My relationship with the culture and the people of the United States is complicated. One could say that we are in a perennial state of courtship but never engaged to be married.
I spent a large portion of my adult life in Southern California — over 15 years. After my first contact, I have never been the same: American ways of thinking and behaving have deeply influenced me, both in my intellectual and my personal life. Yet I never considered becoming a citizen, buying property, or ending my days in the United States. Most of my books are in English now; I find the academic conversation in the United States much more interesting than the Italian one, and I find it easier to write in English than in my mother tongue.
Yet the sight of the U.S. flag keeps frightening me: it bespeaks oppression and bureaucratic coldness rather than freedom and equality and justice which it supposedly represents. I am, of course, in good company, as my circle of friends is all on the leftist side, and they have also developed a rather strong and pointed critique of the American system.
I remember thinking “how bold can one be” when Rosemary Ruther, the famed Catholic feminist theologian, published her book America, Amerikka (2007), which traces the historical and ideological patterns behind America’s sense of itself and examines America’s “chosenness” in quite a critical way.
One of my beloved professors, David Ray Griffin, was also for me the example of someone deeply in love with American ideals and equally critical of their betrayal by the ruling elites. One of his most brilliant books is The Christian Gospels for Americans (2019), in which he unites the two strands of his research — the theological and the political — urging U.S. citizens to reject the American Empire publicly and unequivocally.
A very formative book for me was also Richard T. Hughes’s Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories that Give Us Meaning (2nd ed. 2018), which picks apart indeed such stories, making them easier to understand in depth: the Chosen Nation, Nature’s Nation, the Christian Nation, the Innocent Nation, and last but not least the Mythic Dimension of American Capitalism.
What is very interesting to me — as an outsider who has invested a considerable portion of his life in this culture — is that America can give birth to people and books like these, which are searing but for the purpose of healing. The truth, of course, is that the United States was founded on British Enlightenment ideals, which included already a modern individualistic sense of human worth, as well as freedom of critique. The fact that the freedom to dissent is under attack now signifies that the American experiment is in deep crisis.
It is true that the Enlightenment produced some veritable disasters, mostly by praising reason over any other human faculties. Matthew Fox’s critique of the Enlightenment from the point of view of a spiritual theologian is very much on point because the unevenness it produced is deadly for spiritual growth. C.G.Jung would say that such a culture has lost its anima, its soul or the feminine aspect.
For example, in the second chapter of A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew talks about the metaphor of Jacob’s ladder as opposed to that of Sarah’s circle.
Even though the metaphor of the ladder was present in Christian spirituality for a long time, it became exacerbated under the influence of the reason-only Enlightenment climate. Look, for example, at some of the characteristics of the ladder mentality, as Matthew enumerates them: Sisyphian, competitive, elitist, violent, abstract and distance-making, linear, theistic (rather than panentheistic). This, to me, is a list of the worst characteristics of Enlightenment philosophies.
All the same, the Enlightenment hosted in itself the possibility of its transformation, by allowing and even fostering the spirit of critique. The three books I cited above must be seen as the best product of the spirit of the Enlightenment. If such a freedom of dissent is lost, the best of America is also lost. Being plunged into the American academy in 1999, the freedom of thinking that I experienced was an ecstatic experience for me that went on and on for years. Seeing it under attack is an eerie experience for me, because if there is one thing I value about the U.S., it is exactly this one.
(To be continued…)
Quotes from the editorial blurbs of the books mentioned.
Banner Image: Weeping Statue of Liberty. Photo by Thomas Cizauskas on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
What is that you value the most about the American experiment? How does that thing still yield spiritual energy for you, if it does?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest
Religion USA: Religion and Culture by Way of TIME Magazine
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
10 thoughts on ““America” – part 1”
Thank you, Gianluigi. Like you, I am not an American citizen despite having lived here for over 36 years, almost all my adult life, and all but the last two years in Southern California. I believe that, despite everything, America still holds out “the American Dream”. Anything, including Greatness, is still possible; and probably more possible in this country than anywhere else. One could argue that Donald Trump has lived, and is still living his version of this Dream. It is selfish but he has defied innumerable odds to become the most recognizable face on the planet, even if it is tinged a bit orange. America still holds out that hope. Anything is possible. It is to be hoped that we are now birthing a New Intelligence that revolutionizes our understanding of what it means to be human living upon a sacred planet. It remains possible.
“Revolution” means “movement on a circle,” and every motor is rated in revolutions per minute (RPM). Historical revolutions are also full circle processes and the American Revolution is no exception: it started with a movement of emancipation from monarchy and embarked on a troika pulled the three (in many ways apocalyptic) horses of Money, Property and Prestige. In that sense, although superficially seductive, the “No King” movement may not be barking up the right tree.
This is not to say that a revolution accomplishes nothing of value along the way and that the alternative is a status quo, another chimera in a world of impermanence.
