What is the American religion?

The characteristic style of religious thought in America is indeed Protestant in origin, and largely that still in essence, not doctrinally (and dogmatically: the question, all-important in most forms of Protestantism, of the right belief that faith is focused on, and the authorized practical engagements, by) but ethically (in the sense of ethos, a style of feeling and thinking, behaving and acting, which always includes but is broader than morals, which are matters of what are ultimately legal obligations, or treated in particular communities as such, fixed by definite principles and rules). The distinctive features of American protestant religious and spiritual life are that it is: affirmative, practical, encouraging, and enthusiastic. The consequence of this eminently practical cast of mind is that those who are inspired by it are often highly successful (and, certainly, conscientiously ‘good’, at least by their own lights). New Age spiritualists of various kinds (and there are many, from Orientalist appropriations of (ancient) Indian and Chinese thought, to the cults of Jung and other psychological spiritualities, to the enormous self-help and personal business advice literature (these two things being essentially forms of the same thing). It may be hypothesized that Jews, Catholics, and other groups tend to succeed in the public sphere in articulating what they want in terms that are essentially those of sectarian Protestantism.

What I most love about all this is that the society is changing, and destined to, from increasing international cultural influences (signs of which are small but real) as well as continuing immigration. I love these things because they may portend to make our vaunted universalism less parochial. Intellectual culture is either cosmopolitan or it is just a form of marketing. Marketing and advertising are what readers of books get when public discourse is owned by an organization in a position to control it. Then, democracy dies and republicanism means: something, but much less than it would it once did and might.