Virtue and Depravity in Post-Revolutionary Calvinist Political Argument
Jim German
University of Nebraska at Kearney
My paper examines the use of moral language in political argument by Northern
Calvinist clergy in the 1780s and 1790s. As scholars have often noted,
the clergy sometimes used a language of virtue that paralleled civic humanism
in its demand that individuals suppress their self-interest on behalf of
the common good. But the discourse of virtue was balanced by a discourse
of depravity. The Calvinist clergy insisted that ordinarily, wicked instincts
and passions governed human behavior. Any serious discussion about political
economy had to begin with the reality of depravity, not the possibility
of virtue. The commercial development envisioned by the clergy and their
Federalist allies increased opportunities for sin, and hence for guilt,
and thereby promoted institutional religion.