1

Looks like an interesting project. I think I'll be giving it a shot.

2

The conclusions of the article are so intriguing – and controversial

It reeks of 'newcomer advancing counterintuitive thesis to get a name.' Not uncommon. Still, I've never been one to resist snake oil, so I'm sure I'll duly read it.

3

JPE It reeks of 'newcomer advancing counterintuitive thesis to get a name.' Not uncommon.

Ah yes, the Michael Kinsley Method. I often use it myself (to no avail).

You may not agree with the article but at least you'd get a shot at winning Hugh's book. ; )

4

I can win something? Pfft. I can come up with something waaaay crazier/more interesting/whatever than that. (note to self: read beneath the fold sometimes)

5

JPE (note to self: read beneath the fold sometimes

Um, you do realize that I often put stuff "beneath the fold" don't you? ; )

6

Given the acerbic tone, I'm not gunning for the prize. That said, there's an inherent tension between the author's pimping of Huntingon-style exclusivism and his universalism thesis. To couch Huntington in smarter soil than he's due, certain philosophical beliefs (such as American universalism) arise out of certain milieus. Just as Huntington swiped and butchered for a popular audience the ideas that became the thesis of the clash of civilizations, so he swipes his theory of geophilosophy from more supple thinkers before him. I don't think it'd be unfair to consider Huntington the Barnum & Bailey of thought: the great populizer of the erstwhile exotic.

Anyways, the central idea comes straight from Deleuze, and more elliptically from Nietzsche: ideas don't just arise from Platonic ether. Rather, they arise from particular territories.

Idealists would claim that the great feat of America has been to thoroughly deterritorialize the idea of universal freedom. They tear the idea from it's origin, and reimplant it in a no-place (utopia: pun intended). Of course, this is no easy task, and I think the author belies his thesis in some primoridial American universalism. Note the major figures he cites: Adams, Jefferson, Wilson, Truman, Reagan.

Cosmopolitans. Thoroughly rootless and always already deterritorialized.

The central figure? Wilson. The most internationalist, rootless figure of them all.

The author claims: "I do not claim that Lincoln, Winthrop, and Bradford were crypto-Jews."

To that, I say nonsense. His thesis is that we're universalizing exiles (what is a cosmolopolitan if not a panterritorial exile?), and wants to necessarily root this concept in puritanism. This is silliness, though: "cryptojews" like Spinoza and Leibniz laid much of the universalist foundations for American thinkers; I'd think that at least as much claim could be laid to their legacy as to the expressly exclusionist legacy of the puritans.

What the author ought to explore, but poignantly doesn't, is the weird territorialized heart of the non-Crypto-Jew universalist project. There are all kinds of interesting tensions in the popular American universalist project (as opposed to the elitist, cosmopolitan one that the author solely explores); I would think that those tensions, as productive and generative as they've been, would've proven richer terrain to till.

7

Um, you do realize that I often put stuff "beneath the fold" don't you? ; )

Yeah, but only after I've already posted at least one stupid question that's answered by something beneath the fold. You'd think I'd have learned by now.

Anyhoo, it's a very interesting essay - I think the above was unnecessarily salty. I've always found that good essays raise my dander. Once I've exorcised that raised dander, I can chill and respond more intelligently. Again, good essay. Makes ya salty and thinky.

8

I'm in. This article fits very well with a discussion we've been having over at Liberty. Thanks for running the contest, just wish the deadline was a little longer....

9

I'm willing to try this, but jpe's high-falutin words make me realize just how deep the water I'm wading into is.

10

Oh, I'm definitely in. Especially when there's high-falutin words involved. Plus... we have a whole weekend to write it in!

Sweet.

Thanks Joe! This fits in with a series I was working on by fits and starts - America's "Christian Heritage" :D

and I really want a copy of Hugh's book...

11

I'll bite. Seems to fit my thesis on the effects of the withdrawal of the Church from the public square.

12

Would it be sufficient to use trackback or do you want a link to the entry posts e-mailed to you?

13

Would it be sufficient to use trackback or do you want a link to the entry posts e-mailed to you?

Whichever is easiest.

14

Very interesting. I found myself meditating on much of the same information and reaching conclusions that, though in a different key, arise from the same music:
Getting to know place.

I wrote this a few days ago, so it's not an entry to the contest. I may do that too, if I get some other things done first.

