Americanism:The Fourth Great Western Religion | 
 enlarge | Author: David Gelernter
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $2.94
You Save: $22.01 (88%)
New (9) Used (24) Collectible (2) from $2.94
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 65058
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0385513127
Dewey Decimal Number: 200.973
EAN: 9780385513128
ASIN: 0385513127
Publication Date: June 19, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Finally, the truth about the U.S.A.! March 27, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is a must-read for all Americans. It exposes the left loonies'drivel that we have had to swallow the past 50 years. The truth is:The U.S.A. is the best country in the world! - BAD NEWS PERHAPS FOR THE LEFT, BUT TRUE NONETHELESS!
signed,
GRATEFUL TO BE AMERICAN!
 A very interesting approach to American history and American Exceptionalism March 17, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
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
 Some Call It Idolatry February 12, 2008
12 out of 19 found this review helpful
Gelernter has a worshipful devotion to America. It goes beyond appreciation or support for the nation. The author is convinced that America is God's very own chosen nation. This conviction he calls "American Zionism." He offers a reading of history to support his position. But most often his is a idealized, largely whitewashed reading. Repeatedly he tells us, "America is a biblical republic, and Americanism is a biblical religion" (p.219). But what he means by this is that the Bible and religious faith -Judeo-Christian faith- has profoundly influenced the history and formation of America. No one who seriously looks at the history of the country can deny this fact. However, Gelernter over plays his claim to call Americanism a "biblical faith."
He emphasises the Puritan foundations of America but he refuses to recognize that what the Puritans sought to establish, what John Winthrop had in mind in 1630 when he said that "wee shall be as a city upon a Hill", citing Jesus, never materialized. Winthrop and company would have been appalled to see what happen to their experiment. Reagan can echo the words, "a great shinning city on a hill" but what he and others mean doesn't seriously resemble what the Puritans had in mind. Their "city" was the company of the converted. They were church first of all. A Jew like the author would not have been received with opened arms. Of course the author knows that there is a vast gap between then and now. "Puritanism turned into the American Religion, and it survives today in an altered form" (p.9). The Puritans would have seen it as a disfigured form.
He insists that Americanism the religion is not at odds with Christianity or Judaism. I beg to differ. Nationistic religion when embraced by a faith tradition always distorts that faith and enlists it to serve a purpose foreign to the nature of that faith. But Gelernter suggests that those who resist his vision of America as a "biblical republic" are anti-religious. This reminds me of how Christians were labeled as "atheists" by the Romans in the early years of the church because they would not adopt the emperor cult alongside their own faith. The religious adoration of America that the author advocates needs to be named for what it is: idolatry. I deplore Gelernter's views, not because I'm anti-religious but precisely because I'm a minister who recognizes the dangers of self-glorifying religious nationalism and the narrow agenda accompanies it. Americanism has already infiltrated too many churches and religious organizations. It is something that needs to be resisted, not embraced.
I would suggest Captain America And The Crusade Against Evil: The Dilemma Of Zealous Nationalism by Robert Jewett and John Lawrence for a different, more insightful perspective.
 Helpful for understanding neocon thought January 30, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Basically, this is where author David Gelernter wants to take us: George W. Bush and the neoconservative agenda he figureheads are the modern day embodiment of the Spirit of Abraham Lincoln (whom Gelernter obviously idolizes).
Books could probably be written on why this comparison is more than a bit strained.
Even so, it must be said that Gelernter gives a concise and readable treatment of the rationale behind American exceptionalism. He recasts this concept as a biblically influenced gospel called Americanism, an unofficial religion that many in America mistake for Christianity. Gelernter's thesis seems to be that Americanism is an unofficial gospel endorsing what he sees as biblically grounded notions of liberty, equality and democracy. In theory, all Americans can get behind this gospel no matter what our official religion, or lack thereof, may be.
Like most idealistic books that seek to counterbalance liberal negativism toward U.S. policy, it contains a good deal of whitewashing. (Americanism was certainly not good news for the Native Americans and others.) But many will wish that America as a nation could regain the sense of purpose and higher calling that guided Lincoln and others. I do not agree with all of Gelernter's links between Lincoln, Truman, and current affairs in the mideast, but the book is helpful for understanding Neocon thought.
A fascinating discussion December 24, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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
|
|
|
