Many people regard America as being an idea or ideal - but is it a religious idea? There may be some merit to that. Many of the first colonists in America saw it as a "City on the Hill," a "new Canaan" where a pure Christianity could be developed. This has helped increase the fervor of patriotism and nationalism in America, even among the more secular Americans.

For much of its history, people in America have seen their nation, guided by divine providence, as a means by which they could bring religion and civilization to the rest of the world, lighting the path so that others might follow. This tradition continues to day, but George Monbiot writes for the Mail & Guardian that it may be getting worse:

The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory: “Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope -- a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, ‘To the captives, “come out,” and to those in darkness, “be free”.’” So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons.

Americans are God’s chosen people; America itself is now perceived as a divine project. In his farewell presidential address, Ronald Reagan spoke of his country as a “shining city on a hill”, a reference to the Sermon on the Mount. But what Jesus was describing was not a temporal Jerusalem, but the kingdom of heaven. Not only, in Reagan’s account, was God’s kingdom to be found in the United States of America, but the kingdom of hell could also now be located on earth: the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union, against which His holy warriors were pitched.

Monbiot is correct that belief in national divinity has its dangers; on the other hand, that’s a risk that necessarily accompanies any nation that is bound more by a shared set of ideals than shared language, religion, custom, or ethnicity. Is there, however, any way to preserve such a sense of America without it also becoming its own religion?

Part of the problem is the refusal of so many Americans to even consider the possibility that the American way of doing something may not always be the best way in every circumstance. Like an exclusivist an dogmatic religion which denies the possibility of salvation to adherents of any other religious system, America is treated by many as a way of life, ideology, and political philosophy compared to which all other options are immeasurably inferior.

 

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