The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
by Jon Meacham (New York, New York: Random House, 2018, 402 pages.
Reviewed by Walter B. Shurden
A huge billboard on Hillcrest Avenue in a minority section of Macon, GA, blares the faded words: "FEAR IS CONTAGIOUS. SO IS HOPE." That is the theme of Meacham's passionately written, beautifully crafted book. It is the kind of book that makes you want to run out into the streets and do something great big for equality, for freedom and for justice for all.
And that is why Meacham wrote what is a history of America from the Civil War to the present, with special emphasis on how America triumphed over fear and prevailed with hope. It is a history for us and for our time. The book is sermonic, inspired and inspiring. His final chapter feels like an invitation from a Baptist preacher. “How then,” he asks,” “in an hour of anxiety about the future of the country, at a time when a president of the United States appears determined to undermine the rule of law, a free press, and the sense of hope essential to American life, can those with deep concerns about the nation’s future enlist on the side of the angels?” And like the preacher, he answers, and points to what he wants of you and me. He wants us to "enter the arena," "resist tribalism," "respect facts and reason," "find a critical balance," and "keep history in mind." He wants us to "witness, protest, and resist."
Acknowledging that America is not perfect nor is it perfectible, Meacham sees our Republic engaged in the "eternal struggle" between "our better angels" and our worst demons. He teeters very close to saying that American history demonstrates that hope always wins over fear. He teeters, but he does not cave. He knows well the downward spiral is possible. He documents it.
I nonetheless "feared" something in reading this marvelous book. My fear is that some will read of hope triumphing over fear in American history and then wait passively for history to do its work in our time. Meacham will have none of that passivity.
He knows that we have come through the hideous and deplorable dark nights of our civic life only because of somebody's "witness, protest, and resistance." I was reminded of Carlyle Marney's confession: "It has been 40 years since I asked God to fix anything I could fix." The contemporary political American situation is something that we can fix, roars prophet Meacham. And we must. Even if there has been a radical change in our national character, will and taste, we must engage. This one is ours to win.
A tip: you have to read only the "Introduction" and the "Conclusion" to be able to talk about the book. But what is in between is, as they say in Louisiana, lagniappe. And it is knee-slapping good. It is about the fears that have tormented America’s history–fears that expressed themselves in slavery, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, the Alien and Sedition Act, Plessey vs Ferguson, woman’s suffrage, the Red Scare, the Klan’s revival, Huey Long, Father Charles Coughlin, the internment of Japanese Americans, McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights struggle, among others.
But Meacham is intent on demonstrating that for every villainous fear that raised its dreadful head in America history, a better angel appeared in the form of presidents, reformers, preachers and organized movements. Here is a treasure of quotations from American presidents that helped to lift us beyond our fears. Good words matter, and they are powerful enough to help us transcend our fears. Again, victory was never easy, automatic, or without blood, sweat and tears at any point in American history.
Ken Burns called Meacham’s book “a beautifully expressed and convincing prayer to summon our ‘better angels’ to meet the obvious challenges of today.” There is a kind of prayer here, but I think it is more fervent sermon, rooted in history, calling us as a nation to be our best selves, reminding us that while fear can drag us down, hope can lift us up. But we have to work at it.
Here, for my money, is history as it ought to be written. I urge it upon you. I hope you will urge it upon others.
Walter B. Shurden is Minister-at-Large Mercer University and lives with his wife, Kay, in Macon, Georgia
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