15

Sorry about that. I didn't realize the link above would open in this tiny comment window. Here's url to copy, if anyone's interested.

http://www.montanaheritageproject.org/index.php/MichaelUmphrey/getting-to-know-a-place

16

I don't think anyone will top this.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GA04Aa01.html

17

I'm missing something (as usual). Where does one send a contribution/comment?

18

Here's my take on the article.

There's a name for this type of stuff in Yiddish, Joe, and it ain't "controversial." It's dreck.

19

Slight URL change here for my take on the article.

Geez, how can you take that stuff seriously?

20

In response to an early comment: while I don't usually agree with Gelernter, he's hardly a "newcomer." He's a respected computer scientist at Yale (and was, not incidentally, a victim of the Unabomber, which - hardly surprisingly - seems to have embittered him). He writes on computers-and-society issues and is also a contributing editor at a number of conservative publications, including National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Manhattan Institute Journal. He is known as a fairly extreme cultural conservative of the "good old days" variety (surprising, for he's not that old). Like him or not, he's widely published.

21

Assuming that Gelernter's central claim is true, that Americanism is a religion, what does that imply for Christians who are Americans? Even if Gelernter is correct that Americanism is derived from a branch of Christianity, that doesn't mean it is still Christianity or that all its aspects are compatible with Christianity. Should Christians have two religions?

Gelernter's comments about the civil war are also interesting and probably controversial in some quarters. If, as he argues, the Union army gained it's "practically incandescent determination" from the moral strength of its American essence, does that not imply that its enemy was evil and anti-American? To what extent does admiration for the confederacy still inform current culture and politics in the U.S., particularly in the south?

And it's not obvious that Americanism (if it exists) is derived solely from Puritanism. The Pennsylvania Quakers and Virginia planters were culturally and religiously quite distinct from New England Puritans, but they also had a very strong influence on the early shape of American culture.

Finally, I'd like to see more evidence that foreign anti-Americanism is significantly different than foreign disdain for the perceived arrogance and self-righteousness of, for instance, the British at the height of the empire. A mix of envy and fear may the cause of anti-americanism, and its particular shape just a reaction to the most obvious characteristics of the most powerful nation.

22

Looking at that article one more time, I could have actually argued against it from a Christian perspective, ...

Freedom, equality, democracy: the Declaration held these truths to be self-evident, but “self-evident” they were certainly not.

Uh, the self-evident rights were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

How are the creed’s three conclusions derived from the Bible? Freedom is the message of the Exodus, one of the Hebrew Bible’s great underlying themes.

Liberty, yeah. Give him that one... but what I find- often find- is that the use of a metaphor is problematic- people often don't get it.

Next, equality. Equality was connected with Genesis—every man is created in God’s image—...

Every man created in God's image does not necessarily imply equality. And indeed, slaves weren't equal.

. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, often called the “first written constitution of modern democracy,” were inspired not by democratic Athens or republican Rome or Enlightenment philosophy but by a Puritan preacher’s interpretation of a verse in the Hebrew Bible. They were drafted in May 1638, in response to a sermon by Thomas Hooker before the general assembly in Hartford.

Hooker cited the biblical passage, “Take ye wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you” (Deuteronomy 1:13).

Ah, yes, democracy, but for "freemen" only.

23

And - sorry folks- I gotta comment on this line:

In 1776, three-quarters of American citizens were Puritan.

This seems absurd at face value: Pennsylvania, e.g., was Quaker. Maryland was largely Catholic. Georgia? Puritan? And then there were the slaves, hardly Puritans. By "Puritians," I think that one must mean those Reformed folks who were the original colonists in Massachusetts. I would hardly count the Unitarians of Massachusetts over 100 years later as "Puritans," as there can be no rational explanation why they abandonded biblical authority so early if they were "Puritans."

There's no documentation for this claim whatsover.

24

If Gelertner's saying it (and it isn't computers), it's worth hearing.

I was introduced to Professor David Gelertner through his book 1939: Lost World of the Fair (written while recovering from the Unabomber) which compares and contrasts the Zeitgeists of the 1930s and 1990s through the device of a tour of the 1939 New York World's Fair. I have never met Professor Gelertner face-to-face, but after that book I give a listen to anything he has to say. (The exception is computers, where he often gets obscure and theoretical.)

