Americanism:The Fourth Great Western Religion

David Gelernter

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jun 19, 2007 - Social Science - 256 pages

What does it mean to “believe” in America? Why do we always speak of our country as having a mission or purpose that is higher than other nations?
Modern liberals have invested a great deal in the notion that America was founded as a secular state, with religion relegated to the private sphere. David Gelernter argues that America is not secular at all, but a powerful religious idea—indeed, a religion in its own right.
Gelernter argues that what we have come to call “Americanism” is in fact a secular version of Zionism. Not the Zionism of the ancient Hebrews, but that of the Puritan founders who saw themselves as the new children of Israel, creating a new Jerusalem in a new world. Their faith-based ideals of liberty, equality, and democratic governance had a greater influence on the nation’s founders than the Enlightenment.
Gelernter traces the development of the American religion from its roots in the Puritan Zionism of seventeenth-century New England to the idealistic fighting faith it has become, a militant creed dedicated to spreading freedom around the world. The central figures in this process were Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, who presided over the secularization of the American Zionist idea into the form we now know as Americanism.
If America is a religion, it is a religion without a god, and it is a global religion. People who believe in America live all over the world. Its adherents have included oppressed and freedom-loving peoples everywhere—from the patriots of the Greek and Hungarian revolutions to the martyred Chinese dissidents of Tiananmen Square.
Gelernter also shows that anti-Americanism, particularly the virulent kind that is found today in Europe, is a reaction against this religious conception of America on the part of those who adhere to a rival religion of pacifism and appeasement.
A startlingly original argument about the religious meaning of America and why it is loved—and hated—with so much passion at home and abroad.

What people are saying

Review: Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion

User Review  - Sean Mcdermott - Goodreads

Great book. Woodrow Wilson was a Progressive bastard though.

Review: Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion

User Review  - Charlene Mathe - Goodreads

I read this book, and now I need to read it again; because I forgot so much in it! Gelernter's point though, is very important, so I wish everyone would read it. There is a founding faith in America ...

About the author

DAVID GELERNTER is professor of computer science at Yale University, chief scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies, a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard, and a member of the National Council of the Arts. He is the author of The Muse in the Machine, the novel 1939, Machine Beauty, and other books, and he has written for Commentary, ArtNews, and the Washington Post, among other publications. Gelernter lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Americanism:The Fourth Great Western Religion
• Author: David Gelernter
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007
• ISBN: 0385513127, 9780385513128
• Length: 256 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / General