American Unexceptionalism
Bettina Krause May/June 2026In the disorienting months after terrorists attacked America in 2001, Americans searched for comfort and meaning, and political leaders sometimes assumed the role of pastors in chief. On the first anniversary of the fall of the Twin Towers, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from Ellis Island. He closed with words borrowed directly from the Gospel of John in the New Testament, which describes the birth of Jesus Christ and his mission in the world. But in Bush’s retelling, the divine mission belonged to America.
American ideals and values are the “hope of all mankind,” Bush said. “That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it.”
I remembered that speech one Sunday evening late last year when I visited the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. My daughter, a college music major, wanted to attend an evensong service, but we arrived to find the parking lot unusually full. We’d accidentally chosen an evensong set aside to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Marines.
We sat two-thirds of the way back, behind rows of uniformed Marines and their families. Glorious music from the cathedral choir and the U.S. Marine Corps Band filled the sanctuary. The homily was delivered by a Marine Corps chaplain, who told the Marines that theirs was a “holy calling” to bring liberty to the dark places of the world. His words echoed through the cathedral, both moving and disturbing.
I experienced a similar sense of dissonance on a recent Sunday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Under a scorching sun, thousands of American Christians had gathered to rededicate America to God, at an event sponsored by the Trump administration as part of its yearlong celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
I was there as a member of the press but, in some ways, I wasn’t just a detached observer. I mixed easily with friendly families and church groups wearing matching T-shirts. I knew the words to many of the praise songs performed throughout the day by well-known Christian artists.
The thematic through line of the day was clear: America was, and always should be, a Christian republic. Speaker after speaker--author Eric Metaxas, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Pentecostal televangelist and White House Faith Office director Paula White, House Speaker Mike Johnson--all offered variations on the same historical caricature. America is a chosen land. It offers religious freedom to all, but exists to nurture and propagate the Christian faith. From the Mayflower onward, they suggested, America has stood in a covenant relationship with God. God would prosper America, and in turn, America would be faithful; a “shining city on a hill,” playing a unique, God-ordained role in the world.
In the late afternoon, President Trump appeared via pre-recorded video reading 2 Chronicles 7:11-22. This Old Testament passage is God’s covenantal warning to Solomon, the King of Israel. God warns that Israel’s continued flourishing depends on prayer, humble repentance, and obedience to God.
As the video ended, two self-styled prophets associated with the New Apostolic Reformation—a fast-growing and influential Charismatic movement—took the stage and exhorted the crowd: “What we have just heard was a clarion call from our president for a covenant renewal and outpouring. Brothers and sisters, this is a hinge moment in history.”
Across the Mall, thousands dropped to their knees and raised their arms toward heaven.
The Myth of Being Chosen
This idea of America as a “New Israel” is one of our nation’s most potent and long-lived civic conceits. It’s a self-image that Herman Melville describes in his 1850 novel White-Jacket. “We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.”
The roots of this metaphor reach back to the Puritans, who imagined their flight to the New World in biblical terms, as a new Israel seeking refuge in a new Promised Land. During the revolutionary era, the imagery became even more politically charged, as preachers such as Nicholas Street recast the break with Britain as a new Exodus, with King George III as Pharaoh and the colonies as the people of Israel.
But this idea of a “chosen nation” is not an American invention. Across Christian history, the “New Israel” metaphor has repeatedly been used as a prop for national identity and military action.
In the Middle Ages, during the Reconquista, Spanish Catholics undertook a long and bloody campaign to overthrow Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula. They cast themselves as a New Israel, charged with reclaiming a promised land from the infidel.
After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Russia became the last major stronghold of Orthodox Christianity. In the years that followed, tsars and clerics alike framed Russia as a New Israel, with Moscow as the New Jerusalem. Its task, like that of ancient Israel, was to preserve the true faith in a world of apostasy.
In the 1600s, Dutch Protestants drew heavily on the “New Israel” metaphor to describe their 80-year struggle to throw off Spanish Catholic rule. Later, theologians such as Hugo Grotius helped popularize the idea that the Dutch Republic stood in a covenant relationship with God.
Sweden developed a similar national theology as it became a Lutheran state. In the 17th century, statesmen and clergy spoke of Sweden’s covenant relationship with God, and Swedish Bibles carried the king’s coat of arms with a motto drawn from Psalm 147: Non fecit taliter omni nationi--“He has done this for no other nation.”
When England erupted in civil war under King Charles I, Puritan preachers cast Oliver Cromwell as a new Moses, leading God’s people to victory against Pharaoh. After Charles was beheaded, Puritans helped legitimize the short-lived English republic as a New Israel uniquely favored by God.
Taking God for a Fool
When Christians today claim a covenant relationship between God and America, their American exceptionalism is, in this respect, wholly unexceptional. They’re simply echoing a corrupted theology that has been pressed into the service of nations and sects across history, always in pursuit of some political end. And this fusing of national and religious identity, in the words of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in his 1855 work The Moment, serves only to trivialize faith. “Christianity is played as a game, and God is taken for a fool.”
This year, as we mark 250 years of the great American experiment, we’re celebrating an astounding political and cultural achievement--something genuinely new under the sun that requires no theological embellishment. To dress America in the language of divine covenant doesn’t make the nation more holy. It makes Christianity smaller.
Article Author: Bettina Krause
Bettina Krause is the editor of Liberty magazine.