ABSTRACT
The most remarkable model of American pluralism is probably to be found not in Boston but in Hawaii, where three distinct cultural traditions—Polynesian, Oriental, and Caucasian—live in relative equality and pride. Barely a third of the nation today is of Anglo-Saxon stock and of that, only a small portion is of the high-church sensibility. Ralph Waldo Emerson adds as well, with loving ethnocentricity, a passage on traits of mind institutionalized still today in high-church America: The Teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart, which contrasts with the Latin races. Until John F. Kennedy the national symbol systems had been deceptively Protestant—high Protestant, in good measure—in their reach and range. Abraham Lincoln himself became an imitator of the Christ, yielding up his life for the nation. "Witness" and "sacrifice"—"a good conscience the only sure reward"—were added by high religion to the native pragmatism as much valued attributes.