(I was surprised to learn he was a Computer Science professor; from that work I figured his specialty was American History.)

25

Harold Bloom's book "The American Religion" examines this topic.

The thesis of the book is that the religion that most Americans adhere to "masks itself as Protestant Christianity yet has ceased to be Christian."

"There are indeed millions of Christians in the United States, but most Americans who think they are Christians truly are something else, intensely religious but devout in the American Religion, a faith that is old among us and that comes in many guises and disguises, and that overdetermines much of our national life."

He is claiming that Americans are actually practicing a new form of the Christian heresy called gnosticism.

26

I believe the Puritan ethic is best represented by Evangelical Christians today. They are the ones leading the charge to bring us back to a Godly view of how mankind should live. An accurate review of American history will verify many of the claims in this essay. Of course the humanists, who are responsible for all good and no evil, ever, will dispute this claim. After all AlGore invented the internet.
The humanists are the greatest adversary to keeping America American. Their dark history does not diswade them in the least. During the last century humanist barbarism has murdered more people than all the so called holy wars in the history of man. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro et al are the main players in humanist history. Yet, a testament to the hopeless ignorance of all man kind is the humanist view "we'll get it right this time". And so we have 40 million innocents slaughtered in the abortion mills and homosexuality being forced down our throats inspite of the grave health risks they bring to all of us. Yet it is the saving grace of the scripture that is being demonized.
The Puritans knew that the only thing evil needs to prosper is to have good men do nothing. Sadly, two thirds of those who call themselves "Christian" are no such thing. Only humanists playing church, justifying what seems right in their own eyes, as in the time of Noah. Blinded by a humanist world view.
You just have to review history, which is a difficult thing to do if you get a "condem on the banana" school education. There you learn about every sin committed by white males and many fabricated out of whole cloth. The "Brave New World" will have no place for Americanism.
This is a war and the survival of our country, nay, the whole free world is at stake. So praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, the battle is engaged and there is no end in sight.

27

Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes. Or, at least, truth is at least as awful as some of the nightmarish scenarios which I have proposed are the logical extensions of fundamentalist arguments re "killling embryos = murder."

Check out this sick piece of legislation. What a sad joke!!!!

http://democracyforvirginia.typepad.com/democracy_for_virginia/2005/01/legislative_sen.html

"You are at home alone at 8:00 on a Friday night. You are 8 weeks pregnant. You are excited about the pregnancy, but being cautious, you haven’t told anyone about it yet except your partner, your best friend, your parents, and your doctor.

All of a sudden, you begin to experience heavy cramping. Bleeding ensues. You realize with shock and sadness that you are probably experiencing a miscarriage. You leave a message with your doctor’s service. The on-call doctor calls back, offers sympathies, and advises taking pain medication or going to the hospital if the bleeding gets worse. She offers you the next available appointment for a follow-up exam - Monday at 3PM. You accept. You are overwhelmed with grief and surprised by the intensity of physical pain involved. You call your partner and ask him to come home from his “boys night out”, sparing him the reason over the phone. You call your best friend. She offers to come over immediately and make you cocoa. You cry.

You decide not to tell your parents yet; let them sleep through the night before delivering the terrible news. Your partner comes home and you break the sad news to him. He holds you on the couch and you both cry together. Your best friend comes over with cocoa. You cry some more. Over the next few hours, you suffer pain, cramping, and intermittent bleeding. Exhausted, you finally fall asleep in your partner’s arms around 4 AM. You sleep until noon, and then gird yourself for the difficult call to your parents, who were so eagerly anticipating their first grandchild.

Guess what? You just earned yourself up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine. Why? Because you failed to call the cops and report your miscarriage within 12 hours."

28

Interesting essay, he seems to acknowledge the solid historical facts -that the US is based on Protestant Christian principles informed by the ideals and practical knowledge gained during the Great British Civil Wars of 1639 to 1651, to some degree by the Enlightenment, etc. -that long-suffering, non-Anglican Protestants viewed the new World as a land where they could worship God freely (a Promised Land, if you will) ...

But aside from this the author seems historically confused, ...

*as an aside, the comments on the EO Blog (from some quaters and when taken as a whole) strike me as exactly backwards, these posters claim that they certainly know what happened far, far before written history (with very little or no evidence of any kind), and that we cannot know what happened a few hundred years ago -despite and to the contrary of- written history and evidence of almost every imaginable sort...

