Editor's note: This essay is adapted from the McGinley Lecture delivered at Fordham University on April 9, 2025.
While being a U.S. citizen includes many wonderful features and certainly accords many advantages, it also brings along some stigma and cringeworthy aspects. For example, as a people, we tend to be hopelessly monolingual and (perhaps relatedly) do not travel well at all. We all know the stereotype of the “ugly American” traveling abroad with no clue about appropriate behavior regarding local standards of etiquette or respect for cultural differences.
A more consequential aspect of behaviors and attitudes prevalent among the people of the United States is the phenomenon of American exceptionalism—a loose bundle of concepts that have fascinated observers of our national life for generations, despite being notoriously hard to define with any precision.
In the literature of the social sciences, that term has been employed to document how the United States is a statistical outlier among other nations on many scales, from material prosperity and productivity (we are fortunate to be way up on those scales) to the prevalence of gun violence and incarceration (sadly, we are also a world leader in many such measures).
But if we wish to conduct a theologically grounded evaluation of American exceptionalism, we have more work to do than just counting up instances of nation-specific phenomena. Any theological assessment of the phenomenon will engage the inherited claim that the United States possesses a special mission in the world. Such a project aspires to dig considerably deeper into the culture, history and collective value commitments of the American people than sociologists typically attempt.
This essay seeks to identify both constructive and potentially regrettable aspects of these prevalent attitudes regarding the supposedly unique status of the United States. Key questions will include these two: When Americans affirm that our nation is special and somehow set apart from other countries, are we betraying a delusional arrogance? Is it possible to embrace the idea of a special, evenly divinely ordained mission for America without violating Christian ethical principles and dismissing key religious virtues like mercy and humility?
Civil Religion
Any study of the collective values and virtues of a given people builds upon the seminal insights of Plato. In his treatment of justice in the Republic, Plato contended that the state is the individual writ large, or more precisely that the polis is somehow the magnified image of the souls of its residents, reflecting their collective virtues as well as their vices and pathologies. Many subsequent commentators have proposed a supposed invariant national character as an explanation for why countries behave in certain ways and not others. Wandering too far down this path risks adopting a determinism that pigeonholes entire peoples based on rank generalizations and arbitrarily ascribed traits, and of course this type of reductionism quickly becomes objectionable.
One particularly astute observer of the collective life of the United States is the late sociologist Robert Bellah, perhaps best known for his work describing American civil religion. He noted the presence of certain religiously infused notions that abound in U.S. public life and political culture, picking up on the oft-expressed observation that “America seems to be a nation with the soul of a church.” Bellah defined American civil religion as an ensemble of shared beliefs and practices that express what he called “the public religious dimension.” He got us all thinking about the fascinating role that faith-infused myths play in our national self-understanding and collective identity formation.
Distinct from the confessional beliefs of any particular denomination or church-based religion, the tenets of American civil religion function as the operative myths regarding the origins of our nation, the wisdom contained in its institutions and sacred texts, the virtues of its great leaders and our memories of its resilience in times of national trial. Civil religion generates patriotism and civic loyalty because of its unique ability to bolster the legitimacy of the American way of life. It exudes a penumbra of transcendent value and divine purpose that attaches itself to the national experience of this particular people inhabiting this particular land mass.
Manifest Destiny and the American Dream
Consider two further notions closely related to American exceptionalism and civil religion. One is the notion of manifest destiny: an assertion within our national creed, most prominent during the 19th century, that the United States is somehow destined by God to dominate the continent, to stretch its sphere of influence from the Atlantic to the Pacific and beyond. Appeals to a supposed divine will along these lines justified for many an ambitious program of westward expansion by all means imaginable: land purchases, negotiated annexations, territorial seizures and the brutal suppression and murderous displacement of millions of Native American peoples, with whom treaties were repeatedly broken with tragic consequences.
This aggressive ideology was putatively justified as part of God’s plan for the United States, at least in the popular imagination of the time. And recent events (think: Greenland) suggest that we may not have seen the last of this concept as a driver of our foreign policy.
A second notion closely related to American exceptionalism is that of the American Dream. This idea draws upon a similar storehouse of ingrained values and certain praiseworthy qualities that America is perceived as exemplifying. A short list of these would include: individual liberty, material prosperity, a sturdy affirmation of property rights, a frontier spirit of self-reliance, abundant economic opportunity and easy upward mobility. Each of these six elements serves as a plank of our national ethos, and operates in the first instance as a powerful cultural myth and inherited mindset.
