What is Amer­i­ca, and what is an Amer­i­can? If any­thing binds us togeth­er across space and time, it is our ideals and the sto­ries we tell about our pur­suit of them. From the begin­ning, we set our­selves against Europe’s hier­ar­chies. We exalt­ed demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment, equal­i­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty and indi­vid­ual free­dom. We con­ceived of our exper­i­ment as ​“the last best hope of earth,” in Lincoln’s words.

The rhetoric of Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry about the 'real America' is not imagined: They and those who oppose them live in different Americas.

But ideals don’t live in a vac­u­um; they take root in the soil of insti­tu­tions. Begin­ning with our first exper­i­ments in self-gov­ern­ment, the dis­so­nance between our ideals and our insti­tu­tion­al prac­tices – espe­cial­ly the tol­er­ance and exten­sion of slav­ery – cre­at­ed ten­sions that final­ly tore us apart.

The South’s alter­na­tive vision of the good soci­ety was defeat­ed in the Civ­il War, and our 20th-cen­tu­ry his­to­ry can be told as a nar­ra­tive of halt­ing progress toward greater tol­er­ance and equal­i­ty. The major plot points include reg­u­la­tions on cor­po­ra­tions in the ear­ly 1900s; women’s suf­frage in 1920; a social safe­ty net in the New Deal; the Supreme Court’s rejec­tion of Jim Crow laws in 1954; the civ­il rights and fem­i­nist move­ments of the 1960s; the gay rights vic­to­ries since the 1970s.

This nar­ra­tive sug­gests that our demo­c­ra­t­ic exper­i­ment is work­ing, albeit slow­ly. If we have nev­er been entire­ly uni­fied in our ideals, the Civ­il War at least re-uni­fied our insti­tu­tions. A cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, we ral­ly around the same flag. Or so we think.

The deep­er truth is dis­qui­et­ing. The rhetoric of Michele Bach­mann, Sarah Palin and Rick Per­ry about the ​“real Amer­i­ca” is not imag­ined: They and those who oppose them live in dif­fer­ent Amer­i­c­as, embody­ing dif­fer­ent ideals and mean­ing dif­fer­ent things to their loyalists.

How we reached this impasse is a fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tion. The answer to it rais­es pro­found doubts and ques­tions about how – and whether – we can move for­ward as ​“one nation, indivisible.”

The split could be said to have begun at Har­vard in the decades between the Civ­il War and the turn of the cen­tu­ry, when the university’s pres­i­dent, Charles Eliot, ini­ti­at­ed a series of reforms that trans­formed the par­a­digm of high­er edu­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States.

From the colo­nial era through the Civ­il War, Harvard’s intel­lec­tu­al life revolved around the Bible. Harvard’s mis­sion was to train gen­tle­men of high moral char­ac­ter by giv­ing them a sol­id ground­ing for their faith.

Eliot moved Har­vard away from this ide­al and toward the mod­el of a mod­ern research uni­ver­si­ty. Expand­ing the bound­aries of knowl­edge through research became the institution’s focus. Most uni­ver­si­ties fol­lowed the lead of Har­vard and that of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, found­ed in 1876 for the sole pur­pose of pur­su­ing a sec­u­lar research agenda.

This new mis­sion for uni­ver­si­ties cre­at­ed a spec­tac­u­lar frag­men­ta­tion of knowl­edge. By the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, the old-school gen­er­al­ist who taught every­thing from Latin to lit­er­a­ture and his­to­ry was a rel­ic. The new uni­ver­si­ty required schol­ars to spe­cial­ize in defined fields. This rise of experts with­in the acad­e­my reflect­ed the increas­ing impor­tance of exper­tise in Amer­i­can soci­ety, as careers in the pro­fes­sions came to require spe­cial­ized training.

The pro­gres­sive move­ment of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry grew out of these devel­op­ments. Pro­gres­sives hoped to make the new knowl­edge emerg­ing from uni­ver­si­ties rel­e­vant to the actu­al world. After the First World War, the win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty seemed wide open. John Dewey – the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty philoso­pher and quin­tes­sen­tial pro­gres­sive – sup­port­ed U.S. involve­ment in the war because he believed that the fed­er­al government’s new pow­ers would be used, at the war’s end, to recon­struct soci­ety along more egal­i­tar­i­an lines.

Dewey had elo­quent crit­ics on the left, most notably Ran­dolph Bourne, a young intel­lec­tu­al who reject­ed the idea that a mil­i­ta­rized state could ever be mobi­lized for pro­gres­sive pur­pos­es. Dewey, stung by the crit­i­cisms, used his influ­ence to have Bourne banned from most pro­gres­sive publications.

