevere in belief despite doubts, as “he will judge that it is wise to risk some of the goods of this world to preserve his rights to the immense inheritance that he has been promised in the other.”

In the second part of the chapter, De Tocqueville considers how Americans’ practice of religion is actually guided by the doctrine of self-interest as they calculate that the risks of eternal punishment outweigh the “hindrances” imposed by their religion. They are not ashamed to admit as much. Although the American believer might be more inclined than a believer in an aristocratic age to tie religion to a calculated risk analysis rather than practice religion out of “love of God,” that is not where the most striking difference is to be found between Americans and the aristocratic age’s pursuit of religion. What is especially unique about American religion and the doctrine of self-interest well understood is that American preachers often situate the “interest” in this world rather than the next. According to De Tocqueville, they “constantly come back to earth and only with great trouble can they take their eyes off it.” Instead of focusing on a pure love of God, or even an eternal reward that could satisfy self-interest well understood, American preachers emphasize the temporal benefits of religion to supporting freedom and public order.

De Tocqueville had earlier noted this propensity of American preachers to speak “so often of the goods of this world” as well as the “invincible” distaste of Americans for the supernatural in their philosophic method. While friendliness to religion was a notable attribute of the American people during De Tocqueville’s visits, the religious practice that De Tocqueville encountered had largely been tamed to emphasize worldly goods either as a direct cause of the democratic social state or as a defensive measure to maintain relevance in the democratic age. De Tocqueville’s treatment of religion in this chapter again emphasizes the malleability of American religion to the “intellectual empire” of the majority in a democracy.

Given that within this chapter De Tocqueville mentions the utility of religion in helping citizens acquire virtue by offering a horizon beyond death, De Tocqueville’s decision to highlight once again the adaptability and worldliness of American religion raises at least one interesting problem. If religion is continually pulled back down to earth in America, does it eventually lose its efficacy at pointing Americans beyond mere survival, which has many temporal benefits in De Tocqueville’s account? Does it therefore, in a strange twist, lose its appeal to those Americans most interested in its benefits in this life? The religious practices which most consistently go with the grain of the democratic social state seems to be the kind that would continually leave unchallenged the prejudice of Americans to shy away from the supernatural and look only toward the practical, thus depriving it of what might actually be most useful in mitigating the negative effects of individualism and buttressing a Tocquevillian understanding of freedom.

Kevin Vance is Director of the Center for Constitutional Liberty at Benedictine College. He received his PhD and MA in political science from the University of Notre Dame and his BA from Claremont McKenna College. His research focuses on law and religion, constitutional law, and American political thought. His scholarship has appeared in the Journal of Church and State, the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, and the Journal of Law and Courts.

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