These high levels of religiosity would be less significant if they were the norm for other countries. Americans differ dramatically, however, in their religiosity from the people of other economically developed countries. According to the report,

"This religiosity is conclusively revealed in three cross-national surveys. First, in general, the level of religious commitment of countries varies inversely with their level of economic development: People in poor countries are highly religious, those in rich countries are not. America is the glaring exception. If America were like most other countries at her level of economic development, only 5 percent of Americans would think religion very important."

Tocqueville said that religion in America "must be regarded as the first of their political institutions." A century and a half after him, the English historian Paul Johnson described America as "a God-fearing country, with all it implies." America's religious commitment "is a primary source--the primary source, I think--of American exceptionalism."

Some people might argue that this is a good thing. But the conflation of religiosity with our ideas of American exceptionalism leads as often as not to disaster, if not for us, for our neighbors. The concept of manifest destiny is simply a particularized religious form of American exceptionalism: the idea that American expansion is divinely ordained. John O'Sullivan coined the famous phrase "manifest destiny." Writing,

"the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."

At the beginning of the 20th century, when the United States invaded the Philippines, President McKinley said that the decision to take the Philippines came to him one night when he got down on his knees and prayed, and God told him to take the Philippines. No one likes to mention the some 600,000 or so Philipines who were saved afterwards, primarily by being slaughtered.

Invoking God has been a habit for American presidents throughout the nation's history, and I doubt it should be taken too seriously, but George W. Bush has made a specialty of it. For an article in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the reporter talked with Palestinian leaders who had met with Bush. One of them reported that Bush told him,

"God told me to strike at al Qaeda. And I struck them. And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

No doubt, the Palestinians were greatly relieved to see Bush leave.  

Bush is also the President whose favorite philosopher is Jesus and who has `looked' into Putin's soul. One has to wonder if there is a correlation between religiosity and murderously incompetent behavior? Something along the lines of what the original settlers determined as they slaughtered their way Westward, washing the blood of the Indians from their hands: God says it's okay, so everything is fine.
As Zinn has noted:

"Divine ordination is a very dangerous idea, especially when combined with military power (the United States has 10,000 nuclear weapons, with military bases in a hundred different countries and warships on every sea). With God's approval, you need no human standard of morality. Anyone today who claims the support of God might be embarrassed to recall that the Nazi storm troopers had inscribed on their belts, "Gott mit uns" ("God with us").

Yet the drum beat of the American religious community is never very far behind. The banal antics and statements of the recently demised Jerry Falwell can give us a clue to the mindset of many of the fundamentalists. Here are some of his 'greatest hits', so to speak, delivered  in a top ten list:

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/stupidquotes/a/falwellquotes.htm

10. "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."

9. "The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews."

8. "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!"

7. "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh's charioteers ... AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

6. "Nothing will motivate conservative evangelical Christians to vote Republican in the 2008 presidential election more than a Democratic nominee named Hillary Rodham Clinton - not even a run by the devil himself ... I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate. She has $300 million so far. But I hope she's the candidate. Because nothing will energize my [constituency] like Hillary Clinton. If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't." --at a "Values Voter Summit"

5. "Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them."

4. "Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan in America."

3. "He is purple -- the gay-pride color, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle -- the gay pride symbol." -from a "Parents Alert" issued in Jerry Falwell's National Liberty Journal, warning that "Tinky Winky," a character on the popular PBS children's show, "Teletubbies," may be gay

2. "You've got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops. And I'm for the president to chase them all over the world. If it takes 10 years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord."

1. "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'" --on the 9/11 attacks
   

These revealing samples were found at a 'political humorist' site, and indeed there is much about Falwell's oversized personality that warrants caricature--both in what he said and how he said it, but at bottom, he's not funny.

He is the anti-Democrat: a religious fascist. He's also someone who should have been completely powerless politically in this country, but who gained huge political power and clout preying on the sexual inhibition, race, class and gender inspired prejudices of the ever venal majority. Under most circumstances such demogagic behaviour would have warranted nothing more potent than a mirthless Limbaugh or Imus show rant; but added to his vitriol was the power of the 'Gospel' and all of those Americans who conflated his venom with the 'word of God'--something that is dangerous, indeed. Although Falwell himself has gone on (or not) to whatever after life he so richly deserved, the rise of fundamentalism is not a passing problem.

