A Thinking Reed

Is America a Christian Nation?

Written by

Lee M.

in

Interesting piece from “paleocon” Thomas Fleming in the London Spectator (registration req’d):

America has always been a strange place, even to Americans. While most countries are content merely to exist, America is supposed to have a project, a destiny, a divine mission. New England Puritans suffered from the delusion that their little settlement was a ‘city on a hill’, and Cotton Mather, who played a key role in the Salem witch trials, thought New England was plagued by witches because, before the arrival of white European Calvinists, the continent had been a playground for devil-worshipping Indians and idolatrous Catholics. President Lincoln went so far as to describe the United States as ‘dedicated’ to a proposition, and secular Americans speak glibly of America as ‘an experiment’ — a grisly idea, if ever there was one. Even today patriotic conservatives believe that ‘God’ has blessed our nation as a reward for our virtue and our piety.

[…]

Small wonder that so many Europeans are afraid of the United States and its messianic approach to foreign policy. The good news is that all our exceptional virtue and piety is so much buncombe, as Mencken would have said. Despite the many myths of American ‘exceptionalism’, most Americans have always been just as content to muddle through as if they had been born among the unredeemed heathens of London and Paris.

[…]

I have lived 60 years in the United States, the first 25 of them as an atheist, the last 35 as an increasingly reactionary Christian. I have never witnessed the great piety and deep spirituality which I have heard described in 4 July addresses and in semi-scholarly tomes on American religion. We are a practical people, above all else, and, as I have heard repeatedly from business and political leaders, religion makes good sense: the man who goes to church also goes to work, takes care of his family, pays his taxes. This is religiosity, not Christianity.

[…]

European leftists can breathe a sigh of relief. A typical American may go to church too often to be respectable, but when he walks out on the street he is either a little liberal or else a little conservative. If there really were a ‘Christian America’, Hollywood would be broke, and the ashes of both political parties would be reposing quietly in the dustbin of history.

Comments

3 responses to “Is America a Christian Nation?”

  1. Joshie

    Even though I have plenty of issues with American culture I found this article to be pretty darn insulting.

    And I wonder where in America has he been living? Living 60 years in New York or Boston doesn’t make you an authority on what Americans are “really” like, anymore than living in London for 60 years makes you an authority on what life is like in the whole of England. If he wants to see piety and spirituality, I suggest he move somewhere west of the Appalachins and East of the Sierra Nevada. Typical of East Coast arrogance and ignorance of the rest of the country, a phenomenon that infects right and left.

    P.S. Looking at his “Hard Right” column I found his vicious ethnic slurs against Albanians to be pretty hard to read. The guy seems like a bit of a nut.

    Reply
  2. Lee

    Josh – are you defending red state America?? 😉

    I do think there is a tendency for Americans to think of themselves as uniquely virtuous – something politicians are constantly using as a prop in speeches. That said, I think Fleming goes too far here – maybe his intellectual sensibilities can’t take the tackiness of so much of American spirituality.

    I actually think that’s a big temptation for those of us who like to fancy ourselves “sophisiticated, thinking” Christians. Well, at least it’s a temptation for me! That is, to confuse cultural sophistication with piety or virtue. For instance, I am sometimes tempted to think of a high, liturgical worship service in a Lutheran or Episcopal church as somehow spiritually superior to the worship in an evangelical megachurch. But a lot of that (I’m not going to say all of it) is merely my own aesthetic snobbery and preferences. I think Fleming may be guilty of the same thing here.

    (Though, in his defense, I think the magazine he writes for is based in Rockford, IL, so I don’t know if we can chalk it up to his being an out of touch East Coast elitist)

    Reply
  3. Joshie

    LOL I was trying to figure out where his magazine was from so I could be sure he was an East Coast Elitist, but I couldn’t find any info on it so I just went for it. I regret nothing. An Illinois elitist maybe?

    I agree with you that we “high churchers” can equate our taste in liturgy with authentic worship. I have found myself doing this too. Just because a high church Anglican service moves me more than an evangelical, 7-11 (seven words eleven times) chorus session doesn’t mean the evangelical worship is NECESSARILY shallow or phoney in some way. However, one look at some of the materials on how to lead a “contemporary” worship service, (like changing to a higher key or raising the sanctuary lights at certain points in the service to manipulate the worshippers into a spiritual high) can leave one very, very cold.

    Reply

Leave a comment

More posts