Neuhaus on American ecclesiology

One hates to lift a single sentence out of its larger context, but what Fr. Richard John Neuhaus says here has a certain aphoristic quality and is definitely worth repeating: "In the absence of a strong and deep ecclesiology, American Protestantism has always been prone to embrace America as its church, and to react with angry disillusionment when America fails to live up to that role." Coming from someone who so often seems to ascribe redemptive significance to what he insists on calling the American experiment, such a statement is striking. It also bears no small resemblance to what was written here: A mixed legacy: evangelicalism's puritan roots.