In his book Race of Nation: A Conflict of Divided Loyalties (1925), Italian–American lawyer and diplomat Gino Speranza (1887–1935) focuses on immigrants as a threat to American civilization. While Speranza claims that he holds “no brief for the superiority of Anglo-Saxon civilization,” he claims the US is an Anglo-Saxon country with an Anglo-Saxon civilization and “that people of Anglo-Saxon stock are the best adapted to running its government and shaping its special national life.” Speranza coins the term ‘nation-spiritual’ to distance himself from a very particular material, racialized, and conformist American identity that he details and promotes in his book; the term is, effectively, an ineffable shibboleth that can’t be specified because it is only available to the exclusive class of ‘true Americans’ (like Speranza) who, apparently, know it when they see it, or sense it, or feel it, and who arrogate to themselves the role of ‘decider’ of who ‘counts’ as a true American, and what the ‘essential principles and ideals of American life’ are.

In Re-forging America (1927), Lothrop Stoddard (1883–1950) provides a compelling narrative of the American nation. Stoddard uses language and rhetorical techniques to convince the reader that the story he tells is true because it is based on historical facts and common sense, and because he is a patriot who is deeply concerned about the future of the country he loves. However, if we carefully examine how Stoddard constructs his arguments by analyzing the content of his discourse and the rhetorical devices he employs, we find that he has a particular goal in mind in writing his book, mainly, to characterize an American identity that is inextricably tied to a particular and exclusive ethnic/cultural identity: Anglo-Saxonism. Yet, stark differences existed among the thirteen original colonies in terms of economic interests, social customs, ethnicity, cultural norms, religious affiliations, languages spoken, and class stratification that rendered the colonial world a disparate patchwork of largely unconnected entities. Despite these differences, in the colonial era and well into the nineteenth century, America was widely understood to be a nation founded, ruled, and owned by white, Northwestern European–origin, mostly Christian (if only in name) men. There was little public pushback against this account.

In this chapter, the writings of two intellectuals are reviewed. Isaac Berkson (1891–1975) and Randolph S. Bourne (1886–1918) viewed the Americanization movement as unnecessary, wrong-headed, and contrary to their understanding of American democracy. For Berkson, Bourne, and many other intellectuals and political activists, the ‘melting pot’ meant forced assimilation into a particular preexisting ‘pot’ into which the immigrant is to be cast, and after a coerced ‘melting’ process, becomes – as much as possible – like the default ‘normal’ Anglo-Saxon/Northern European, white, Christian, English-speaking ‘American.’ For these writers, such a process was incompatible with a future based on a transnational polity of complex diversity that is always evolving and open to change and improvement, and that includes cooperation with other nations in the furtherance of sustainable peace and the improvement of living standards in the United States and across the globe.

Wentworth Stewart was an American Evangelical Methodist pastor whose views on Americanization were greatly influenced by his religious beliefs. In his book The Making of a Nation: A Discussion of Americanism and Americanization (1920), Stewart argues that the process of ‘becoming (or being) a true American’ requires a deep emotional commitment to an ill-defined state of mind rather than a compact in which the citizen (native-born or naturalized) understands and benefits from the basic principles of a constitutional democratic republic and expects equal opportunities to enjoy the ‘fruits of liberty.’ Stewart’s conception of Americanism, as represented in his writing, relies on assumptions about the founding of the United States that entail particular and constructed ‘American values,’ along with myths about the Founders and their heirs, that simply do not hold up under close scrutiny. Stewart’s commentary constructs an idealized version of American exceptionalism as the ‘soul of the nation’ that is precious, not universally available nor easily obtainable, and that requires Americanization programs that will take a very long time for proper indoctrination in Americanism to be completed, if ever.

Franklin K. Lane (1864–1921), born in Canada, was a lawyer and Democratic politician who served as secretary of labor in the Woodrow Wilson administration. As a strong advocate for US entry into the war in Europe, Lane used his role as interior secretary to promote programs that taught civics and English to ensure that immigrants understood the meaning of America and Americanism as he understood those terms. He believed that all Americans needed to be involved with Americanizing immigrants as well as those Americans who were not living up to their responsibilities in promoting American ideals, values, and aspirations. In a speech given in Washington, DC, on April 3, 1918, Lane invokes religious metaphors to characterize Americanization as a spiritual crusade; he states that America is a nation sanctified by ‘God,’ a ‘holy ground – because it serves the world’ – a country that is ‘tolerant,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘fair,’ and ‘kind.’ This hagiography trope of America as a ‘holy land’ that can ‘win out against all adversity’ with little more than ‘the philosophy of confidence, of optimism and faith and the righteousness of the contest we make against nature’ extends from the colonial period to the present day.

The narrative that America was founded by British religious refugee immigrants in search of a place to freely establish their New Israel, a city on a hill, is mired in historical revisionism and uncritically taught in school curricula that has legitimized the policy of removing ‘uncivilized’ Native peoples to allow for the settlement of ‘the empty land’ by superior ‘civilized’ white European settlers. The religious justification for the well-documented illiberal, illegal, and immoral behavior of government dealings with Native Americans has, in general, been ignored because it does not comport with a benevolent (patriotic) interpretation of American identity, an identity that was largely constructed in the first decades of the nineteenth century and has persisted to the present day. The myth that the United States is a Christian nation is not only a fabrication; its continued existence poses an actual danger to the health and survival of the American experiment, an experiment that is based on secular principles of equal justice under law and the strict separation of church and state in all aspects of state functions, policies, and powers.