Do you remember that theme song "Truly American" from the old Letterman skits? That should be the background music for this post which is prompted by the meeting of ECUSA in my town and by something Neuhaus wrote at First Things :
Schoenborn observes: “The Church can never identify herself with any one nation. She is not a national Church. And yet the unmistakable features of the Church can be discerned within the different nations. This is never more luminously expressed than in the saints. Who could be more French than Therese, more English than Thomas More, more Spanish than Ignatius, more Italian than Catherine and Francis? And yet none of them is just a national saint, and any attempt to misuse the saints in the cause of nationalism (as has happened, for example, in the case of Saint Joan of Arc) totally misses the point of their lives.” Which prompts the question: Who could be more American than . . . ?What would a truly American saint look like? What are American characteristics? Though some of these are a bit trivial, we are seen by Europe as more laid back and enterpreneurial, more violent, more emotional and into self-help (re: Oprah), more hardworking, and more puritanical when it comes to smoking and drinking.
Looking at those characteristics it seems the Evangelicals got 'em covered but for the violent part. Who is more laid back and hardworking than evangelicals, where even their small groups have small groups and the weekly activities of the typical megachurch require a directory the size of a small telephone book? Self-help? America's best-selling religious book is a self-help-by-helping-others book. (As an experiment I put "Christian self-help" in the subject box of the Amazon.com search engine. The number one result was "The Purpose Driven Life" audio book. How American is that?)
As far as enterpreneurial & puritanical, I think the LDS win hands down. Joe Smith started his own religion and now even coffee is banned. It's an export, not an import and has very spicy doctrine, like hot wings.
But for sheer unselfconscious Americanism it's hard to beat the ECUSA. They want to canonize Thurgood Marshall. I'm not making this up. Marshall wasn't big on going to church and liked his booze and women but he did serve at the Holy and August U.S. Supreme Court...
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