Sarah Palin’s JerUSAlem and Pentecostal faith: a hysteric symptom of American utopianism?

The United States of America embodies the utopian claim that people from any religious persuasion can identify America as their homeland. This is traceable in the history of non-conforming Protestants fleeing persecution in Catholic Europe. Their establishment of utopian communities also in-volved the appropriation of land from the original owners and an imperative to will ignorance of this as a criminal act. The perpetuity of this legacy can be seen in the twenty-first century return to religion and the identification of America with economic opportunity rather than as socio-geographic entity. While many are still attracted to migrate to the United States, even more people live vicariously in an American utopia via increased modes of consumerism, invoking anxiety about its impact on the non man-made world.