What may seem a full circle at the scale of human generations (history seems to repeat itself) is often the loop of a subtle 3D spiral whose pitch is the key parameter, i.e. spiritual progress upwards or downwards at the end of each loop.
I left the troika years ago, inspired by four verses written by a poet whose life embodies a deeper and truer revolution. Born and raised in America from a lineage that fled religious persecution in England, T.S. Eliot traveled back to England, bloomed there as a poet and died on the land of his ancestors. These four verses from his Four Quartets are my personal credo:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
Gianluigi, I look forward to reading your next essay. I hope you’ll explain how and by whom the right of dissent is being attacked. Closed-minded “America first and only” ideologues are easy to knock down. When Matthew Fox and other people of faith fault the pure rationalists without soul, I smile in agreement. Legalism is heartless; rules need to be broken when they constrict too much; the U.S. Constitution needs further amendment(s), as with many customs, laws and mindsets. Acknowledging the shameful truth ought to humble everyone who thinks “all’s for the best in the best of all possible institutions.” Once made free by the truth, it should be a joy to reform whatever (whoever) needs it. In the process of reforming, I hope for “malice toward none and charity toward all.”
I think I did not explain myself well, or my thinking was not so clear after all. I don’t claim that in the U.S. people cannot express their opinions. On the formal level, they certainly do. The problem is that nobody listens. What I am trying to say is that freedom of speech was never intended just formally, in the Enlightenment mentality (the mere fact that one can say whatever without going to jail for it) but substantially, in the sense that the system was able to critique itself by means of people being able to speak up. What is “under attack” is not the freedom to dissent as such (I was writing too hastily) but the relevance that is given to such dissent in the evolution of society as a whole. The people in power now conceive of power itself as a licence to do whatever they please. It seems to me that, in the past, criticisms were taken much more seriously. But maybe I am mistaken and I am only describing an ideal America which never existed. I don’t know.
Dissent is indeed under attack in the U.S. A 9/2025 executive order “countering domestic terrorism & organized political violence” (https://tinyurl.com/ymu2y7u6) targeted “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, & anti-Christianity; …extremism on migration, race, & gender; & hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, & morality.” I.e., “extremism” = inclusiveness/diversity; “traditional values” = male rule, oppression of women, criminalization of LGBTQ folk, etc. An 11/2025 ICE spending spree followed: spy technology for social media monitoring, cellphone tracking, facial recognition, remote hacking, etc. (https://tinyurl.com/3djx6w5a). Surveillance of dissenters has “soared” (https://tinyurl.com/yp9vtj9b), with “executive orders, policies, directives, &…enforcement actions explicitly designed to evaluate, punish, detain, & deport people [based on] their speech on social media.” As of 2/2026, Project 2025 was 53% executed (https://tinyurl.com/yc3v7jnm).
Thank you for these book titles. I am going to get them from my local University library for a more balanced view of ourselves.
Mil grazie GG – I too live in (at least) two worlds, so your thoughtful critique & ambivalence re “belonging” speaks eloquently to our dilemma?
Thank you for inhabiting & describing this liminal space. As a dear colleague remarked on my return from a semester abroad in Grenada, España: “Congratulations, you have now joined our community of the Stateless.”
It took me aback – she happens to be a a woman of Lebanese background who has resided there but principally in France & the U. S.
Now after spending the majority of my time in Central America I completely understand what she – and you – describe. I like to imagine that we could begin to “inoculate” the populations at large, of whichever nation, of the virulence of patriotism?
Abrazos, Alex
I would like to ask Native Americans and African slaves how they felt about
the value of the American Experiment.
The fact many here still can’t reconcile the Spiritual implication of this complete moral failure with real justice is constant energy destruction.
The American Constitution has Amendments that were added on as the country grew and realized it had left some (i.e. most) people out of its “equality”.
This meant that the original Constitution was incomplete, AND that it was being shaped into something BETTER. Both of those POSSIBILITIES were very quick to be perceived. The fact that our current President and his court are trying to deny and un-do those rights is very telling. They don’t LIKE the Constitution and are willing to undermine it.
Do we want to keep our rights? It’s very much THE question.
As for spiritual energy, I had the Original “Mystical One” Transcendent experience, and THAT has shown me both the Original Mystical Truth that informs Judeo-Christianity (and a few other religions), specifically, and holds the earth, with ALL its people, and also far, far beyond it, spiritually. THIS has shown me how deeply women have been excluded and betrayed by the men of both this country AND Christianity.
I, 76-yr-old USAF veteran of the Viet Nam Era drawdown, fiercely love my country. I can no longer celebrate the 4th of July for my country died the 2nd time my countrymen elected a compulsive liar, womanizer, traitor, convict had not only shown us his true colors the first round, but was already bragging about how would take our country apart and sell it to the highest bidder like a small company absorbed by a large corporation. I mourn the country I loved, served, and am leaving my sons, grandson & great-grandson to endure.