The Two Competing Theologies of American Foreign Policy

In a sweeping essay, Michael Doran locates the fundamental tension within Americans’ approach to foreign affairs in the divide between two schools of Protestantism. Dispensational premillennialism (or fundamentalism) sees mankind as fallen and imperfectible, the messianic era as not subject to human control, and the task of government to “protect the community [and] safeguard its freedom” rather than “to spread the word of God or to perfect the world.” By contrast, the “progressive persuasion” (or modernism) claims that “the spread of the gospel will produce a millennium prior to Christ’s return.” The first group tends to be suspicious of multilateralism, the second to embrace it. And while the first group has supported Jewish statehood in the land of Israel—even before Zionism—the latter has resolutely opposed it. Even as America has become increasingly secular, writes Doran, the fault lines remain in place: