Americanism:The Fourth Great Western Religion [Hardcover]

David Gelernter (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 19, 2007

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

American Enterprise Institute fellow Gelernter argues that America is a biblical republic and Americanism a biblical religion encompassing an American Creed with three political ideals (liberty, equality, and democracy) and a doctrine, American Zionism, incorporating the biblically derived ideas of a chosen people in a promised land. Americanism is global. There's no need to be American, or to believe in God, to subscribe to it. Still, to understand Americanism, you need to understand America. Gelernter discusses the emergence of Americanism through several crucial events in American history: the Puritan exodus from England, the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, the cold war, and Islamic terrorism. He insists that his book is neither history nor group portrait but instead "an essay in folk philosophy." Not everyone will agree with Gelernter's conclusions (e.g., "If there is to be justice in the world, America must create it"), but he offers fascinating food for thought. Sawyers, June

Review

Advance Praise for Americanism

"David Gelernter is a national treasure, a patriot-scholar. In Americanism, he explains what America is to him—an idea, a belief, a religion. The City on a Hill has no greater or more powerful an advocate.”
—Bill Bennett, host of Bill Bennett's Morning in America and author of America: The Last Best Hope

“David Gelernter always has something fresh to say about any subject he touches, but never has he been so original as in this brilliant analysis of what is truly distinctive about America and in the new idea he propounds of the role played by the Bible—and especially the Old Testament—in the evolution of our special national character.”
—Norman Podhoretz, author of The Prophets and editor-at-large, Commentary magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (June 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385513127
• ISBN-13: 978-0385513128
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #849,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating discussion December 23, 2007

By Seth J. Frantzman HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover

Riding on the heels of Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Vintage) and Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity this book tries to examine the culture of America and its uniqueness. His greatest quest is to discover the deep hidden and subconscious traits that have made America and Americans throughout the years since independence. He encourages readers to learn more about America through this prism rather than judging America based on simplistic views of 'conservative' and 'Fast food nation.'

THe only slight qualm is that the author describes something called 'American Zionism' when he should properly have called it American israelitism, which was the term for it in the 19th century. It is no secret that from the earliest pilgrims such as Winthrop through the present day America has been seen as a 'city on the hill' or the 'new Jerusalem'. Mormons took this a step further and created a religion where America literally became the new Zion.

This book examines the religious heritage of America, her Protestant origins and her insistance on freedom and individualism.

A very well written account that provides further understanding of American heritage, history and culture.

Seth J. Frantzman

51 of 66 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating analysis of our American history July 3, 2007

By Phebe Carlotta

Format:Hardcover

Wow was this a revelation to me! I felt as if I was in the beginning class and an expert professor was leading me through some fasinating connections. You might not agree with the good Professor's conclusions but you must read them and be tested on your previous views of the world of the Founders and those of us who have followed them. Based on previous articles I have read by the author and some blogger recommendations, I bought the book, couldn't put it down and will be chewing it over for several re-reads. This is what thinking leads to and I urge you to exercise your mind with this book. Plus it is beautiful.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting approach to American history and American Exceptionalism March 16, 2008

By Craig Matteson HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

David Gelernter is passionate, intelligent, and a wonderful writer. I enjoyed reading this book a great deal. It's a fresh approach to the wellsprings of American Exceptionalism, which he finds in our religious heritage, especially Puritanism. But not the Puritanism we use as shorthand for tyrannical sex hating killjoys. He shows us who the real Puritans were, what they were concerned with, and what became of them. Gelernter contends that as Puritanism lost its fire it cooled into Unitarianism as a faith, but the passion passed to the idealism of what America represented to its citizens and what they believe it can mean for the world.

He sees the great phases of the development of Americanism as a faith from its founding by the Puritans, transformed during the Revolution by the original founders, and transformed again by Lincoln, whom he calls the final founder. He then sees Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as taking the faith into its international doctrines including the Spanish American War and World War I. I do not share his enthusiasm for the Progressives because I am quite uncomfortable with their dismissal of the Constitution as antiquated and that it must yield to their doctrines of progress. But this is not something Gelernter is addressing too directly, because he wants to get us someplace else.

The author does not see FDR as a high priest of Americanism, but with Harry Truman and the Truman Doctrine and his support of the founding of Israel we get another transformation and big step forward in Gelernter's view of the foreign policy of Americanism....

I did find his discussion of Vietnam, the four lies that too many people believe about the war, and how intellectuals have pressed that war into an American equivalent to what the First World War did to Europe to be quite interesting. He does support George W. Bush's efforts in foreign policy if not every practical application.

While I did not agree with every step of his arguments and have more reservations that I laid out in this review, I did gain a lot from reading this book and thinking about the arguments presented by the author.

