On American Exceptionalism

Yes there was something quite special about this nation’s founding:

In recent articles I have looked at various related issues, including the injunction for believers to seek the welfare of the city they find themselves in (Jeremiah 29:7); the matter of American exceptionalism with specific reference to John Winthrop and his “City Set On a Hill;” and next year’s 250^th anniversary of the Independence of America, especially as discussed in some new books by Os Guinness.

I want to tie these different matters together by looking at one chapter from a helpful new book: In Defense of Christian Patriotism by Daniel Darling (Broadside Books, 2025). I have already written an introductory review of that book, so please have a read of it here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/10/08/on-christian-patriotism/

My focus here is on Chapter 5: “The Case for American Exceptionalism”. I will mainly feature quotes from it, including some useful quotes Darling offers from other writers. Just as his entire volume defends the notion that Christians can be patriotic and love their country, so too here: Christians can and should recognise and celebrate the unique American beginning.

He introduces his thoughts on this as follows: “Beyond gratitude, which is essential for a Christian, it’s right to ask, ‘Is there something special, perhaps even God blessed, about our country?’” He recognises that some Christians will reject this, claiming it is idolatrous and so on to even think that way.

He says we of course are NOT promoting the idea that Americans are of more value and worth than others. We should not act as if we are superior to others simply because of where we were born. Instead, a “healthy American exceptionalism is not arrogance but an appreciation of the blessings of freedom, liberty, and prosperity. It’s a recognition of the uniqueness of the country.”

He quotes Southern Baptist scholar Richard Land in this regard:

To whom much is given, much is required. No nation or people have ever been as blessed as the citizens of the United States. A blessing by definition is undeserved. I believe we have an obligation to be the friend of freedom and the defender of human dignity whenever we are asked and whenever we can. We can’t address all the world’s ills, but when we can make a difference, we should.

And that does not mean that we see America as being the promised land. Writes Darling:

Followers of Jesus can hold two things in tension. We can both believe that America is a good gift from God and recognise that America is not Zion, is not the end of history, and that we must ultimately look for a city whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:10). In its proper place, loving our country above the rest is a way of expressing gratitude for our home.

Darling looks at how very different the American Revolution was from other revolutions, and presents a number of helpful quotes from historians and intellectuals. They make it clear how quite distinctive the American experiment was, especially in terms of a government instituted on the consent of the governed.

He notes how historian Thomas Kidd said that the Declaration of Independence is “the most resounding statement of human equality the world has ever known” – mainly because of its “theological character.” And he quotes columnist George Will:

America had an exceptional revolution, one that did not attempt to define and deliver happiness, but one that set people free to define and pursue it as they please. Americans codified their Founding doctrines as a natural rights republic in an exceptional Constitution, one that does not say what government must do for them but what government may not do to them.

Darling also shares remarks from Jonah Goldberg:

Capitalism is unnatural. Democracy is unnatural. Human rights are unnatural. The world we live in today is unnatural, and we stumbled into it more or less by accident. The natural state of mankind is grinding poverty punctuated by horrific violence terminating with an early death. It was like this for a very, very long time…

 

All states prior to the Miracle were designed for the betterment of the tiny slice of humans at the top. Everywhere around the world, rulers saw the masses as little more than instruments of their will. . . . The Founders were creating something new in the world.

And Darling shares the famous remarks made by the great G. K. Chesterton on American exceptionalism:

America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason, just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.

Darling goes on to say this:

Unlike other nations, America is, as Chesterton so rightly observed, founded on a creed, a sort of idea that has the aspirational, universal quality that a church’s creed would. Like a church, it is structured in such a way that it can more easily assimilate new members than can other nations with, say, more race- or culture-based foundational ideas. That is why America is the place to which people from around the world come, bringing both their ethnic identities and the desire to be free, to be American. He was joined in that assessment by the nineteenth-century French aristocrat and philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America described the young nation as a rare place that “exhibits in her social state a most extraordinary phenomenon. Men are there seen on a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other words, more equal in their strength, than in any other country of the world, or in any age of which history has preserved the remembrance.” The late historian Paul Johnson remarked, 150 years later, that the “great American republican experiment is still the cynosure of the world’s eyes.”

 

Our country’s uniqueness is why, every day, thousands of people try to breach our borders and enter the United States. It’s why a US visa is one of the most coveted possessions in the world. Not because of blood or soil, or because the people born in this nation are any more exceptional than people born anywhere else in the world. No, America is exceptional because of her unique ideals.

And again, Darling is not being unrealistic here. America of course has her fair share of faults. The leftist and critical theorists love to only concentrate on those faults, without ever looking at any positives. Says Darling:

Though we cannot ignore the many current problems and issues that face our country … rather than be surprised at what’s not great in America, we should be awestruck that this experiment in human liberty still exists, even if it’s rickety, needs some oil, and will require enormous work to preserve it for our children and grandchildren. It’s not nostalgic to claim that America is exceptionally free, prosperous, and impossibly successful.

 

Perhaps the most salient theory for why the American experiment worked while almost every other revolution in history has failed is that the motivation for what our Founders did was different from the reason most movements overthrow governments. Os Guinness, a historian, Christian apologist, and keen observer of America, pointed to a key difference between what happened in America and what transpired in France a little more than a decade later:

 

“The differences between the two revolutions are extreme. Obviously, they have different sources. One, the Bible, the Torah, the other, the French Enlightenment, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire. They have different views of humanity. The American Revolution, based on biblical ideas, has immense realism. . . . The French Revolution is utopian. Man is born free, Rousseau says, and everywhere is in chains.”

Darling continues:

The 1789 French Revolution was about freedom for freedom’s sake. There was no coherent moral principle on which to base the foundation of a new society. The 1776 American Revolution, on the other hand, was a unique mix of reason and religion, liberty and virtue. When the war was over, the men who gathered to form a new government were statesman who understood that freedom is not just mere self-actualization, but that our rights come from God. In many ways, American democracy was about government relegating power to its proper place with all of the country’s citizens, rather than centralizing it within the state, thus creating a government that recognized its own limits. The system may allow more vice in some ways, but it also doesn’t micromanage virtue, which the Founders considered to be the greater danger of government. Their success speaks for itself.

The words of Darling, and those he quotes from, offer a nice summary statement about why we are correct to speak about American exceptionalism, and why we are right to celebrate this great nation – warts and all. Hopefully next year when public celebrations take place, the bulk of Americans will learn, or relearn, about what it is that made the American experiment so important and so valuable.

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