Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
Throughout the nation’s history, America has emphasized Christian values as fundamental to our conception of ourselves as a nation. While this has questionable implications for the founding principle of separation of church as state, it also profoundly affects the way in which we, as a nation, actuate change. In the midst of the abolition movement, which, incidentally, was based very solidly upon religious ideals, many American Protestants were calling into question the way in which America lived up to its ideals. This certainly applied to slavery and its moral implications but also to society as a whole. Protestantism focused on the individual and the “power of the individual to achieve sanctification” but the movement also extended this concept to the larger redemption of American society and the ability “of the American nation to establish a new golden age” (Davis 251). Individual rights have always been a cornerstone of American identity. The Settler Colonialism: If Not Genocide, Then What? post touches on this in the connection it draws between Wolfe’s article and Turner’s Frontier Thesis. The individual’s ability to act how he wants and achieve his dreams on his own merit is a concept that has been idealized from the beginning of American history. These new evangelicals simply take this one step further in identifying “fatal discrepancies between American ideals and American practice” thus expanding notions of individual greatness and morality and applying them to all of American society (Davis 251). As religious leaders asked citizens to question the meaning of their own lives and to reassess the way they acted as individuals they also asked them to examine the way in which the country as a whole was living out the ideals laid down at the nation’s founding. Thus, individual action affected the morality of all of society. This adds an extra dimension to personal morality and increases the importance given to individual actions as they both affect and provide a model for a larger American culture.