29

Intriguing. I'd like to give this a shot or at least a thoughtful read. I'll send a trackback.
Seriously Joe, if I 'win', can I please pass on those prizes? Blog on!

30

Gelernter so throughly misinterprets Puritanism - from its orgins to its major emphases to its demise - that any conclusions he draws are inevitably flawed.

31

I wrote this immediately after the Madrid bombings in March, 2004.

My piece made many of the points David Gelernter makes, except I seem to have been less culturally self-aware. The Madrid massacres shook me up even more than 9/11 and I may have neglected to conceal my Puritan roots.

Gerlenter is particularly good at reminding us of the role of American Presidents in re-articulating the Puritan legacy - most notably in the person of Lincoln, but Wilson also gets a mention, as does Roosevelt. Less surprisingly, Ronald Reagan uses the very phrase "city on a hill."

But Gerlenter leaves out Martin Luther King, Jr. This is odd. Perhaps he thinks it is too obvious a reference. If ever there was a second Moses in American history it was King. King was more self-consciously Moses than Winthrop.

The fact that King lead the most effective radical social and political movement of the American 20th Century, and did it on the back of English Puritan ideology, is sufficient to reaffirm the role of the Hebrew Bible traditions in the development of the American culture.

And in David Gerlenter style, right at the end I must add: That story is not over yet.

32

Having reread, it's actually far more banal than it was at first sight. There's plenty to draw out, but that's due more to the richness of the topic than the thesis of the author.

33

Count me in Joe.

I'll let others debate the relative merits of the thesis from the historical perspective. What is of interest to me is the theological connections. Old Testament>-->Puritans>--->"Americanism?

Israel of old was marked by inconsistencies so why are we suprised when new Israel is also inconsistent. Coming to the ideal is an on-going historical process over time. Perfection is never found, but I do not at all beleive we have to come to that perfection beforer we can seek to shine a little light of hope in a dark world. Former U.S. salavery does not invalidate the principle of equality. Robber baron greed does not invalidate the principles of social responsibility and compassion. If there is a fault with "Americanism" it is a lack of humility.

We may debate the degree of connection between Puritanism and Americanism, but in my mind it's pretty clear that there is a connection and Americanism has borrowed from the Puritan vision.

Peace, ~ The Billy Goat ~

34

Joel,

Do explain how that has anything to do with gnosticism. Gnosticism is an extremely mystical religion that is an amalgamation of several different early and middle Christian sects. How it has any relation to modern "Americanism" is beyond me.

35

wow...for a first timer to any blog I, well, am at a loss. I do not have enough information to respond to the article in question, but it does echo in some fashion a position I have maintained for some time. Many focus their lives toward removing anything smacking of religion and are unaware that this leaves them with...yep, another religion. And then there are those that experience religion in primarily a cultural context. If I am not mistaken, this Americanism from Puritanism argument is from a cultural religion perspective and sounds quite interesting. I would agree that many that call themselves Christian today do more from a social/cultural/emotional position than any knowledge of Scripture, doctrine, or theology. Sadly it seems that many or most of these are displacing those that would be disciples from the contemporary church. So, Americanism from Puritanism...linking now

36

It boils down to the Puritan founders of the American Republic. Puritanism disappeared into Unitarianism, which has degenerated so totally that it is the only church in which you would never hear the word "God," and Trinitarian Presbyterianism, about which I know nothing. Gelernter claims, and I can buy what he's selling, that Puritanism morphed into Americanism, the idealistic engine that powers and invigorates the American society.

I don't think it's incompatible with Christianity. The whole message rings out in popular lyrics such as "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again," the Horatio Alger canon, Think and Grow Rich, and the Dale Carnegie Movement. Americans love to say "God helps those who help themselves." Though biblical literalists scoff at this belief, it is key to the American mingling of Christianity and Involvement in Science and Commerce. And I for one find it more hopeful, enabling, and freeing than Prov 28:26 (NIV) "He who trusts in himself is a fool..." America was not hewed out of a continent by God, or a noble ancient regime, but by people just like us.

If I could put words into America's mouth, they would be "Let us beware of hubris but continue to act with resolve, with God as our compass."

37

American Gnosticism?

