How Modern Powers Use Theology and Ideology to Create Cohesion and Justify Expansion

Geopolitics is often explained through material variables — military capability, economic leverage, institutional alignment, demographic weight. Yet beneath these measurable factors lies something older and less quantifiable: the human tendency to believe that one’s own community is uniquely chosen, historically destined, or morally superior. This belief — whether expressed through theology, civil religion, revolutionary ideology, or civilizational myth — performs two enduring functions. It binds societies internally, and it legitimizes their projection of power externally.

Exceptionalism is not confined to any one religion, culture, or political system. It is an anthropological constant. Societies across history have told stories that elevate the in-group and define a moral boundary separating it from outsiders. These narratives do not automatically produce aggression, but they normalize hierarchy and make expansion, influence, or resistance feel not merely strategic but justified. Modern states, despite their bureaucratic and secular facades, continue to operate within this ancient pattern.

The United States offers one of the clearest examples of exceptionalism evolving over time. Early American identity was shaped by covenant theology — the idea of a people set apart for a divine purpose, a “city upon a hill.” In the nineteenth century, this framing took territorial form in Manifest Destiny, the belief that continental expansion was historically ordained. After the Second World War, American exceptionalism secularized into liberal internationalism. The United States cast itself as architect of a rules-based order grounded in democracy, open markets, and human rights. This universalist posture was missionary in structure: American values were not merely national preferences but global goods.

Today, however, that post-1945 liberal consensus is visibly under strain. A rising current of America First nationalism — often intertwined with Christian nationalism — challenges secular humanism and global institutionalism. The debate is not whether the United States is exceptional; it is what that exceptionalism requires. Should it lead a universal order, or defend a distinct civilizational identity at home? The underlying structure of chosenness remains, but its policy implications are contested.

European exceptionalism has long combined sacral authority, civilizational mission, and political expansion, a pattern visible from the Greek and Roman Empires, the papal endorsement of the Crusades through the theological and legal justifications that underwrote early modern colonialism; in the twentieth century those same currents mutated into secular, racial, and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)