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Published on: 10/23/2008
Last Visited: 10/26/2008
Timothy Shah
Timothy Shah, an expert on religion and foreign policy for the Council on Foreign Relations, said the results suggested to him that the American public has an almost Calvinist view of itself with regard to its international engagement.
"I think Americans, like Calvin and Calvinists, tend to have a sense that they are in a kind of covenant, a special relationship with God," he said.
However, along with that covenant is a Calvinist "special vocation or sense of calling" and "an element of criticism" when policy decisions go awry.
"What the survey strikingly shows is that America and Americans, evangelical and non-evangelical, hold these things" -- that the U.S. is both blessed by God and responsible to be introspective in foreign-policy choices -- "in a remarkable tension," Shah said.