I’m obsessed with the historian Tom Holland’s thesis about Christianity’s enduring influence in Western civilisation. He argues it remains saturated by Christian ideas, even if subconsciously.
America’s values are a prime example. Particularly the way attitudes to wealth seep into the secular sphere. To see this, one has to understand the specific Christian strand behind America’s foundation.
English Puritans fled to Plymouth in modern-day Massachusetts because they believed the Church of England was still too catholic. They wanted to start a purified community of real Protestants. It’s a generalisation, but sociologists have long observed that Protestant cultures, particularly Calvinist-influenced ones, are more capitalist. Max Weber’s Protestant Work Ethic is well-known for arguing it’s the result of an anxious struggle to know if they’re really chosen by God.
To summarise the theology very briefly, Protestants emphasise God’s grace as a one-way gift. If God chooses me to receive this grace, he’s also likely to wish me material prosperity on earth. Hence wealth is a blessing. Think of this line from evangelical clergyman John Newton’s famous hymn Amazing Grace:
The Lord hath promised good to me.
God’s grace is unilateral and unearned. One is not chosen because he or she is faithful, but faith is itself evidence of God’s choosing. Moral transformations and prosperity – in Newton’s case, this was a volte face from slave ship captain to leading abolitionist – are fruits of this grace.
Prosperity Gospel
We still see Puritan theology in presidential speeches that end with “God bless America”. It reflects a deep cultural belief in divine favour, a clear inheritance from the idea that the nation itself is part of God’s providential design.
But this belief doesn’t manifest as, “great, I’m rich. God loves me.” Rather, it’s about wearing this wealth lightly because it’s not truly mine. It’s a gift. Challenging gospel passages on wealth (e.g. Mark’s “sell everything you have and give to the poor”) are interpreted attitudinally. The bad rich man is one who focuses on money itself, rather than seeing it as a by-product of living with God’s grace. Wealth, then, is not an extractive zero-sum game, but a manifestation of divine abundance.
Because it’s abundant and not truly ours, we shouldn’t hoard it. The Prosperity Gospel is the most radical and ostentatious example of this. It teaches that God will multiply generous giving. Gifts and donations to the church sow a seed to reap a harvest of blessings. That’s the message of famous televangelists like Oral Roberts. And, controversial, because these televangelists got very rich from this spiritual investment scheme.
Tipping and Bankruptcy
That spirit of abundance persists in America today because of its origin story. Even as the country has grown more secular and multi-faith, it is this Protestant attitude that influences quirky practices like tipping. Visitors are often aghast when expected to tip 20 to 25 percent on top of any service bill. But Americans embrace this “pay it forward” mentality.
Or take bankruptcy. America’s laws are lenient because it’s not viewed as a moral failing. It’s a nod to a spirit of forgiveness and new beginnings. Several of President Trump’s businesses have declared bankruptcy at no detriment to his popularity. It’s a stark contrast to the social stigma in places like Japan and South Korea. For Americans, wealth is easy come, easy go and they love a riches to rags to riches story. It all feeds into the great tradition of American risk taking and innovation.
America is very rich
This cultural attitude of abundance is influential in the prosperity America enjoys today. We struggle to understand just how rich America is. GDP per capita is distorted by tax havens, natural resources giants and profit centres with small populations. Even when you divide its massive GDP across all 340 million citizens, America still ranks seventh globally. That is real, usable wealth at a huge scale.
Median household diposable income gives us a more accurate picture. You see that in almost any American TV show. Even families with relatively modest incomes live in comfortable suburban houses with a garden and several cars.
Dream versus Reality
The tangible advantages behind this are well known:
💎 Innovation
💎 Human capital
💎 Energy independence
💎 Dollar hegemony
But its founding story matters just as much. I heard former US Ambassador Anthony Gardner talking about America-China competition in Singapore several years ago. He argued China’s attempts to win influence through infrastructure and loans (The Belt and Road Initiative) would fall short against America’s more ethereal ability to “make people dream.” Setting aside the question of how real that dream is, Americans believe it and that belief has power.
Causal Fallacy
I’m aware of the causal fallacy risk here. In the early years of Christian Rome, its bishop Damasus suggested to the pagan high priest that he should convert to Christianity. “Make me bishop of Rome, and I will instantly become a Christian,” Praetextatus replied. His retort implies that it’s easy to preach from a position of privilege, enjoying all the benefits of one’s belief system. If I live in the richest country on earth, I’m more likely to have a relaxed attitude about money – to see it as abundant. In newly wealthy nations – like the Asian tigers – poverty is not a distant memory. So I might be a little more frugal.
That’s evident in contrasting attitudes to philanthropy. Where Bill Gates plans to leave less than one percent of his wealth to his children, many older Asian entrepreneurs emphasise family continuity. It’s grounded in preservation and Confucian values of filial duty. But the American impulse towards philanthropy has deeper Protestant vibes. It speaks to suspicion of government redistribution. After all, tax-and-spend implies scarcity. Charity implies surplus.
Belief shapes context and context reinforces belief. America started with this Puritan idea of abundance and it manifested in success (driven by other tangible factors like geography and resources). But “God Bless America” means setbacks can be interpreted in the light of providence too. It is the bankrupt entrepreneur who starts again. It is the nation that recovers from the Great Depression, Vietnam and the Great Financial Crisis, despite endless predictions of its decline. Just months ago, we were told American exceptionalism was over. Investors needed to look elsewhere. And yet, halfway through the year, despite all the noise about Trump’s erratic policies, it’s as you were in financial markets.
Does Trump really preach abundance?
Maybe this paean to America looks anachronistic in current circumstances. Politics of envy and economic injustice were powerful forces in Trump’s rise to power. It hardly shows a population relaxed about the abundance of wealth. Similarly, do attitudes to immigrants and defence really reflect a spirit of generosity?
But that misses the exclusivity of this early Puritanism. Grace isn’t for everyone, just God’s chosen elect. In this moral framework, globalists and university elites are poisoning the purified community. We see it in the war of words between JD Vance and Rory Stewart over Jesus’ message of universal compassion. Vance argued this love is hierarchical – directed first to family, then to community, then to nation. Only then, could it perhaps consider the world at large.
Vance is, of course, a Catholic. But that’s the point. American attitudes reflect cultural inheritance, not conscious theology. The Puritan mindset permeates society whether one is Protestant, Catholic or even secular.
Empire is eternal, until it’s not
Perhaps more pertinent is the question of whether the same attitude that drives America’s success could also be its undoing. We might suggest that the federal debt is also a product of an easy come, easy go attitude to wealth. As abundance persists in the appetite for US Treasuries, few sound the alarm that America is living beyond its means. We’ve already seen this play out on an individual level in the Great Financial Crisis, where people borrowed on the assumption of perpetual growth.
So this belief in abundance isn’t without danger. In its limitlessness, it threatens to ignore trade-offs. Just as the Roman Empire believed it was eternal until it wasn’t, belief can slip into complacency. But that same belief and assurance which stems from Puritan beginnings fuels America’s optimism, resilience and culture of risk-taking. God Bless America reflects a powerful cultural force. And it should make us wary of writing off a nation which believes its supremacy is protected by divine force.