Of late the fundamentalists have become louder and more brazen in their demands. Here is Newt Gringrich shortly after Falwell's death professing fear of a 'radical secularism' in an address to the 2007 graduating class at Liberty University. It's an amazing performance not least because the world view espoused by Newt Gingrinch has no apparent basis in reality. As Steven Benen over at http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ has noted:

I'm hard pressed to imagine what country Gingrich and the 12,000 people who applauded his worldview are living in. Out of the 535 members of Congress, 50 governors, the president, vice president, the Bush cabinet, and nine Supreme Court justices, there is exactly one person -- not one percent, just one guy -- who does not profess a faith in God. If polls are to be believed, less than 5% of the population describes themselves as non-believers.

In the last presidential election, one candidate announced during a presidential debate, "My faith affects everything that I do, in truth.... I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith." This was John Kerry, the more secular candidate of the two.

As for "discrimination," the New York Times had an interesting report last week showing that so much public money is now going to ministries, religious groups are hiring lobbyists to get more.

In our culture, religion is common in the media -- I can't remember the last month Time and/or Newsweek didn't feature religion as a cover story -- almost exclusively in a positive light. In sporting events, celebrating athletes routinely express their religiosity. At awards ceremonies, entertainers routinely "give thanks to God" from the outset, usually to considerable applause.

Gingrich sees all of this and believes an "anti-religious bias" dominates U.S. society. I have no idea why.

Indeed, we've become so accepting of the profession of faith that news commentators like Tim Russert regularly dish up this nonsense with a straight face. Am I doing God's work? he asks, and tells without a blush how he is listening to St. Luke...

St. Luke teaches us "to whom much is given, much is expected." Am I hearing that admonition--and responding to it in a generous way? Do I have a true appreciation of the uniqueness and goodness of others? More questions than answers, I'm afraid.

Luckily, after 9/11 knocked off 2000+ US citizens, Tim can claim that he learned a lot about friends and family and now he is "praying with purpose". Besides the overt religious trappings, the distasteful coupling of the murders on 9/11 to Russert's personal edification seems callous, at best.

But the real problem with over zealous religiosity only begins there. Based almost entirely on religious believes, women are denied abortions all throughout the third world.

Since 1973, under the Helms amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, USAID has been prohibited by law from using funds to support abortions as a method of family planning. Several procedures are used to ensure that the law is strictly followed. These include legally binding provisions within USAID contracts forbidding such activity, staff monitoring, and regular audits by nationally recognized accounting firms

Keep in mind that this is a worldwide effect.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been and remains the single largest contributor of funds for family planning and reproductive health services worldwide. In addition, it is the single largest donor of contraceptives globally. President Bush, however, is proposing a severe funding cut to USAID's family planning program for next year [2007] that would undermine the program's reach and reduce the amount available for procuring and distributing contraceptive supplies.

[...]

As if the resource limitations affecting the supply of contraceptives were not challenging enough, the situation is exacerbated by the fact that the United States conditions the provision of its supplies on the willingness of foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to comply with its strident antiabortion policy. The global gag rule prohibits foreign NGOs, in exchange for any U.S family planning assistance, from providing any abortion services or information and from engaging in any efforts to liberalize their own country's abortion laws. This restriction applies even to an NGO's eligibility to receive USAID shipments of contraceptives.

In specific countries and areas around the world, the effect has been disastrous. The London-based Marie Stopes International (MSI), for example, has been disqualified from any U.S. family planning assistance--including contraceptive supplies--because it could not accept the terms of the global gag rule. Getachew Bekele, MSI's Ethiopia country director, explained to the Ottawa Citizen in April that the U.S. policy is at least partly responsible for the fact that Ethiopia is facing a severe shortage in contraceptive supplies. In the article, Bekele recounts the story of a client named Esther, who was married at 16 and had had three children by age 21. She was exhausted and resisted her husband's desire for more children. MSI helped her to avoid another pregnancy for three more years with three-month injections of Depo-Provera. Last year, she came back numerous times for her shot, but each time learned there was none to be had.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/09/2/gpr090215.html

Thus the backwater fundamentalism of a reactionary North Carolina and North Carolinian pol manages to touch poor folks from Ottawa to  Ethiopia to Sudan--in ways that are far from positive.

