An Almost-Chosen People

To Mrs. Curmudgeon's bemusement, I am an obsessive listener of the EconTalk podcast, and have picked up the phrase "deep insight" from host Russ Roberts. Paul Johnson's lecture "An Almost-Chosen People," published in the June/July 2006 issue of First Things, is littered with them. Just one paragraph (get ye and read the rest):

"Since religious establishments were popular rather than hieratic, a distinctive American religious tradition began to emerge. There was never any sense of division in law between laity and clergy, between those with spiritual privileges and those without—no jealous confrontation between a secular and an ecclesiastical world. America was born Protestant and did not have to become so through revolt and struggle. It was not built on the remains of a Catholic Church or an establishment; it had no clericalism or anticlericalism. In all these respects it differed profoundly from the old world, which had been shaped by Augustinian principles and violent reaction to them. The word secular never had the same significance in America as in Europe because the word clerical had never conveyed an image of intolerance and privilege. America had a traditionless tradition, making a fresh start with a set of Protestant assumptions, taken for granted, self-evident, as the basis for a common national creed."