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...is an American disease. And in the eyes of European Christians, secularism is an American disease, too. In reality, both Christianity and secularism came to America, like most other things, from Europe. The difference is that in America Christianity is vigorous enough to right for its corner in the public square, whereas in Europe Christianity has largely been driven out of public life. The readiness with which invocations of the Almighty spring to the lips of American statesmen arouses cynicism and a kind of atavistic fear among those who attribute imperialist ambitions to the United States.
The one group of Europeans who might be expected to take a more balanced view of God's own country are those whose profession and vocation it is to know what can be known of God. I mean, of course, the theologians. Michael Northcott, who teaches Christian Ethics at Edinburgh University and has written books on environmentalism and global debt, is the very model of a modern theologian. He begins his latest, An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, by establishing his credentials as an informed and unprejudiced critic of the United States: "I first flew to JFK to join my family in Connecticut in the summer of 1969 when Americans first walked on the moon."
Northcott uses his American connections, however, to make common cause with American critics of the Bush administration, including not only Christians such as Stanley Hauerwas but also the...
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