“Promiscuous.” Hector St. John Crèvecœur (1735-1813) uses this term to describe Americans in his fictional “Letters to an American Farmer” from the late 18th century. Crèvecœur, a Frenchman who settled in New York for a period, published these essays on American life in London in 1782. To him, America’s essence is cultural “promiscuity,” in its Latin meaning: “mixed, not separated.” In his delightful third letter, Crèvecœur reports to his curious European readers, “[Americans] are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes.” It is no surprise that the term “melting pot” originates from these letters.
The current political climate has significantly diminished the perceived goodness of America’s diversity. As we know from past election cycles, the radical left seeks to divide by race, gender, and sexuality. But some on the radical right are eager to divide by ethnicity. Whether by espousing the white guilt that Critical Race Theory and the Black Lives Movement demanded, or the white supremacy found in extreme nationalists, not all Christians have withstood these polarized cultural currents. Both extremes contradict the more positive vision found in Crèvecœur’s America, one that is characterized by the ostensible goodness of diverse peoples living together in community.
More importantly, the divisiveness reflects the abandonment of biblical values. These movements specifically fail to recognize our common blood as descendants of Adam, “the beginning and origin and head of the human race.”[1] In light of our common ancestry and shared imago dei, ethnic divisiveness is patently unbiblical, and that makes an evangelical component in the radical right so insidious. Kinism, a concept that teaches among other things that interracial marriage is prohibited by God, has a strong presence in certain Christian circles. These types of movements would be quite at odds with Crèvecœur’s interpretation of America. More importantly, it conflicts with the goodness of ethnic diversity that God himself created.
Read alongside Scriptures, Crèvecœur offers a corrective lens to view this contemporary predicament regarding ethnicity in America. How might his depiction of “Americanness” help us to think of the stranger as neighbor? How can we affirm God’s good creative purposes with diverse people groups and celebrate, rather than denigrate, the opportunities that this country offers?
America’s legacy is simply a product of her essence: she is “promiscuous” with a cultural diversity that does not exist anywhere else on earth. The vast number of peoples, or nations, that comprise this nation complicates her capacity to adopt a homogenous, consistent identity. Our nation’s cultural resources emerges from a people with Scots-Irish, French, German, Scandinavian, Asian, and African descent – just to name a few.
And so Crèvecœur’s critique of American life is both prophetic and instructive for contemporary cultural understanding. As with America herself, “Letters to an American Farmer” is not without contradictions, but the document can refresh us on the fundamentals of “Americanness.” This following anecdote illustrates the cultural pluralism Crèvecœur encounters, primarily in the northern states:[2]
“What then is the American, this new man? He is either an [sic] European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the east; they will finish the great circle.”
Crèvecœur’s imagination captures the New World’s peculiarity, specifically how various aspects of one’s identity in the Old World diminishes on this continent. It is now virtually impossible, perhaps outside of the Amish country or certain Appalachian or Mormon villages, to locate any purely homogeneous ethnic communities living in America. Therefore a once “scattered” group of persons now becomes “incorporated” into a new people with shared values. He rightly anticipates that this “new people” would “one day cause great changes in the world,” which we have seen in scientific advancements, the arts, and technology.
More to the point, Crèvecœur’s use of the terms “new man” and “new race of men” have Pauline aromas, and it is hard to imagine that a biblically literate writer would borrow these terms unwittingly. As in the Apostle Paul’s gospel, the Christian “leaves behind him” particular patterns because he “receives new ones” whose expectations can hardly co-exist with the previous ones. This analogy suggests a parallel between the Christian life and citizenship in America: one cannot expect to live in both his old identity and simultaneously in his new identity. A change of identity forces a change of allegiance.