Gnosticism teaches that the world of material things is evil, the prison created by the Evil Demi-Urge to imprison the divine Spirit created by God, and that only God and the fragments of Spirit He created are good. I can't see this as a mainstream American belief, but it resonates with certain movements like Primitive Baptists, the Amish, some New Agers, and various millenialist belief systems that discount the importance of life in favor of an existence in Heaven.

38

I think the perceived animosity between the US and Europe is not a result of anything the Europeans have done so much as an extension of two core facets of the American experience being reigned in by realities that are as much beyond our control as they are unsettling to contemplate.

1. We don't conserve, energy, food, pollutants, etc., because for our entire history as a nation we've been accustomed to unbridled resources and unending open spaces. "Amber waves of grain' and endless ones at that.

2. We don't generally do well with Multi-lateralism because, again for so much of our history, we were separated by two oceans from anyone who could do us significant harm which meant we could more or less shut out the rest of the world and do as we wished.

That begin to change after World War Two, but most of the world we cared about was with 'us' and not with 'them' all through the cold war, so we got used to everyone agreeing with 'us' and perhaps assumed that was the Way Things Ought to Always be and Always Would Be; Forevermore. But ...not so, forevermore ...

What we're going through now is a national, emotionally painful, readjustment process, as both of those idyllic pleasantries fall under the weight of a reality we don't wish to confront but nevertheless cannot prevent. When confronted with it in a grisly way, or even a not so grisly way, we tend to blame 'them' along the lines of blaming the messenger, and/or we tend to just freakin deny it; denial is certianly alive and well in America!
And, as much as I'd like to take credit for these thoughts and win a cool prize or a shiny gold star next to my name, in fair use disclosure I have to point out that Jared Diamond, Jim Kunstler, and many others, beat me to it years ago.

39

DS,
We are not estranged from 'Europe' but from France and to a lesser degree Germany. We still number European countries like Great Britain and Italy among our closest allies. French leaders had a cozy economic relationship with Saddam Hussien; now he is in a jail cell and to be prosecuted for his murderous butchery. France has lost its ally in Iraq, that is the long and short of it.

40

Dear Mr. Carter, my contribution to your symposium appears in my blog as "The anti-anti-Americanism we need now."

41

It is interesting to contrast Nazism with its attitude to the "Jewish influence" and some of
the Jewish influence on America.

In his commentary he notes the link between the OT and Puritanism, then he links that to Americanism.

42

The proper, American, way to respond to an account of Americanism is "constitutionally," which is to say by instituting the equivalent of a system of checks and balances. Instead of simply negating Gelernter's approach by reiterating the standard and intellectually lazy reproaches, which really amount to asserting our own moral superiority to the people without whom our moral sense wouldn't have been possible in the first place, why not deepen, enhance and complicate Gerlenter's thesis by introducing a string of competing, complementing and overlapping ones?

The first contending thesis: a definition of "Americanism" in terms of the Constitution, which relies upon the Declaration of Independence and its reliance upon Puritan and ultimately Hebraic notions of equality in the sight of God but also offers an enormously more complex anthropology as well as an exemplary process of discussion, debate and compromise (in the Federal Convention and then in the ratification process). Once we say the equality is ordained by God, and therefore the ultimate horizon of any political arrangements, it also follows that social division and conflict are inevitable and can never be settled once and for all--precisely because, paradoxically, no one can accept any one's contrary judgment to one's own sense of being treated unequally. The Constitution answers this insight by taking virtually every source of conflict deriving from human envy, resentment and striving for distinction and articulating them within a series of institutional processes that make such potentially destructive passions part of the inner workings of an infinitely expansive system. If we are to think of ourselves generatively, that is, in terms of how we find in where we are the resources for projecting where we might go; rather than thinking in originary terms, the Constitution and the political thinking it implicates, is the better guide. Of course, the originary kernel Gelernter provides is essential for taking up the Constitution in this way.

