Manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, and the city on a hill seen through Winthrop, O'Sullivan, and Bush
Opportunities for religious peacebuilding
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12913192 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Steven C Cunningham (0000-0001-7758-7717, University of Maryland Extension, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 12 |
| Publication date | 2021-11-08 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociology Compass (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1751-9020 • E-ISSN: 1751-9020 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/soc4.12946 |
| OpenAlex | W3214669019 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 15 |
A dominant theme in the story of the American, city‐on‐a‐hill experience is manifest destiny, a term literally expressing a sense of a rightful, westward expansion across the continent in the late 19 th century, but more broadly expressing a general entitlement granted, it is often understood, divinely to an exceptional United States of America. The origins, the political‐versus‐religious undergirding, and the implications of manifest destiny are widely discussed in the literature. Here I focus on three primary texts by John Winthrop, John O'Sullivan, and George W. Bush to argue that, even though Winthrop's and his fellow Puritan immigrants' understanding of their role in the new land was a far cry from that of O'Sullivan—who coined the term “manifest destiny” – the seeds of manifest destiny were brought with these first immigrants to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, later sprouting and blossoming in O'Sullivan's coining, and eventually bearing some of its many fruits Bush's foreign policy. Finally, I will discuss the sociological and other implications of the divine endorsement of such ideas
American exceptionalism · Destiny (ISS module · Environmental ethics · Immigration · Manifest destiny · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theme (computing · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies
Manifest destiny
The Second Inaugural Address
Ethnic ingroup friendships in schools
The Origins and Character of American Exceptionalism
A Discovered Dissembler Can Achieve Nothing Great”; Or, Four Theses on the Death of Presidential Rhetoric in an Age of Empire
Alternative Wests
New Directions in Sociological Theory
Errand Into The Wilderness
The Folly of Fighting for Providence, or, the End of Empire and Exceptionalism
Toward a Historicized Sociology
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |