ANOTHER DEFINITION OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

This one comes from Renew America and is explicitly theocentric.   Here are some excerpts:

American Exceptionalism was first explored by Alexis de Tocqueville in his seminal work, Democracy in America. He did not come up with the idea, but he was the first to understand that our nation was formed based on a set of values that was far, far different from any other nation in human history. America is the first place where a government was formed around the truth that individual rights come directly from God. America was the exception, and its exceptional quality was that unlike any other nation in history, in which the church, a king or a dictator bestows rights, our Declaration of Independence correctly asserts that our unalienable rights are granted by the Creator himself.

It was and is truly exceptional not because of our DNA – America is home to peoples from all across the earth – but because Americans began with the correct ordering of man’s relationship to God. Only through that ordering can human dignity, individual rights and freedom be honored and maintained. That is why America is exceptional. It is not that we are great but that He is great.