According to a recent Pew survey:
Americans are more religious and Americans are more hopeful about their ability to improve their future than are other wealthy countries.
Americans are more prone to think hard work will uplift, to reject thinking that outside forces control their destinies, to be happy and to prioritize religion. Over half of Americans say religion is very important to them, twice the rate found among Canadians, Australians, British and other wealthy nations.
In fact, Americans have more confidence that hard work will uplift than any other country. And Americans reject fatalism more than any country than, interestingly, Venezuela, which is perhaps Venezuelans subversively rejecting the nonsense rhetoric of their socialist regime.
Wait, the findings even have Calvinists in view:
Fifty-seven percent of Americans disagree with the statement “Success in life is pretty much determined by forces outside our control,” a considerably higher percentage than the global median of 38%. Similarly, Americans place an especially strong emphasis on the value of hard work – 73% think it is very important to work hard to get ahead in life, compared with a global median of 50%.
According to Mark Tooley:
Such confidence in hard work in America obviously reflects the undying Puritan work ethic, still strong after 400 years, and reinforced by countless waves of ambitious immigrants. As to rejecting “forces outside our control,” this American trait is also rooted in historic Puritan/Anglo Protestant confidence about providential mastery over the future. Calvinists may have believed in predestination but not determinism or passivity. Americans, even the non-religious, are culturally embued with a notion of individual and national purposefulness.
In other words, Americans are ripe for the New Calvinism that the Gospel Coalition promotes. Why doesn’t anyone ask what the Allies are doing wrong? Is Kathy’s b-s detector using all the electricity?
It’s like my great grandfather used to say, Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.
The Allies just need to chill and have a drink with some Oldlifers, focus on means of grace, and go quietly about their daily lifes (1 Thess 4:11). But then someone else will come up with a bright idea and good website design. Same stuff, different day (Eccl 1:9).
LikeLike
1 Thess 4:11 A fine counter to the totalitarian transformationalists.
LikeLike
Guest Todd,
Yeap:
Welcome.
LikeLike
A.B. – fascinating, thanks.
LikeLike