Then there are people who are reckless closer to home, like David Barton, a 51 year old self-professed Evangelical leader whose main thesis is that the U.S. has been a religious nation from the time of the Founders until the 1963 Supreme Court school-prayer ban (which Barton has called "a rejection of divine law").

Time magazine has a profile on David Barton, noting that many historians dismiss his thinking, but Barton's advocacy organization, WallBuilders, and his relentless stream of publications, court amicus briefs and books like The Myth of Separation, have made him a hero to millions of religious Americans -- including some powerful politicians--who would like to see the wall between the church and the state in this country simply disappear.

But perhaps the most dangerous scenario is the one being fought by Mikey Weinstein, a self-described "militant Jew" who took on the academy, the Air Force and the Department of Defense a couple of years back because of flagrant violations of the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution by the officers and cadets of the Air Force Academy. Their officers, chaplains and classmates were subjecting cadets to a robust and pervasive proselytizing of fundamentalist Christian doctrine.
"With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military" chronicles Weinstein's crusade against the school from the time he graduated with honors in 1974. Some of the most chilling passages  in the book describe how Jewish cadets are subjected to Mel-Gibson-style anti-Semitism, and how the administration fails to support them. But more compelling than his personal narrative is Weinstein writing about the history of the evangelical influence in the military. Here are some sample passages:

"It was Vietnam," remarks Anne Loveland, "which really turned the tide. As the war progressed, more and more mainline denominations spoke out against it and, in fact, became centers of organized resistance. That never really happened with evangelicals." Perhaps largely due to their stark view of human events as a titanic struggle between the forces of good and evil, evangelicals often subscribed to official rationales of the war as a necessary stand against the domino-tipping strategies of their `godless' communist opponent.

Writes Weinstein,

"As the [Vietnam] war continued to grind away at American conscience and consensus and the military increasingly became the object of the swelling antiwar movement's fury, a siege mentality took hold. In the us-against-them polarization that was splitting the nation, the armed services looked within itself to single out and promote those who would wholeheartedly support the savagely decisive conflict, and none were more vociferously vocal in their allegiance than the evangelicals, who had spent much of the last two decades securing positions within the ranks. "Should a follower of Jesus participate at all in the messy military business of killing people?" asked evangelical author Randolph Klassen. "Would Jesus? Would Christ carry a draft card? I am convinced He would. Does He want me to carry one? Of this I have no doubt."

Besides this amazing reading of the New Testament which manages to elide almost all of its meaning without breaking a sweat, there have also been complaints about New Testament verses sent to cadets in email, chaplains actively proselytizing and forcing them to attend chapel. One incident reported that a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and that another Jew was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.

A banner in the football team's locker room read: "I am a Christian first and last ... I am a member of Team Jesus Christ."

As a result of these incidents (and more), Weinstein argues the military has been hijacked by a right-wing fundamental Christian agenda, in what appears to be a clear-cut violation of the constitutional separation between church and state, which has rippled across all four branches of the military under President Bush.

"The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids after 9/11 under this administration and this White House," Weinstein said in an interview with Jason Leopold of Truth Out. "This administration has turned the entire Department of Defense into a faith-based initiative."

Weinstein explained that VA chaplains, as federal government employees, are not supposed to "proselytize or rescue souls."

VA chaplains "are not supposed to view the VA hospitals as their own personal mission field, or the veterans as low-hanging fruit," Weinstein said.

"The VA is not the Southern Baptist Convention. In this country, we have a separation between church and state. The religious right views the separation of church and state as a myth. There is no difference between the VA hospital and a US Air Force fighter squadron. They're both part of the federal government. It doesn't matter if you're an Orthodox Jew, a Buddhist or an atheist."

