On American Exceptionalism: Abram Van Engen

It seems every political community has a Golden Age—an era (real or imagined) when leaders were all virtuous, the people were all happy, and national prominence was obvious to the watching world. In the American context, the idea that our political order is somehow exceptional—the best there ever was—has fascinating history. America, in its origins, was supposed to have a distinctive calling and purpose that set it apart. It was, to borrow the words of Jesus and the Puritan John Winthrop, a City on a Hill, to whom the eyes of all nations turned.  Our guest today, Abram Van Engen, investigates the history of the idea of American exceptionalism, looking at its cultural and even theological origins, as well as the ways in which the idea has been picked up and transformed in contemporary politics. He also raises questions about the ways that the underside of the American experiment (the displacement of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of African men and women) is forgotten in many tellings of the national myth.