It hardly matters that the claims associated with the American Dream resist empirical verification or data-driven confirmation. Efforts at falsification or refutation are futile, and won’t persuade many who profess this belief. Collectively, we blissfully affirm that the United States is a land of easy upward mobility, where the possibility of rapid gains in income or wealth readily follow the Horatio Alger narrative of “rags to riches.” Despite the harsh facts on the ground, the popular imagination continues to assert that hard work will regularly be rewarded with unimaginable wealth.
A City on a Hill
For better or worse, American exceptionalism fits neatly into these patterns of quasi-religious beliefs and commitments. While it remains forever elusive in its content, its tenets always include reference to two levels: first, the transcendent, with a sense of permanence and certain normative ethical dimensions; and second, the immanent, relating to the empirical and material level of power, treasure and flesh-and-blood people. It is not reducible to either of these two levels, because it includes references to both the proper order of the universe and to a specific people in their historical existence.
In the popular imagination, America is special and set apart from its neighbors, even set above its neighbors as a foreordained global leader, even “the last best hope of earth,” to quote Abraham Lincoln. This is perceived to be so because its people are somehow mysteriously favored by the Deity, who looks down approvingly on its activities and who actively wills that this national community continue to live out a common life around shared values and certain markers of identity.
Indeed, the notion that the people of this nation enjoy divine favor and hold a distinctive status, a special role in the world, goes back to before there was any such nation at all. This interpretive framework and intellectual construction may be detected in some of the earliest episodes in the history of the colonies that would eventually become the United States.
Even before the 1630 landfall of the flotilla of ships carrying a wave of Puritan settlers to the English outpost that would become the Massachusetts Bay colony, the pastor and eventual colonial governor John Winthrop delivered a sermon titled “A Model of Christian Charity” which cited an appealing image invoked by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Paraphrasing Matthew 5:14, he forecast that “we shall be as a city set upon a hill,” thus projecting a special destiny awaiting on shore for his party, which Winthrop understood as a community of saints in the Calvinist theological framework of predestination and the economy of grace.
The implication is that, by rigorously striving and perfecting the virtues already bestowed by God, this small band of settlers would in due time serve as the light of the world, to conjure an adjacent image in the Sermon on the Mount, just as the Hebrew people, the people chosen and favored by God in the Old Testament, was destined to be a light to the nations. As the thinking went, the people of New England were preordained to be the New Israel in North America.
And recall Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation two centuries later: “I think we can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on these shores.” Winthrop inaugurated an influential pattern of reflection on the meaning of America, one with perduring power.
The motif of American exceptionalism has played a role throughout U.S. history, shaping the self-understanding of the founding fathers of the new nation in the late 18th century and motivating the actions of every subsequent generation. American exceptionalism served as a myth of origins, a marker of identity and meaning, a key motif guiding our thinking and reminding us of who we most deeply are, at home and abroad.
Political Rhetoric
American exceptionalism, most often in circumlocutions but in recent decades explicitly in those two very words, pops up as a leitmotif in many presidential inaugurals and State of the Union addresses, especially in times of national crisis and challenge. Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and just about every president during and after the Cold War invoked this notion to describe a sense of national purpose. The favor of God and the eyes of the world are upon America, we have been assured over and over again.
Three recent episodes are worth noting. Ronald Reagan (or more likely the deft speechwriters for the Great Communicator) added the adjectival phrases “shining” and “tall, proud” to modify John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill.” That certainly raised the rhetorical bar. Recall how Barack Obama was chided by some of his detractors for failing to express, at least to their satisfaction, adequate faith in this plank of the national creed. Their incessant criticisms did get our 44th president to more frequently wear lapel buttons displaying the U.S. flag, but probably did not achieve the conversion to uncritical patriotism that John McCain, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney pressured him to adopt.
And Donald Trump’s 2025 inaugural address referenced American exceptionalism, at least by way of circumlocution. One phrase that did cross his lips that day was “manifest destiny,” curiously enough while describing NASA’s plans to reach Mars, and presumably to annex the red planet as U.S. territory.
