What Is America?

I am reading an incredibly fascinating book called What Is America? by Ronald Wright. I think it should be required reading for every American. Here is an excerpt:

The power of faith, especially of a fundamentalist turn, in the life and politics of the United States is unique among major modern countries. "No Western nation is as religion-soaked as ours," writes the cultural critic Harold Bloom, adding that this "demands some understanding, if our doom-eager society is to be understood at all." Many a conversation between an American and a European founders on the rock of piety. In short, most Americans believe that God takes a direct hand in human affairs; most other westerners do not. And many in the United States, like their Puritan forebears, are so certain they are privy to the Almighty's intentions that they are willing to help him carry them out: some in the positive ways of altruism; others in bigotry and on the battlefield. With their sense of being actors in a war between good and evil fought on Earth but directed from Heaven, such Christians have more in common ideologically with the hardliners of Islam than the mainstream secular west.

I highly suggest you read this book.