John Winthrop's "city upon a hill" dominates presidential rhetoric and our self-understanding. Here's the problem
PETER MANSEAU
When Barack Obama delivered his first inaugural address six years ago last week, on January 20, 2009, it was the first time a newly elected president used the occasion to give voice to the diversity of religious life among its people. “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims,” Obama said, “Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”
Such a high-profile expression of the varieties of American religious experience was unprecedented, even if the reality it described predates the Republic itself. A spectrum of beliefs informed the nation’s history well before its first president, in his 1789 inaugural address, spoke of “that Almighty Being who rules over the universe.” Yet Obama’s choice of words served as a reminder that only recently did the range of opinions about the nature of that Being, including its existence, begin to receive their due in the ongoing national conversation about the appropriate place of religion in American life.
Perhaps most noteworthy about the president’s acknowledgment that the United States is a country of many faiths was that it seemed noteworthy at all. His simple declaration of a catalogue of beliefs surprised many because there persists, among believers and nonbelievers alike, an assumption that the United States is, for better or worse, a Christian nation. more . . .http://www.salon.com/2015/02/14/we_..._and_the_eternal_lie_of_the_city_upon_a_hill/
PETER MANSEAU
When Barack Obama delivered his first inaugural address six years ago last week, on January 20, 2009, it was the first time a newly elected president used the occasion to give voice to the diversity of religious life among its people. “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims,” Obama said, “Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”
Such a high-profile expression of the varieties of American religious experience was unprecedented, even if the reality it described predates the Republic itself. A spectrum of beliefs informed the nation’s history well before its first president, in his 1789 inaugural address, spoke of “that Almighty Being who rules over the universe.” Yet Obama’s choice of words served as a reminder that only recently did the range of opinions about the nature of that Being, including its existence, begin to receive their due in the ongoing national conversation about the appropriate place of religion in American life.
Perhaps most noteworthy about the president’s acknowledgment that the United States is a country of many faiths was that it seemed noteworthy at all. His simple declaration of a catalogue of beliefs surprised many because there persists, among believers and nonbelievers alike, an assumption that the United States is, for better or worse, a Christian nation. more . . .http://www.salon.com/2015/02/14/we_..._and_the_eternal_lie_of_the_city_upon_a_hill/