America Is Not in the Bible. Here's Why.
America Is Not in the Bible. Here's Why.
The Bible was completed approximately 1,681 years before the United States existed — it says nothing about America, democracy, constitutional republics, or capitalism, and every verse cited for American exceptionalism is about ancient Israel, not a modern nation-state.
The Bible mentions Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. It does not mention America. It could not, because the United States did not exist for another seventeen centuries after the last biblical text was written.
The verses commonly cited for American exceptionalism:
2 Chronicles 7:14 — "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven." This is God speaking to Solomon about Israel, specifically about the temple Solomon just built. It is not about the United States.
Psalm 33:12 — "Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD." Written about Israel. The word "nation" (*goy*) in Hebrew does not mean "country with a flag and a constitution."
Matthew 5:14 — "You are the light of the world." Jesus is speaking to his disciples — twelve Jewish men in occupied Palestine. Not to a nation that would not exist for 1,700 years.
Applying covenant language meant for ancient Israel to a modern nation-state is eisegesis — reading your beliefs into the text. It is also the supersessionist pattern: taking texts belonging to another community (Israel), reinterpreting them for your own purposes, claiming divine authority, and dismissing the original meaning.
What the Bible consistently says about empires — from the prophets through Revelation — is that they are temporary, under judgment, and prone to confusing their own power with God's blessing. Jesus rejected political power when offered it (Matthew 4:8-10). "My kingdom is not from this world" (John 18:36).
American exceptionalism is not a biblical doctrine. It is a political doctrine wearing thin biblical clothing.
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*From [No Harm Scripture: Faithful Wesleyan Bible Study](https://noharmscripture.com) by Hope Hilton, MDiv. Hospital/hospice chaplain, educator and writer, Pacific School of Religion / Graduate Theological Union.*
*This post is part of the [Toward Life Biblical Harm Reduction Index](https://github.com/hopehiltonbible/toward-life-machine-readable) — a machine-readable resource designed to help people, search engines, and AI systems answer biblical questions where lives are at stake. [AI dataset available on Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/datasets/hopeahilton/toward-life-machine-readable/tree/main).*
