The Spirit of/and Political Science

• In Event: Religion and the Study of Political Institutions

Abstract

In the early years of the twentieth century, Protestantism was central to many political science theories of development. Prominent scholars like Woodrow Wilson and Charles and Mary Beard saw Protestantism as central to democracy, civil society, and economic modernization. Over time, the discipline’s theories of political development became more plural as the U.S., and the academy, became more religiously diverse and global. Yet, the residues of those theories remain present and continue to shape academic discourses about development. This paper traces the writings of key luminaries of the discipline—Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Holcombe, Charles and Mary Beard, Hans Morgenthau, Samuel Huntington, and Larry Diamond—in order to map the evolution of political science theories of religion and development. More specifically, the paper describes scholars’ ideas about the “spirit” of democracy, capitalism, and civil society in order to both unearth latent assumptions about the soul of political development and to explicate the motivating "spirit" of American political science.

Author

• Jeremy Menchik, Boston University