To which, as a patriotic American, one can only respond: amen.

Americanism - Conclusion

What's most frightening about this moment is the fact that we are at once the most powerful nation in the world militarily, but also probably the most vulnerable and subject to dramatic change --a change that will prove inevitable as oil supplies recede, and global warming alters demographic patterns permanently -- within the next decade or so. We are also the nation most prone to delusions of self importance and divine destinies. And, as a culture, we are least likely to see anything culpable in our actions, indeed, as mentioned previously, we thrive precisely because we are capable of this 'double think', carrying out horrific actions in the name of some ostensible good (God or Democracy or Freedom),which allows us to excuse the very horror we create. "Gott mit uns!"

Our technologies make us truly exceptional and militarily powerful at the strategic level, but our religious pieties and sense of entitlement and innocence make us - as a population - blind. I sometimes see our nation as a flaying  Cyclops madly pawing at the cave walls looking for Ulysses' men, the villains who took away our sight: our villain du jour, the terrorists or the communists. But the image is fanciful. In truth, no villians have blinded us; we've just refused to open our eyes.

What is to be done than? In an excellent piece at Truthout.org and written up for Eurotrib by DeAnders (with a fun  betting poll rating US Imperial collapse possibilities   here ), Chalmers Johnson recommends a dramatic solution.

The American people must make the decision to dismantle both the empire that has been created in their name and the huge (still growing) military establishment that undergirds it. It is a task at least comparable to that undertaken by the British government when, after World War II, it liquidated the British Empire. By doing so, Britain avoided the fate of the Roman Republic - becoming a domestic tyranny and losing its democracy, as would have been required if it had continued to try to dominate much of the world by force.

    For the U.S., the decision to mount such a campaign of imperial liquidation may already come too late, given the vast and deeply entrenched interests of the military-industrial complex. To succeed, such an endeavor might virtually require a revolutionary mobilization of the American citizenry, one at least comparable to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

   [...]

    Such reforms would begin at once to reduce the malevolent influence of the military-industrial complex, but many other areas would require attention as well. As part of the process of de-garrisoning the planet and liquidating our empire, we would have to launch an orderly closing-up process for at least 700 of the 737 military bases we maintain (by official Pentagon count) in over 130 foreign countries on every continent except Antarctica. We should ultimately aim at closing all our imperialist enclaves, but in order to avoid isolationism and maintain a capacity to assist the United Nations in global peacekeeping operations, we should, for the time being, probably retain some 37 of them, mostly naval and air bases.

Is this possible?

At certain times in recent history, noted imperial nations relinquished their power, more or less voluntarily, and thus saved themselves. The British in India and East Africa, the Belgians in the Congo, the French in Algeria, the Dutch and French in Southeast Asia, the Portuguese in Angola--they all reluctantly surrendered their possessions and swallowed their pride.

Someday, like Chalmers Johnson, I hope America will have the sense to join them. In the mean time, it's worth examining what forced these other empires to bend to the will of the people.  Johnson makes reference to the Civil Rights movement and I believe he's onto something with that. The Indians did not fight the Brits to a standstill and although the Algerians were considerably more bloody than the Indians in their nationalistic movement, they certainly did not militarily win against the French. They won because of massive support for their cause in the indigenous population. These empires were forced to abdicate their authority by massive local resistance.

In the instance of Americanism what would be the parallel? A world wide movement, a rejection of unilateral efforts by Americans or Nato forces, a belief by many in the people themselves that can transcend this last and most menacing `ism'. But is such a movement possible?

I think so. In fact, it's already happened. On February 15, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, more than ten million people in more than 60 countries around the world demonstrated against that war. They weren't demonstrating against America, they were demonstrating against Americanism. They were marching against our massive military infrastructure, obviously built for empire, and fueled by Americans who rarely knew or know how their own tax money is spent. They don't know because they believe in their own exceptional piety and innocence. Thus, for many Americans still, it never occurs to them to ask.

Other diaries in this series:
Americanism, Part I - American Innocence

Americanism, Part II- American Militarism

Americanism, Part III - American Exceptionalism

(cross posted at DailyKos, ProgressiveHistorians)