Very much worth reading.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Another book with a different take on a similar topic is Promisted Land Crusader State by Walter MacDougall

Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 Read more ›

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Americanism and it's effect on our culture, a clear distinction August 23, 2007

By Paul S. Mccullough

Format:Hardcover

An excellent insight into the development of the religious context of American history. The religious underpinnings of the American culture are very well expressed and their historic significance makes clear a fundamental difference we have and will continue to have with Europe, necessitating, I believe, a better understanding of why we see the world and our role in it through a different lens.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars An Ideal America, Refurbished as a Religion February 7, 2012

By G. H. Joost Baarssen

Format:Hardcover

The idea that "America" was and is perceived as an idea is not novel at all. The idea, however, that "America" is a religious idea--a faith in liberty, equality and democracy--and that America is a biblical republic with "the Bible on its mind," is an interesting catch which provides for an intriguing topic for a book. The analysis, however, disappoints. Nowhere does Gelernter truly fathom the material in any unexpected way, which, indeed, had already been worked over and over. When Gelernter argues that "simplicity as a worldview was especially important in America," I'm afraid, with due respect, it seems like he's talking about his own book.

Gelernter's is a highly monological history of the United States. When he writes that "America's earliest settlers came in search of religious freedom, to escape religious persecution'important facts that Americans sometimes forget," we must pause and reflect what has just been argued. Have Americans, and others, really forgotten the most overdone, the most overstated fact of early America? No, Professor Gelernter, what Americans and others tend to forget is the diversity of early America. No word about the early Dutch, who did not come for religious reasons to America at all (the fact that both their Republic and New Netherland were mildly tolerant of religious thought is something that could have been of use to Gelernter, though), no word about the Swedes, no word about the French Huguenots, and so on. I wouldn't want to understate the influence of Puritanism on American thought at all, but to claim that "America started with the Puritans," is an essentialist, homogeneous, and monological misrepresentation....

Similarly, Gelernter has a penchant, a rhetorical need really, to connect the Puritans/Pilgrims to the Jews/Israelites, for instance, through what he calls American Zionism. We know of the Puritans' use of covenants; we know of the Puritans' own sense of their being the children of Abraham. But Gelernter cannot wish to use these to argue that Jews in the United States, "are the ultimate insiders." "Jews have lived in America since 1654," which is true, but Gelernter conveniently neglects the fact that they did not live among the not-so-tolerant-of-Jews Puritans (They lived in New Amsterdam, not at all welcomed by Governor Stuyvesant, but condoned by the Dutch West India Company; in 1657 they were granted religious freedom).

Much has been said about Gelernter's use of 'religion,' which, in a sense, desecrates the very practices and beliefs normally regarded as religion. He also uses an overly inclusive definition of Puritanism--"simplicity"--as to be hardly usable. If all the faiths were the same, then there would have been no 'need' to persecute the Quakers; then there would have been no 'need' to persecute Roger Williams, right? It also, again, strips all these faiths of their diversity, a diversity for which there is no need in the argument, because by the middle of the nineteenth century, it is argued, all of them will succumb to what is called Americanism.

With a(n) (religious) idea as bold as "America," it surely must be in opposition to something else. Like so many others, Gelernter argues that America was/is opposed to Europe, which at least is partially true (see The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe Are Alike for an admirable opposing view), although his use of Europe at times amounts to nothing more than Britain, at others Germany and France. In Gelernter's juxtaposition, it comes down to "democratic chivalry," a Christian duty to intervene for the good in this world. But when democratic chivalry is defined by E.B. White, quoted by Gelernter with hearty approval, as "to meddle in other people's affairs frequently, gallantly, and without warning--and with no ulterior motive," then one can hardly call America's foreign policy today one of democratic chivalry. I do not want in any way to neglect the idealistic character of American foreign policy, but the dyad has always been complemented with a good dose of realpolitik.

When democratic chivalry is, in essence, ordained by God, then that makes all opposition to it void. And if Americanism is the belief in liberty, equality, and democracy, then anti-Americanism, too, is void. A reasonable critique of real policies becomes an irrational rant at America. Indeed, it leads to the Manichean adage of the Bush Presidency: You're either with us or against us. In fact, that is exactly the kind of neo-conservative vision Gelernter shares: "When a free society as France assists a fear society like Saddam's, it becomes an enemy of Saddam's enemies'--of the Iraqi people and the United States."

Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion makes for an interesting read, in some sense it is even an admirable undertaking. It gives us an insight in neo-conservative thought, which is seemingly on the decline, at least for now. However, the simplicity with which Gelernter, a professor in computer science, mind you, argues some of his points, is striking. And when he comes up with: "September 11 came shortly after the close of eight Democratic years. Of course the Democrats didn't cause 9/11; but their foreign policy did little to discourage mass murderers who thought it up," that is--and this is coming from someone who does not happen to be a supporter of the Democrats--sickening. Read more ›