Perhaps the most perceptive and influential book on this topic is a 1996 volume from political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. The subtitle he chose introduces the main tasks to which theological resources may contribute, in the search for moral guidance on matters of national ethos and political culture. Like so many human inventions, of the material and intellectual variety, American exceptionalism is a tool featuring both great promise and great peril—often simultaneously.
This mindset inherited from past generations can surely serve as an excuse for self-congratulatory bluster, arrogant bravado and exuberant chest-thumping. In isolation, this version of American exceptionalism is self-serving, chauvinistic and morally objectionable, likely to poison America’s relations with potential global partners.
Alternatively, a constructive interpretation can help us fulfill the promise that Winthrop envisioned so long ago: to advance the well-being of all of humanity through a mission of service, understood as fulfilling a prompting of God. Realizing that the double-edged sword can indeed cut both ways, we look now to theology to supply ethical guidance to accentuate the positive side of the ledger for this notion which lies at the intersection of political thought and religious devotion.
The Catholic Challenge
Although not commonly called upon to do so, Catholic resources, and especially Catholic social teaching, may help us assess the possibilities and limitations of American exceptionalism. Our popes and bishops have for over a century produced a rich fund of authoritative church teaching documents treating many ethical aspects of social order, including principles governing political and economic justice, both within national communities and between nations in the world community.
One frequent observation is that Catholic theology supplies what strictly secular social theories cannot provide: a satisfyingly deep grounding for our moral judgments in metaphysical principles and notions of human nature—indeed, a commitment to an entire cosmology that undergirds the moral order of the visible world. One of the premier moral foundations of church social teachings is the affirmation of the solemn and equal dignity of every human person, regardless of nationality or citizenship status. In Catholic theology, we are all equally precious in the eyes of God; no one deserves more or less consideration by virtue of belonging to any particular national community. The conceptual challenges to American exceptionalism are obvious from the very start.
A related central feature of Catholic social teaching is a marked universalism in our rightful collective social concerns. While post-Enlightenment secular thought assuredly features themes redolent of a certain inclusive benevolence, Catholic theology displays a much deeper and fully articulated commitment to universal love, even a cosmopolitan spirit, along with an insistence on working out how the principles of universal social concern can be brought to bear on international relations.
Brothers And Sisters All
These themes are developed with considerable specificity in the pages of Pope Francis’ encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” or “Brothers and Sisters All,” a visionary 2020 document by Pope Francis that treats global solidarity, conflict resolution and social reconciliation. Francis builds here and elsewhere upon the groundbreaking encyclicals of two of his predecessors in the previous century. First, John XXIII published “Pacem in Terris” (“Peace on Earth”) in 1963 with an appealing portrayal of proper order in the family of nations, a constellation that constitutes a genuine worldwide community. Second, Paul VI issued a challenging 1967 encyclical “Populorum Progressio” (“The Progress of Peoples”) that insists on an integral human development that leaves nobody out. In these documents, nations are understood as moral agents, charged with pursuing the common good within their borders and obligated to contribute to a universal common good in the worldwide community, so as to fulfill the duties of good global citizens.
The vision of mutuality and universality of social concern that emerges from these three encyclicals (and many other papal writings besides) provides valuable moral context for recommending and shaping a certain style of American engagement with the world. A proper stance of any great power toward other peoples is one that emphasizes the constructive aspects of exceptionalism, namely the desire to be of service to all, to enact a benevolent universalist ethic, without the potentially destructive aspects mentioned above.
In line with the Catholic commitment to enacting a preferential option for the poor and marginalized, a nation that aspires to be that “city on a hill” must always be mindful of the “city under that hill,” refusing to relegate other peoples to unwitting victims of its rise to prominence and power—those who find themselves stepped over or trod upon in the course of America’s own ascendance. An America that aspires to play a constructive role on the world stage must embody the virtues of humility and self-restraint, resisting the constant temptation to subjugate others and to control the terms of global exchanges for its unilateral advantage.
Murray, Niebuhr, Maritain
Are these appeals to moral principles blatantly naïve? Can we reasonably expect a world power to expend its resources and efforts to benefit others? While it is not hard to anticipate such objections to this portrayal of proper social order and America’s place in the world, it is also possible to muster further theological resources that allow us to incorporate such demurrals in a constructive way.
