The Gospel of Freedom,or Another Gospel? Augustinian Reflections on Empire and American Foreign Policy

Abstract

American foreign policy is often extolled in terms of exporting "freedom" to the rest of the world— extending God's gift to humanity (according to President Bush's Second Inaugural). But just what notion of "freedom" undergirds this project? According to the National Security Strategy, the freedom being globalized is a negative, non-teleological notion of freedom that primarily underwrites the expansion of free markets. But such a liberal, non-teleological notion of freedom is just the notion of freedom that is rejected by the orthodox (Augustinian) theological tradition. So the theological invocations that cloak this foreign policy can only be, technically, heretical. This paper takes Augustine's theology as a mode of cultural criticism, offering a contemporary rendition of Augustine's critique of empire in The City of God by interrogating the discourse of freedom associated with the Bush Doctrine as well as a critique of Hardt and Negri's alternative as it is laid out in Empire and Multitude.     

Constructing an Empire? Guano, Bananas, and American Foreign Relations

Jimmy M. Skaggs. The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs and American Overseas Expansion . New York.
Lester D. Langley and Thomas Schoonover. The Banana Men: American Mercenaries and Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880–1930 .