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Chosen peopleThe big idea that shapes England and AmericaAre we Britain's bogeymen?CHOSEN PEOPLE On the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1 1916, the British Army suffered 60,000 casualties. Clifford Longley, former religious affairs correspondent for The Times, traces this disaster not so much to inflexible and incompetent leadership but rather to a hidden but apparently all-pervasive national ideology. The theory is that at that time Brits held to the unspoken assumption that they were God's own people. Therefore failure was unthinkable. Longley supports this by a quote from General Haig's letter to his wife before the battle: 'I feel that every step in my plan has been taken with divine help', and a real shocker from the then Bishop of London, Winnington-Ingram: 'I think the church can best help the nation first of all by making it realise that it is engaged in a Holy War... Christ died on Good Friday for freedom, honour and chivalry and our boys are dying for the same things... mobilise the nation for a holy war'. More detailed work would ground the claim more securely but Longley's interest is rather in the broad sweep. The 'chosen nation' mentality explains, we are told, a great many of the less palatable episodes in British and American history, from the persecution of Catholics to the slave trade, from anti-Semitism in Britain to the systematic exploitation of American natives in the New World. Just as Israel in the Old Testament was given a free hand by God to exterminate their enemies (as Longley sees it), so both British and American political life have been deeply shaped by the sense of their unique role in God's purposes. This has been, the book concludes, a Bad Thing. The problem apparently began with the English Reformation, when the state usurped for itself the authority of the medieval Church. This was given spurious support by quotes from the Old Testament, an abuse that reached its apogee under the Puritans. Later, the evangelicals (here sharply distinguished from the Puritans) helpfully modified this emphasis; nevertheless it has lingered in the British and (especially) American national consciousness to this day. This, then, is a book that makes historical claims; I believe historians will find it thin and unconvincing. Although he has a great many disparaging remarks about the Puritans, Longley only quotes from them once, using the opening sentences of Jonathan Edwards's 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' as an example of 'chosen nation' theology. In fact, however, the link here (and surely throughout the Puritan writings) is the rather different one between the visible people of God in the Old Testament and today. Where Longley's primary sources do support the claims made, they are invariably from politicians and national leaders rather than Bible-believing Christians. Though it is clear (from his general argument and from a great number of snide asides) that Bible Protestants are Longley's bogeymen, the open-minded reader will remain unconvinced. Tom Forryan,
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