American prophetic language fuses scripture with national founding narratives.

Evidence

An important language in the United States that overlaps in varying measure with rights language (not to be directly equated with human rights language) is its prophetic language. Unlike human rights discourse, American prophetic language not only draws its vocabulary and imagery from a particular scripture (the Old Testament), it is also deeply rooted in narratives of the founding of a particular nation (the American). Famously, there are two narratives—one anticipating, the other supplementing: First, the story of the seventeenth-century Puritan escape to religious freedom from persecution in England; and second, the story of the constitution of thirteen American colonies into a new sovereign state, signifying a repudiation of English despotism. In both cases freedom comes from a rejection of tradition. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 701

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘prophetic language’ as distinct from rights discourse — scripture-derived vocabulary fused with national founding narratives.
• XREF: Connects to debates about American civil religion and exceptionalism; resonates with Robert Bellah’s civil religion thesis. — connects to: Adherents explain prosperity as reward for national fidelity to the Bible — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 150