The American Miracle

Since the days of the Pilgrims, leaders of the new society that arose in the New World have embraced the core concept of a divinely determined destiny. For nearly four hundred years, Americans nourished the notion that God maintained an intimate, protective connection to their singular nation. Only recently, with the emphasis on guilt over gratitude in our teaching of history, has the public grown uncomfortable with the idea that fate favors American endeavors. Today, the merest suggestion that the Almighty plays favorites among the nations of the world strikes contemporary sensibilities as offensive, outrageous, or at least controversial.

Much of that controversy involves a fundamental misunderstanding of the old idea of divine providence in the rise of the Republic. It confuses the reality of American exceptionalism with fantasies about American perfectionism. To argue that a higher power directed the United States to a unique and valuable role in the world isn’t the same as insisting that our national saga unfolded without flaw, folly, or failure. The confidence that this nation has been distinctly blessed doesn’t mean that it’s been exclusively blessed—or that it has provided an unmitigated blessing to each citizen, or to all nations, at every moment in its history. … The evidence for divine providence doesn’t prove that America is perfect, but it does strongly suggest that America is no accident.

Michael Medved, The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic, pg 359, 360