Bourne’s cri­tique ulti­mate­ly proved cor­rect. But if Dewey was wrong in that case, and if he behaved appalling­ly toward Bourne, the essence of his vision won out. He and oth­er pro­gres­sives had been hope­ful about the poten­tial of har­ness­ing knowl­edge to pow­er for the pur­pose of recon­struct­ing soci­ety; and from that point for­ward, for bet­ter and worse, pro­gres­sive hopes for social reform have been heav­i­ly invest­ed in edu­ca­tion­al and gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions, and a loose, com­pli­cat­ed alliance of the two realms.

GOP: God’s Only Party

Reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives pushed back by mobi­liz­ing and build­ing a par­al­lel uni­verse of insti­tu­tions to pre­serve what they believed to be the truth.

The cause of their exit from main­stream Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions was reli­gious lib­er­al­ism – ​“mod­ernism,” as it was called. Reli­gious mod­ernists accept­ed schol­ar­ly work about the human ori­gins of the Bible while still valu­ing scrip­ture as a source of wis­dom. They accept­ed evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry while still hold­ing out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of divine pur­pose in the uni­verse. They tried, in gen­er­al, to rec­on­cile reli­gious truth with the knowl­edge emerg­ing from the academy.

Mod­ernists felt at home with­in America’s main­stream, but reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives felt betrayed. They built their own net­work of insti­tu­tions to defend the old-time reli­gion. Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty, found­ed in 1927, emerged from this era.

Two devel­op­ments added ener­gy and pow­er to this wave of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian insti­tu­tion build­ing. One was the new tech­nol­o­gy of radio, which in the 1930s opened the way for free­lance evan­ge­lists to build their own min­istries based on charis­mat­ic appeal.

The oth­er cru­cial devel­op­ment was the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of a new account of humanity’s fate: pre­mil­len­ni­al dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ism, or p.d. for short. It posits that human his­to­ry can be divid­ed into sev­er­al ages, or dis­pen­sa­tions, and that the cur­rent age will con­clude with the Bat­tle of Armaged­don. How­ev­er, sev­en years before that bat­tle, Jesus will return to earth for the redeemed, and they will be ​“rap­tured” to heaven.

Much more than a the­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, p.d. is among the most potent and impor­tant polit­i­cal ideas of the last cen­tu­ry. Its first great pop­u­lar­iz­er in the Unit­ed States was Cyrus Scofield, whose anno­tat­ed Scofield Ref­er­ence Bible was pub­lished in 1909. Since then, p.d. has grown ever-more influ­en­tial. It was the sub­ject of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Plan­et Earth, the best-sell­ing non­fic­tion book of the 1970s; and it was the plot-dri­ving device in the Left Behind books, which are among the best­selling works of fic­tion in the 1990s and 2000s.

The polit­i­cal influ­ence of p.d. is locat­ed in its premise that all human insti­tu­tions are irre­deemably cor­rupt. Since con­di­tions in this world will steadi­ly dete­ri­o­rate, the duty of the true Chris­t­ian is to remain faith­ful to the gospel as the world descends into god­less chaos.

Skep­tics regard­ing p.d.’s influ­ence right­ly note that a rel­a­tive­ly small minor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion actu­al­ly adhere to the the­ol­o­gy. But uni­fied and high­ly gal­va­nized groups wield out­sized pow­er in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. The hard work of actu­al­ly get­ting things done, whether for good or ill, depends on the ener­gy and orga­ni­za­tion of ​“mar­gin­al” groups who rep­re­sent minor­i­ty opin­ions and which, more often than not, are fired by reli­gious faith. That truth has been dri­ven home with fright­en­ing clar­i­ty by the recent debt-ceil­ing debate and by the rad­i­cal­ism of the lead­ing Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates – near­ly all of whom, not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, pro­fess faith in some vari­a­tion of p.d. theology.

Today, the cur­rents of vic­tim­iza­tion, sep­a­ratism and fatal­ism cours­ing through p.d. have spread beyond the true believ­ers to dra­mat­i­cal­ly reshape the GOP. What has recent­ly come to the fore with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty, but has been build­ing with­in it for decades as the reli­gious right’s influ­ence has grown, is a new Con­fed­er­a­cy: a nation with­in a nation, cer­tain of the degen­er­a­cy of the usurp­er ​“Unit­ed States,” hos­tile toward its insti­tu­tions of edu­ca­tion and gov­ern­ment, and pos­sess­ing a keen sense of its own iden­ti­ty as a vic­tim­ized, right­eous rem­nant engaged in spir­i­tu­al war­fare. As Michele Bach­mann put it when explain­ing her posi­tion as a tax accoun­tant for the IRS, she took a gov­ern­ment job because she want­ed to infil­trate ​“the enemy.”

Amer­i­ca on its knees?

Pun­dits argue that our cur­rent dys­func­tion stems from dis­agree­ments about the prop­er scope and size of gov­ern­ment or the lim­i­ta­tions of ​“free mar­kets.” These expla­na­tions miss the heart of the mat­ter. America’s divi­sions involve fun­da­men­tal ques­tions of trust and truth: What author­i­ties do you believe? Whose def­i­n­i­tion of truth do you accept?

