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This timely, provocative book combines and shows the relationship between two large themes: a)the nature and importance of spiritual and religious values and b) the nature and spiritual character of American democracy, with all its flaws. I was struck to find this book and the manner in which Needleman developed his themes. In broad outline, Needleman's preoccupations are my own. Without agreeing with everything he said, I came away from his book with my own ideas clarified and strengthened -- and a bit envious of Needleman's eloquence and ability to put his ideas into print.
Needleman draws a double picture of American freedom and its use. One picture is that freedom means everyone does simply as he or she pleases. This is, for Needleman, an America which has been criticized by many for its materialism, its emphasis on growth, its sole focus on the profit motive, its greed, racism, and, sometimes, bellicosity.
The other America is a spiritual American whose ideas of freedom and democracy was founded upon religious and metaphysical ideas of the nature of man, human commonality, the uniqueness of each person, and the search inward of each person for what is valuable and important. The ideal of democracy on this view is not simple pursuit of material wealth but rather a turning inward so that each person may pursue life and truth in his or her own way.
And what is the relationship between these two concepts of America? How do we help transform the one into the other?
Needleman's answer is in part a study of the wisdom literature common to all religions and great philosophy of life. (Needleman evidences a great deal of impatience with standard church or synagogue-going. He argues that he himself has found such conventional forms of religion sterile and routine.) He finds such wisdom, in various of its phases, in the writings of the American founders.
Thus the larger part of the book is a discussion and creative discussion of the American founders and a reading of certain of American texts. Thus Needleman gives us a paragraph-by-paragraph discussion of Washington's Farewell Address, The Tenth Federalist Paper, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, an Oration of Frederick Douglass, an Iroquois Indian creation myth, and Walt Whitman's late essay, "Democratic Vistas". He tries to show how these texts show an America of spiritual values rather than money-making. His aim is, avowedly, to remythologize America and its past.
In a broad sense his project is carried through well. Some of his readings of the texts, particularly of Washington's Farewell Address and of the Iroquois myth, seem to me forced. Needleman would have done better to let Washington speak for himself rather than create a Washington with, perhaps, Needleman's own spiritual preoccupations. The readings of Whitman, Douglass, and Lincoln work much better, even on Needleman's own terms.
In trying to get people to think about America -- and to reassess its values in spiritual terms --Needleman has critical things to say about America's treatment of the Indians and about the long legacy of slavery. These themes are valuable and important and Needleman is right to dwell upon them. I have some question about whether the treatment of the Indians is in itself free from a degree of modern stereotyping. Be that as it may, Needleman's point is that we may see America with its flaws and crimes and love it and try to recognize and bring about the ideal in the sometimes shabby nature of the real.
There is a great deal of erudition in this book, both on spiritual texts and on American history. In addition to his treatment of certain standard figures in American history, Needleman has a fascinating discussion of the Ephrata community in Pennsylvania and its founder Conrad Bissel. This Protestant spiritual community flourished briefly during the period just before the Revolutionary War.
Walt Whitman has the last word in this book, as he properly should, with his vision of America and of the American person.
There is a great deal of interest, as best as I can tell, in American history, as evidenced by the many new books on the Founders and the unending interest in Lincoln and the Civil War, and in spirituality, which I myself have found in a study of Buddhism. This book combines these two broad themes in an attempt to help the reader rethink and America and understand it anew. It is a worthy goal and the book carries it out well.
