A Religious Idea Called "America"

The always excellent Brothers Judd excerpts David Gelernter's provocative A Religious Idea Called "America": How Puritanism Created It, What It Means, Why It Matters as part of their wonderful selection of Independence Day readings.

Americanism, or the religious idea called “America,” seems like a secular idea. It can and has been professed by devout atheists. Its creed, a central element of Americanism, is completely secular in tone--of course there’s no canonical version, but most people would agree that it calls for liberty, equality, and democracy for all mankind--or something on those lines.

I’ll argue that despite all this, Americanism is profoundly Christian in its inspiration and worldview.

It is in fact profoundly Puritan.

[...]

America is the Puritan nation. Europeans have always seen that clearly
enough; Americans might as well, too.

Hatred of Puritanism happens to be one of the best-established
bigotries of modern times. “Puritan” has been an insult for hundreds of years.
It suggests rigid, austere, censorious--exactly the kind of religion secularists
love to hate. Puritans were rigid and censorious, up to a point. Most
caricatures are partly true. But they were much else besides. They were creative
thinkers about man’s spiritual role in the modern state and the modern
world.

Puritanism was a British invention of the Elizabethan age. It reflected
the unhappiness of English Protestants who saw the Church of England as not
really Protestant or insufficiently Protestant; who wanted a purified church
with no hierarchy or no Catholic-style hierarchy, where each Christian dealt
directly with the Bible and the Lord.

Read the entire thing: http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/2008/07/like_palmolive_1.html