From providence to civil religion : some "Dutch" Reformed interpretations of America in the Revolutionary era

The bicentennial commemoration has accelerated the already abundant recent output of literature on the American "civil religion." One common definition of that concept—and the one used in this article—is that in which the United States is seen as a chosen, "redeemer nation," God's "new Israel," with a mission, a "manifest destiny,'' to usher in the climactic stage of world history. This conviction of America's eschatological role is rooted, inter alia, in the doctrine of providence, in the expectancy awakened by the Reformation, in England's sense of a national religious vocation (note John Fo... Mehr ...