One of the great architects of twentieth-century American public theology is Reinhold Niebuhr, a Protestant often considered the father of Christian realism. Even with his decidedly Augustinian pessimism in advising against altruism and moral perfectionism (especially in the form of naïve pacifism) as an appropriate guiding principle for American policies, Niebuhr never descended into rank cynicism or abandoned hope that nations could indeed act on moral principles in shaping their internal affairs and their foreign policies. While scarcity and security concerns always constrain nations and their choices, making power rather than good intentions the primary coin of the realm in the rough-and-tumble world of diplomacy, morality remained of permanent relevance for Niebuhr, even as he advised settling for approximations of justice rather than insisting upon full achievements of ethics in public affairs.
On the Catholic side, the writings of the Jesuit John Courtney Murray reflect a similar impatience with dewy-eyed idealists, but also a similar high regard for affirming the perduring role of principles in foreign policy. Even when the characteristically Catholic emphasis on the common good falls decidedly out of fashion, Murray resists falling into a cynicism that abandons the quest for morally principled approaches to the conduct of foreign policy, such as prioritizing humanitarian assistance and restraint against the wanton use of force abroad.
If Murray and Niebuhr can, in their faith-based prescriptions for U.S. foreign policy, insist on moral standards for the conduct of foreign policy and international relations, then so can we today steer a course in which the service-oriented aspect of American exceptionalism overrides the self-serving and domineering side. While respecting pluralism and the consciences of all, there indeed remains room for the pursuit of the full range of Christian virtues in the conduct of American policy abroad.
Jacques Maritain, a contemporary of Niebuhr and Murray, sheds further light on this topic. His 1958 book Reflections on America was his love letter to the country that offered him refuge from the tumult that enveloped his homeland of France. Without ever using the phrase “American exceptionalism,” Maritain endorses the proposition that the United States represents the future hope and promise of civilization. He also frames his observations in terms of the “Old World inheritance” and the feudal order of rigid class structures and sharp social stratification that the United States is fortunate to have avoided.
In this observation, Maritain joins the ranks of other commentators for whom a central feature of American exceptionalism is precisely what America enjoys immunity from—including the appeal of both socialism or authoritarianism, captured in the phrase “It can’t happen here.” That phrase, by the way, supplied the title of a dystopian 1935 Sinclair Lewis novel that cast considerable doubt on America’s immunity from the gravitational pull of aspiring authoritarian dictators, and this just happens to be a topic receiving renewed attention at the present historical moment.
Maritain’s highly positive assessment of America’s role in the world was greatly influenced by his witnessing the constructive role played by the ambitious Marshall Plan, by which the United States contributed to the rebuilding of his beloved Europe after the devastation of World War II. If he had written Reflections on America even five years later, he would surely have included some reference to the explosion of programs inaugurated by the Kennedy administration for extending American leadership around the world and reaching out a hand of assistance, in the forms of the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress in Latin America and many other partnerships.
The Present Context
I also cannot help but imagine Maritain’s astonishment if he were to witness the events of the past few months, as a U.S. administration inexplicably embraced an “America First” (or even “America only”) attitude and pulled back from so many laudable international commitments. These include, most egregiously, dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and a wide range of vital humanitarian assistance and foreign aid programs, threatening the entire notion of global leadership and service that has been a hallmark of the best versions of American exceptionalism.
On that latter score, I for one am not prepared to concede that the American people as a whole have somehow suddenly lost their sense of solidarity and concern for our global neighbors and are now callously indifferent to pressing human needs, no matter what certain government officials say or do. And if we are somehow experiencing a moral decline in this regard, I would be the first to challenge the claim that such a trend would be permanent or inevitable. There is nothing American about ignoring the needs of suffering people around the world—needs that we could easily address, and indeed have been doing so in admirable ways for many years.
The United States can still achieve great and noble things, precisely by invoking American exceptionalism, rightly understood. It can continue to promote democracy and human rights throughout the world, with a sense of service to all of humanity, resisting the selfish isolationism that rears its ugly head from time to time. But America can do so effectively only if it pursues these legitimate aspirations with such virtues as humility, restraint and self-control, harnessing that felicitous synthesis of altruism and realism which shaped the most commendable face of American exceptionalism, as a beacon of hope to all of humanity.
