David Gelernter knows there's something about America. He just doesn't realize how complicated that thing is.
Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale, a novelist, and a senior fellow for the American Enterprise Institute-something of a Renaissance man, in other words. Considering the resources he has at his disposal, his 2007 book entitled "Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion is surprisingly muddled."
The title of this "essay in ‘folk philosophy,'" as he calls it, simultaneously misleads the reader and reveals more than the author intends. It is misleading because Gelernter means to present Americanism as a religion compatible with, not in opposition to, the big three (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). It is revealing because Gelernter is wrong.
Americanism he defines as the sum of American Zionism and "the Creed." The former refers to the belief first held by Puritans that God has specially blessed America. Americans are the New Israelites; America is the new Promised Land. Accompanying their unique blessings is the divinely ordained mission to share them-to spread the new gospel to all nations.
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