The alternative civic-theology of President Obama enabled him to pander when he wrongly claimed that “only in America” was his story possible, but it also challenged the notion of America as perfect. President Obama attempted, with mixed results, to redefine American patriotism as an argument for its unique diversity, and its steady inclusion of immigrants, franchisement of minority ethnicities, and ecumenicism of religious devotion.
From Manifest Destiny to President Kennedy, and later Reagan’s co-optation of John Winthrop and the Sermon on the Mount, calling the United States a “ shining city on a hill,” it is clear that American leaders and voters do not see their country as just another human setting – showcasing the triumphs and terrors of human fallibility - but a magical mass of divine favor. More than a mere society, it is an Edenic paradise operating according to heavenly mandate. America does not conceive of itself as a country.
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