America's culture is syncretic, with three primary components: 1. A fundamentalist Protestant Christian ethos, derived from the Puritans; 2. A cosmopolitan an

America's culture is syncretic, with three primary components: 1. A fundamentalist Protestant Christian ethos, derived from the Puritans; 2. A cosmopolitan and secular ethos, derived from British and Western European mercantilism; 3. Literally everything else, including the last 240 years of immigration and infusion by every non-Christian group under the sun. Whenever people say that America is "Christian," I wonder if they mean it in that syncretic sense, or in an attempt to erase or obscure it.