Sweet land of piety

Are we good people? In the past, Christianity, the dominant religion of the West, tended to emphasize our badness. But the history of Christianity since the Renaissance has, with some detours, been the history of our extricating ourselves from the notion that we are fallen creatures. The Calvinist idea of an Elect represents the big breakthrough, and nowhere has its effect been more evident than in America. The rationale of the Revolution and the development of our constitutional government have been traced many times from the (Calvinist) Puritans . Some Americans of increasing vociferousness argue that because religion was an element in the European settlement and in the development of our government, and because God has been continually appealed to in political and civic matters, we are, in essence, a religious nation. Others argue against this , pointing out that the 17th-century religious understanding of America developed into a secular understanding of the nation and state.

In "Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion" (Doubleday, $24.95), David Gelernter condemns the secular view and comes up with some tumescent ideas about the religious and, indeed, mystical nature of the United States. For him, we Americans inhabit a religious narrative no less real than that of the Puritans. The nation is a "biblical republic" where the very idea of America itself is a religious one "of enormous, transporting power." The result is "Americanism," an actual religion possessed of a specific doctrine that he identifies as "American Zionism," with a "Creed" that says " America is a new promised land." What's more is that the salutary message and transforming power of Americanism are not confined to our happy land, but are global. All this is "supported by a mountain of evidence."

Let's see what we've got . While Gelernter warns that understanding the Puritans is "an intellectual handful," he can still tell us they "invented American Zionism and started to weave the American Creed on a great biblical loom." The weaving was completed by the "revolutionary generation," though it was some time before Americanism was established as the national religion. We owe that to Abraham Lincoln, "the greatest religious figure of modern centuries," whose "face in the old photographs makes biblical reality easier to grasp -- as if we were looking at Isaiah." Next up, Woodrow Wilson, who brought the United States into World War I (a conflict that "strikes some people as ridiculously obscure"), making Americanism "a world religion, which implied chivalrous duties abroad and at home." As Gelernter notes, we see those duties discharged today by George W. Bush, "a chivalrous American who believes in liberty, equality, and democracy not just for France and Denmark but for Arab nations...."

But we are ahead of ourselves here, having leapt over Harry Truman, who "doted on the Bible" and "brought the story of Americanism full circle." He did this by causing America to be the first nation to recognize the state of Israel. You could almost say, "Bingo." Not only were the Puritans inspired by ancient Israel, but, as Gelernter would have us believe, the United States and Israel resemble each other "more than any other nation on earth. Each was created by persecuted ex-Europeans who came to a sparsely settled promised land clutching their Bibles, ready to make the wilderness bloom and to build or rebuild a shining city on a hill." The rest of the story is a bit rushed, somewhat anticlimactic, and even depressing given the way our righteous pursuit of the war in Vietnam has been mischaracterized by poxy, guilt-burdened liberals.

This is not a history book, its author tells us, but "an essay in 'folk philosophy.' " To me there is something unwholesomely reminiscent of "Volk" here. But beyond that, the idea that our national destiny has a religious or mystical dimension -- or, indeed, that it has a destiny at all -- reminds me of National Socialism's perversion of Hegel's argument that the state, the German state as the Nazis identified it, is the expression of Geist. Some people like to feel that they are part of something big and good here on earth, but when it comes to the state I consider myself a citizen, not a devotee, and get nervous around those for whom that's not enough.

Americanism notwithstanding, the most popular way to feel good about being good today is to embrace the way of the green consumer. As a faith, this persuasion shares the most useful feature of the vanished pre-Reformation Church in allowing the selling of indulgences, now known as "carbon offsets." Indeed, I have just read a book that has not only been carbon offset itself, but whose lowercase title has surely saved a great deal of ink. It is "the green book: the everyday guide to saving the planet one simple step at a time," by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen (Three Rivers , paperback, $12.95).

So, how to be good? Buy unwrapped candy, the good "green book" tells us, use homeopathic medicines, work at home, and shun ATM receipts and traveling to the library. And, "when you buy poultry, try to buy only as much as you think you'll need." Many celebrities weigh in , but none so perfectly captures the spirit of this book as NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. Strangely, he has nothing to say about gas consumption, but plenty to tell us about the virtues of his sponsor, Budweiser. Recycle those cans , he counsels us, "so you can enjoy a few more Buds the next time my red No. 8 car and I cross the finish line."

Katherine A. Powers, a writer and critic, lives in Cambridge. She can be reached at pow3@verizon.net.