Second: American pragmatism. On the one hand, it is easy enough to see the debt American pragmatists like James and Dewey had to the presuppositions regarding equality and self-government that lead us back to the Hebraic origins of Gerlenter's Puritans. On the other hand, the mainstream of American pragmatism, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, and, today, academics like Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty, aims at undermining the "theologico-political" structures Gelernter is retrieving. (Even if it's a little more complicated in the case of James). But this is not true of the founder of pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce, who not only believed in the "reality" of God, but provided brilliant arguments on behalf of the rationality, necessity and beneficiality of such belief. In other words, for Peirce, reason, faith and human solidarity are all interwoven. If we take--obviously the whole argument is much too complex to make here--Peirce (whose ternary definition of human knowledge and experience in terms of (along with other conceptual terms) "chance," "force" and "law" interestingly corresponds with the separation of powers of the American constitutional structure) as a "constitutional" thinker whose thinking (much more so than, say, a more obviously "Puritan" thinker like Emerson) many still find inexhaustible today--then I have just added to the viability of my hypothesis regarding the strength of this version of Americanism.

Finally, taking into account the contribution of classical American literature, and in particular Herman Melville, might further energize a collective inquiry based upon Gelernter's thesis. I would suggest (this is obviously not original--see, among many other places, Sacvan Berkovitch's very well known The American Jeremiad, which advanced, much more ambivalently, a thesis similar to Gelernter's regarding Puritanism and Americanism) that Melville was fascinated and horrified by "Americanism," and a very interesting way to read his work is as an exploration of the possible consequences and limits of this form of religiosity and community. And in Moby Dick, for example, he touched on one crucial and very sensitive point which I think Gelernter's account is vulnerable to as well: once you see America as a historical "type" (re-enacting but also, necessarily, modifying, the ancient Hebrews process of liberation, degeneration, punishment and redemption) then you give yourself license to disregard empirical reality by reading everything as a "type" of some "promise" to be realized later or as a betrayal of some promise that should have been realized by now. There is the potential for enormous violence in this disposition. Now, I'm not saying that Melville is simply right, or should have the last word in the discussion, but that we should always carry his "pessimistic" questioning with us as a "check and balance" to the more "optimistic" assumptions embedded in Americanism.

I want to conclude by insisting that none of this is meant to refute Gelernter's thesis--his thesis is, in fact, inescapable--that really is the strongest version of Americanism possible and anyone genuinely interested in the distinction, power and permanence of the U.S.A will ultimately find themself drawn to that thesis; and, conversely, those attempting to refute it will almost invariably show themselves to be opposed to and/or ashamed of Americanism and to desire nothing more than for the U.S. to become indistinguishable from, say, Denmark. My point is that taking Gelernter's thesis seriously will lead to something along the lines of the thesis I have presented here--and back again. And this is not meant to exclude yet other possible articulations.

43

LOL... Uhhh ... yeah TWJ, just keep repeating that to yourself until you buy it pal ... They love us over there, they're just jealous of us over there...there's no place like home ...

44

My thoughts are that Mr. Gelernter used a lot of isolated quotations with religious overtones to back up a claim for which he offers precious little evidence in the end.

It seems to me that "Americanism"is better explained by the birth of Jacksonian Democracy during the early 1800s and its continued influence on America's self-perception and politics.

I think Red America is what we are really talking about, and Red America - its attitudes, values, and propensity for fightin' - is better explained by James Webb's "Born Fighting - how the Scotch-Irish Shaped America." Puritans they were not.

45

I'm in. something will be linked soon. I am very excited such a thesis was put forward. It is quite relevant and addresses what I believe to be the most important element missing in analysis of our liberties (and the origins of the universe too, but I'll leave that to another debate). :)

46

Count me in! My entry for this symposium can be found here:

http://paragraphfarmer.blogspot.com/2005/01/retooling-americanism.html

47

In his long, droning article “Americanism—and Its Enemies” David Gelernter's central thesis is: Americanism is a religion. He bases this thesis on the premise that because fervent anti-Americanism “resembles a religion—or a caricature of a religion” (his words) its opposite, Americanism, must be a religion.

That's an interesting theory in spite of its illogical nature (one thing IS something because its opposite RESEMBLES that thing) but he then confounds the reader by making a further quantum leap with the flat-out declaration that “Americanism is not . . . a 'secular' or a 'civil' religion. No mere secular ideology,“ he claims, ”no mere philosophical belief, could possibly have inspired the intensities of hatred and devotion that Americanism has. Americanism is in fact a Judeo-Christian religion; a millenarian religion; a biblical religion.“

Word games! “Mere secular ideology“ he states, as if the term 'secular ideology' was an oxymoron to be dismissed. The same trick applies to the term 'philosophical belief' dismissing it as a “mere philosophical belief.“

Worse yet is Gelernter's definition of Americanism; he states in his second paragraph: “By Americanism I mean the set of beliefs that are thought to constitute America’s essence and to set it apart; the beliefs that make Americans positive that their nation is superior to all others—morally superior, closer to God.“ What an insult to intelligent religious Americans: 'you are so vain, he tells you, you feel you are superior to all others.' I certainly hope that religious Americans are above the type of vain elitism Gelernter accuses them of.