For some ethno-centric persons, the co-mingling that Crèvecœur describes here may be cringe-worthy, reminiscent of Old Testament passages that warn Israel not to intermarry with women from foreign nations. Passages such as Deuteronomy 7 indicate God’s strict command for Israelites not to marry Canaanite, Hittite, and other women. But the purpose of these laws is not ethnic purity, but covenant faithfulness: “for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods” (Dt. 7:4; italics mine). And God’s primary concern is always this covenantal fidelity. Consider Ruth, for example. Ruth was a Moabitess – a foreigner prohibited from worshipping in God’s assembly – yet she not only marries a faithful Israelite man, she
bears the grandfather of King David and is thus a biological ancestor of our Lord Jesus. Though she is ethnically a Moabite, she comes under the wings of the LORD, the God of Israel (Ruth 2:12). Being engrafted into the covenant nullifies her ethnic disqualification. If we object to Crèvecœur’s illustration, it must be on the grounds that marriage into different nationalities somehow contributes to theological and spiritual failing, not that it produces ethnic inferiority.
Crèvecœur’s idyllic scenario diminishes those distinctions of a former self. Even so, the more one emphasizes ethnic divisions in either the church or civil realms, the greater the potential for unjustified acrimony. The contemporary impulse for tribalism is impossible and unwise. The melting pot cannot be separated out without destroying it altogether.
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Despite some limitations of the Enlightenment’s influence on Crèvecœur and apparent contradictions in his vision of America in the “Letters,” he depicts what makes America a special place, especially for faithful followers of Christ. This vision transcends the divisiveness both extremes in our political discourse.
How, then, might Christians view America’s ethnic diversity? First, Crèvecœur’s writing embues a certain representation of God’s eschatological kingdom. From days of old, God cov
enanted with Abraham to draw unto himself people from all the tribes of the earth to worship Him. As John Piper wrote, “God’s purpose for the world is that the blessing of Abraham, namely, the salvation achieved through Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham, would reach to all the ethnic people groups of the world.”[3] John the Apostle sees this promise fulfilled in the Book of Revelation (7:9-12). Perhaps unbeknownst to him, Crèvecœur’s description of Christians from numerous countries worshipping alongside one another in Letter III anticipates that heavenly community of the saints.[4] All those redeemed by the blood of the Lamb will, in fact, worship alongside one another in spirit and truth. While America has never been that eschatological reality herself, she provides a glimpse of celestial diversity unlike any other terrestrial state.
The gospel itself subsumes ethnic differences. In his letter to the Galatian churches, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The burden of Scripture is to minimize the believer’s sociological markers at the expense of those spiritual ones that Christ bestows. If one’s ethnic identity has no bearing on his new identity in Christ, what business has any Christian leveraging it against another? One must not entertain persons who denounce one’s ethnicity, on one hand, or elevate it above others, on the other. These are both definitional forms of racism.
The Levitical command to love the stranger as yourself (Lev.19:34) is also subsumed into Christ’s command “to love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 5:43; Ga. 5:14). In Christ’s kingdom, the stranger has become one’s neighbor. The Parable of Good Samaritan vividly depicts that strand of Kingdom life. Yet some Christian circles reverse this impulse and redefine the neighbor as a stranger. Consequently, the core commands of evangelism and mission becomes quite complicated for them. Fulfilling the Great Commission, as demonstrated by the Book of Acts, does not permit discrimination.
Any concerted effort on the part of Christians to deconstruct America’s essence as a melting pot – that is, a nation that is “promiscuous” at its core – does not typically gesture toward furthering Christ’s kingdom. It is a retreat toward the curses of alienation originating at the Fall and culminating at Babel, and followers of Christ must reject it as such.
[1] Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God. Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press (2019): 167.
[2] With stern, righteous indignation, Crèvecœur addresses the abuses toward the slaves in the South in Letter IX, “Description of Charles-Town; Thoughts on Slavery; On Physical Evil; A Melancholy Scene.” The passage quoted here should not intend to diminish the African presence in those states. Instead, Letter III focuses on the northern, mid-Atlantic states.
[3] John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad, 2nd edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Acade
mic (2003); 169. [4] Again, Crèvecœur is cautious and anticipates some of the complexities
of religious freedom, namely dilution of theological stability.
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