As Bellah points out, American identity is rooted in a sense of divine agency and Christian destiny. “Behind the civil religion at every point lie Biblical archetypes: Exodus, Chosen People, Promised Land, New Jerusalem, Sacrificial Death and Rebirth. But it is also genuinely American and genuinely new.”

XREF: Connects to Robert Bellah's civil religion thesis; relevant to discussions of American exceptionalism and national mythology.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 569