a “Protestant” country. Americans have been captivated from the beginning by the notion of a special providence that reserved the discovery of America until the emergence of Protestantism. America is thus the only country in which the concept of “Protestantism” gained church-historical significance and reality, for America wants to be not the country of the Lutheran or the Reformed church but precisely the country of “Protestantism” in its full denominational breadth. Perhaps it is true to say that