The American Idea

Of all the Western democracies, America, we are told, is the most religious; Americans, the most God-fearing. Yet, it would be hard to deny that America’s God bears little resemblance to the now-dead European one or to the one ostensibly stirring America’s enemies. For one thing, America’s God appears so little to be in control of what’s happening to Americans that most of them would rather that their courts adjudicate his will. Elsewhere electricians fall off ladders because God wills that they should. In America they tumble because ladder manufacturers fail negligently to foresee every possible combination of factors that compel electricians to lose their balance. In America faith doesn’t seem to compel a belief in fate. America’s God helps only those who help themselves and presumably never those who do not. Americans love the freedom necessary for making their own fate, even if for many of them the principal exercise of that freedom is a belief in a God whose existence renders that freedom irrelevant. Americans are an inventive people, perhaps the most inventive in the world. Nothing, not even their God, is beyond the reach of their creativity.