For the prag­mat­ic and pro­gres­sive Amer­i­ca that grew out of sec­u­lar­ized high­er edu­ca­tion, truth has a pro­vi­sion­al, this-world­ly ori­en­ta­tion. It’s more evo­lu­tion­ary than eter­nal in char­ac­ter – a flu­id body of knowl­edge and inter­pre­ta­tion, sub­ject to revi­sion and expansion.

For the Con­fed­er­a­cy that now dom­i­nates the GOP, truth is sol­id and fixed and divine­ly embed­ded in the struc­ture of the uni­verse. Humanity’s respon­si­bil­i­ty is to accept and believe the truth rather than test ideas against actu­al expe­ri­ence. The Confederacy’s obses­sion with ​“orig­i­nal­ist” inter­pre­ta­tions of the Con­sti­tu­tion – a twin of bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ism – is the clas­sic exam­ple: truth must be eter­nal, universal.

Prag­ma­tists and pro­gres­sives defer to experts and pro­fes­sion­als. They expect truth claims to be sup­port­ed by evi­dence that emerges from research and test­ing. They put their faith in this process, and in the com­mu­ni­ties of inquiry – the dis­ci­plines – legit­imized by sec­u­lar insti­tu­tions of high­er education.

The new Con­fed­er­a­cy rejects that process whole­sale. Its lead­ers and author­i­ties are the spir­i­tu­al descen­dants of the con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians and charis­mat­ic radio preach­ers who broke away from reli­gious mod­ernism in the 1920s and 1930s. For these lead­ers and their fol­low­ers, faith jus­ti­fies – and ver­i­fies – itself. You don’t believe an idea because it’s true. It’s true because you believe it.

This is why, in the ​“real Amer­i­ca” of Bach­mann, Palin and Per­ry, it is self-evi­dent that cut­ting tax­es increas­es rev­enues; the founders were evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians; evo­lu­tion is bunk; cli­mate change is a hoax; the Unit­ed States has the best health­care sys­tem in the world; we can trans­form the Mid­dle East into a gar­den of democ­ra­cy; Kenya native Barack Oba­ma has slashed the mil­i­tary bud­get; the war on drugs is worth the cost; and so on. These are all leaps of faith. The new Con­fed­er­ates flat-out reject or ignore any counter-evi­dence, because they have their own fount of truth. FOX News is the obvi­ous exam­ple, but decades before the rise of FOX – going back to the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry radio evan­ge­lists – con­ser­v­a­tives had been qui­et­ly build­ing their own media and net­works for ​“truth” telling.

And here is the unset­tling thing for any­one con­cerned about this fraught moment in the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment. Though they’re clue­less, the lead­ers of the new Con­fed­er­a­cy do offer a seduc­tive­ly egal­i­tar­i­an vision. The solu­tions to all our prob­lems can be found, they promise, not through actu­al exper­i­men­ta­tion or so-called knowl­edge, but from the sim­ple faith of ordi­nary citizens.

Rick Per­ry, the gov­er­nor of Texas, summed up the egal­i­tar­i­an fatal­ism at the heart of the new Con­fed­er­a­cy this sum­mer, in a let­ter invit­ing fel­low politi­cians to his prayer ral­ly in Hous­ton. ​“Some prob­lems are beyond our pow­er to solve, and accord­ing to the Book of Joel, Chap­ter 2, this his­toric hour demands a his­toric response,” he wrote. ​“There is hope for Amer­i­ca. It lies in heav­en, and we will find it on our knees.”

In 2009, Per­ry flirt­ed with the idea of Texas leav­ing the Union – a fact that is aston­ish­ing yet unsur­pris­ing. It is aston­ish­ing because it’s hard to believe a politi­cian of Perry’s rank and vis­i­bil­i­ty would open­ly muse about seces­sion – and remain a viable pres­i­den­tial con­tender. Imag­ine the out­rage on FOX News if Barack Oba­ma had once said any­thing similar.

It’s unsur­pris­ing because the truth is right there: Per­ry, Bach­mann and Palin and the seg­ment of the GOP they rep­re­sent have already seced­ed from the Union. Spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, they live in a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent vision of ​“Amer­i­ca,” one with its own faith-based real­i­ties and aspirations.

Spir­i­tu­al seces­sion isn’t the same as actu­al seces­sion, and we are a world away from the 1860s. But Rick Perry’s toy­ing with the idea wasn’t exact­ly a gaffe. It briefly brought to light a cer­tain dis­qui­et that we aren’t pre­pared to talk about open­ly, and raised ques­tions that are too painful to con­front. A house divid­ed against itself can­not stand, as Lin­coln said. But what if the divi­sions are just too deep and wide to bridge? What if the com­mon ground for com­pro­mise sim­ply does not exist? What if the last best hope of earth can­not long endure, after all?

God help us, indeed.