Caroline Winterer

Yeah, they're a young republic, but there's no evidence that this is going to last very long.

So they're this untried, new republic.

Democratic Republic and versus the ancient monarchies of Europe who are always threatening to reinvade them.

So, you know, and they come into the 19th century still with this chip on their shoulder.

We're such a young nation.

We have so much to prove at any moment.

The Brits are going to reinvade or maybe France will.

So they start casting about for a different foundation on which to build their nationalism.

And they end up kind of hitting on this beautiful solution.

They say, well, yes, you know, we are the youngest nation politically.

So we are fresh.

We are like the atom among nations, you know, in this era.

Garden of Eden that is the new United States.

But we are also simultaneously the oldest world of all when you start thinking in terms of the age of the rocks that lie beneath us.

And so behind our story of manifest destiny that God is watching over our land, there's now this really deep backstory.

God, at the very beginning of Earth's history,

pulled North America out of the oceans and said, this is my country, this is my land.

And Americans feel so strongly about this that by the late 19th century, they consecrate the first national parks, Yellowstone, Yosemite, all of these, quote, national parks.

They're like natural cathedrals.

They're where Americans go to say, this is where I see God in the antiquity of American nature.