A thesis based on a false premise must be dismissed -- relegated to the scrap heap. That is where this essay belongs.

(This, along with a preface, is posted on my blog.)

48

Dear DS; Europe is not a parent to us. They are more like the crazy old aunt, who has 50 cats and whose house smells like urine.
We are their savoirs. We bailed them out of their disfunctional messes at least three times last century. WWI, WWII, The Cold War. The only thing that kept the Russians out of Western Europe was the United States.
The screeching of the crazy old aunt, while anoying, makes no real difference to our world.

49

RA you wrote, "Europe is not a parent to us. They are more like the crazy old aunt, who has 50 cats and whose house smells like urine..."

You really hit the nail on the head -perfect analogy and a good chuckle to boot, ROTFL. I'm going to use that one sometime (with your permission).
------------------------------------------

DS you wrote, "...they love us over there..."

Here's a free lesson in foreign relations: Nations have interests and allies NOT affections and friendships.

50

A contribution from a Christ based philosophy perspective is here.

http://secundumchristum.blogspot.com/2005/01/blog-symposium-successor-of-puritanism.html

51

The thesis is intriguing and certainly highlights the role of the New England culture in shaping our national life. That said, it becomes easy to read our present state backwards, to think they are like us; our prejudices theirs, etc.

Americanism certainly carries on the puritanism, but also the experience of the southern presbyterianism, of the trauma of the Civil War, and of revivalism. What is significant is how this robust protestant culture in turn can become the home for so many from so wonderfully diverse lands. These processes (frontier, south, war, immigration among others) also add to the mix in shaping our national spiritual identity.

52

I have posted a response, "Americanism, Puritanism & the People of God," at www.nonprophetchurch.blogspot.com.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Dr.MR

53

How does one enter this contst. The deadline is fast approaching. Where to we submit/post our essays?

54

Link to my posting for the 2005 EO Symposium (1st Quarter):

"Americanism?" Or, "Christian constitutionalism?"

URL: http://burkeancanuck.blogspot.com/2005/01/americanism-or-christian.html
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Russ Kuykendall
Toronto

55

Here's my response to Gelertner's article, which I thought was quite good, though I don't know much about the topic.

"My Anti-Americanism":
http://ikilledcheguevara.blogspot.com/2005/01/my-anti-americanism.html

I can't decide which is greater: the irritability of jpe's personality, or the irrelevance of his comments.

Also, the article powerprof posted sucked, though the facts at the ends were neat:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GA04Aa01.html

56

Here's my take on the article as well:

http://xbip.com/index.php?m=20050111

57

Some interesting comments. I tend to agree with Joel that there is a strong Gnostic tendency in Americanism. Yes, it originally came through Puritanism but has been warped by the left wing of the Reformation also know as Anabaptism. Keep in mind also that not all Gnosticism has been anti-matter. For instance, in the Romantic period the goal was to become a Magus, i.e., a god walking on earth. Much of this was taken from Hermes Trismegistus who is said to have taught both Moses and Plato. The thing that all Gnosticism has in common is a strong emphasis on unmediated, immanent experience of the divine. Bloom spots this in Americanism and calls it the American Religion including all species of new cults started in America such as Jehovah's Witnessess, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Pentecostals and Billy Graham style Baptists.
Add to this the strong anti-intellectual strain of American Protestantism (liberal and conservative), anti-creedalism, anti-history, anti-sacrament, anti-patriarchal feminism, anti-institutionalism, and subjective individualism. This is certainly not Christianity but it is reductionistic and does resemble the charismatic left wing of the Reformation.

58

My comments are found at
http://www.sogol.net/2005/01/from_winthrop_t.html

59

Joe,
I emailed you about an hour ago, but just to let you know, my response is posted at http://johncoleman.typepad.com.

60

Can't we all just get along ????

61

well, visited again, and see the degeneration into psuedo intellectual tripe. buh bye