Incarnational Nationhood

American exceptionalism admits of at least two very different histories. On the one hand, you have the early Puritan exceptionalism of moral example articulated by John Winthrop, wherein the Massachusetts Bay Colony was to be as a "city on a hill." This would develop into a larger vision of the entire United States as a beacon to the world of a just and righteous society. On the other hand, and many years later, Joseph Stalin coined the actual term "American Exceptionalism" to describe a minority view in the Communist Party USA that the United States was not bound to the Marxist historical-economic laws that led to the collapse of capitalism in other countries (for example, because the United States did not go through a feudal period). But whether as a divine vocation or as a historical anomaly, there is broad agreement, especially on the right, that the United States is a very special country.