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Apologia Americana.

Article Excerpt
Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion, by David Gelernter (Doubleday, 240 pp., $24.95)

AMERICA, Chesterton famously observed, is a nation with the soul of a church. The remark is often misunderstood as a comment on the ubiquity of religious profession and practice in the United States, but it was actually an insight into America's sense of itself. Chesterton recognized that Americans regard their country in religious terms--not merely in the intensity of their devotion, but also in their conviction that to belong is to profess a certain creed: "We hold these truths ..." Other nations may have myths and rituals, but America is unique in also having doctrines.

David Gelernter wholeheartedly agrees with Chesterton's observation, and then some. His new book, Americanism, argues that this sentiment is not like a religion--it is a religion. He calls this religion "Americanism," and considers it "a new force in the world's spiritual history." Gelernter is a true polymath--professor of computer science at Yale, political columnist, scientist, art critic, novelist, and painter--so it is unsurprising that his book draws upon multiple disciplines. By turns employing theology, ethics, and history, he proposes that Americanism is, in the words of the book's subtitle, "the fourth great Western religion."

Gelernter traces the origins of this new religion to two formative concepts: the Covenant and the Creed. The Puritans, drawing on the Hebrew Scriptures,...