This book originated in a curious fact about my move to England more than a decade ago: I quickly developed a previously unknown interest in studying the country from which I had come. Though I was not at that moment ideally situated for studying the history of American political ideas, I was well placed for learning about the places and intellectual traditions from which the reverse migration had first been made. Thus I started doing groundwork in English and to some extent European political thought from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When I returned to the United States, I set out more directly on my path toward composing a first volume in the history of American political ideas.

That volume has yet to be produced. This book is the surprising result of my researches toward that project; it has not fulfilled the project itself. I wanted to acquire knowledge about American political ideas for its own sake, but along the way I discovered things about modern democratic thought which may be of interest even to people who find the other subject inherently uninteresting. Human affairs being as they are, to learn something important about the history of democratic thought is necessarily to learn something important about democracy itself. Thus I am deliberately offering a hybrid book, and I can only hope that seekers of knowledge about both the fields that it covers will find in it some reward for their pursuit.

Another curious feature of this book, and one that surprises those who know me well, is the amount of sustained attention I have given (not to say devoted) to matters of Christian theology – or, more precisely, ecclesiology.