puritans
Discord on Plymouth Rock
TaraShea Nesbit’s novel about the Mayflower pilgrims and their conflicts
The deep roots of America’s enchantment with capitalism
Eugene McCarraher explains how money became our object of worship.
Women who do things
The story of Esther Wheelwright and the communities of women and girls who surrounded her
J. K. Rowling’s wizards in the Jazz Age
Fantastic Beasts diagnoses how rising fear leads to demonizing others.
A time to shout and a time to whisper
There’s a place in society for prophetic denunciation. There’s also a place for restraint.
The United States of intoxication
18th-century colonists drank beer with breakfast and continued throughout the day, with average consumption twice as high as today’s.
by LaVonne Neff
Theological horror
Few Americans may believe in witches—or in a Puritan God. Yet The Witch explores human impulses that are still with us.
The Congregationalist burden
Margaret Bendroth intends to rescue liberal Protestants from scholarly anonymity and the disdain that accompanies numerical decline.
Ignorant but interested
If Americans of a certain age know anything about Puritanism, it is probably because they read something by the (atheist) historian Edmund S. Morgan, the great Yale scholar who died July 8. His book The Puritan Dilemma—which used the life of John Winthrop to describe the Puritans’ religious and political project in America—was widely assigned in high schools and colleges.
I had the good fortune decades ago to take a graduate class from Morgan on American colonial history.
A this-worldly story
The colonial Puritans did a lot of good things, but banning Christmas was not one of their better ideas.