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Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, Free University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: Americans express a peculiar fascination with the founding of their country. Both citizens and scholars often disagree over details of the beginnings but many Americans define themselves in relation to the founding. History inspires them and provides a patriotic sense of belonging. It is often debated whether current policies are faithful to the so-called founding principles, what has stayed the same and what has changed. Though many countries celebrate their birth, only Americans combine so much cultural myths and political history. Alexis de Tocqueville famously said: "I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores"(Tocqueville 1831-32). And indeed, much of American mainstream culture builds on a Puritan legacy. They claim to have inherited it by promoting the idea of religious freedom and equal opportunity, by being a 'city upon a hill', a stronghold for democracy, and much more. However, only by retracing the historical development of Puritanism and its roots, it becomes possible to determine what sufficiently defines the Puritan legacy and what causes the persistent relevance in American politics up to this day. As Perry Miller stated, " w]ithout some understanding of Puritanism, it may safely be said, there is no understanding of America" (Miller 1950, 4). In this work I will therefore begin with reviewing the historical background of Puritan theology and development in North America. Given this as a basis, I intend to trace back political modes of thought and behavior to Puritan roots. I will answer the question in how far Puritanism is still alive today and how its legacy to American politics can be described.
Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, Free University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: Americans express a peculiar fascination with the founding of their country. Both citizens and scholars often disagree over details of the beginnings but many Americans define themselves in relation to the founding. History inspires them and provides a patriotic sense of belonging. It is often debated whether current policies are faithful to the so-called founding principles, what has stayed the same and what has changed. Though many countries celebrate their birth, only Americans combine so much cultural myths and political history. Alexis de Tocqueville famously said: “I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores”(Tocqueville 1831-32). And indeed, much of American mainstream culture builds on a Puritan legacy. They claim to have inherited it by promoting the idea of religious freedom and equal opportunity, by being a ‘city upon a hill’, a stronghold for democracy, and much more. However, only by retracing the historical development of Puritanism and its roots, it becomes possible to determine what sufficiently defines the Puritan legacy and what causes the persistent relevance in American politics up to this day. As Perry Miller stated, “[w]ithout some understanding of Puritanism, it may safely be said, there is no understanding of America” (Miller 1950, 4). In this work I will therefore begin with reviewing the historical background of Puritan theology and development in North America. Given this as a basis, I intend to trace back political modes of thought and behavior to Puritan roots. I will answer the question in how far Puritanism is still alive today and how its legacy to American politics can be described.
Written by a leading expert on the Puritans, this brief, informative volume offers a wealth of background on this key religious movement. This book traces the shaping, triumph, and decline of the Puritan world, while also examining the role of religion in the shaping of American society and the role of the Puritan legacy in American history. Francis J. Bremer discusses the rise of Puritanism in the English Reformation, the struggle of the reformers to purge what they viewed as the corruptions of Roman Catholicism from the Elizabethan church, and the struggle with the Stuart monarchs that led to a brief Puritan triumph under Oliver Cromwell. It also examines the effort of Puritans who left England to establish a godly kingdom in America. Bremer examines puritan theology, views on family and community, their beliefs about the proper relationship between religion and public life, the limits of toleration, the balance between individual rights and one's obligation to others, and the extent to which public character should be shaped by private religious belief. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
The Puritan Tradition examines how a Puritan past, historically reconstructed as a founding legend, gave meaning to early American political culture. In tracing the rhetorical invocations of this Puritan legacy, this study lends important insight into how this constructed past helped shape the political thought that underlies revolutionary, Federalist, and Whig political discourse. This emphasis on the changing political uses of this puritan Past is an important departure from scholarship that identifies an enduring Puritan essence that is read forward into American culture. Where such scholarship has often yielded either unpersuasive genealogies or a view of Puritanism as dissolving into irrelevance, The Puritan Tradition demonstrates how a Puritan past continues to play a critical role in American political identity.
Using "Paradise Lost" as a touchstone first to the English Revolution and second to the way that revolution was transferred to America, Stavely convincingly argues that the "structure of feeling" embodied in the poem persists through three centuries ofAmerican culture. His discussion of Puritan radicalism in New England and, more importantly, his detailed case studies of Marlborough and Westborough, Massachusetts, which he investigates and understands by constant reference to Milton's great poem, display his strong gifts as both literary critic and intellectual historian. Puritan Legacies is a challenging example of the "New Historicism" we have so long needed.
A powerful dissection of a core American myth. The idea that the United States is unlike every other country in world history is a surprisingly resilient one. Throughout his distinguished career, Ian Tyrrell has been one of the most influential historians of the idea of American exceptionalism, but he has never written a book focused solely on it until now. The notion that American identity might be exceptional emerged, Tyrrell shows, from the belief that the nascent early republic was not simply a postcolonial state but a genuinely new experiment in an imperialist world dominated by Britain. Prior to the Civil War, American exceptionalism fostered declarations of cultural, economic, and spatial independence. As the country grew in population and size, becoming a major player in the global order, its exceptionalist beliefs came more and more into focus—and into question. Over time, a political divide emerged: those who believed that America’s exceptionalism was the basis of its virtue and those who saw America as either a long way from perfect or actually fully unexceptional, and thus subject to universal demands for justice. Tyrrell masterfully articulates the many forces that made American exceptionalism such a divisive and definitional concept. Today, he notes, the demands that people acknowledge America’s exceptionalism have grown ever more strident, even as the material and moral evidence for that exceptionalism—to the extent that there ever was any—has withered away.
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This exhaustive treatment of the Puritan movement covers its doctrines, its people, its effects on politics and culture, and its enduring legacy in modern Britain and America. Puritanism began in the 1530s as a reform movement within the Church of England. It endured into the 18th century. In between, it powerfully influenced the course of political events both in Britain and in the United States. Puritanism shaped the American colonies, particularly New England. It was a key ingredient in literature, from authors as diverse as John Milton and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Although Puritanism as a formal movement has been gone for more than 300 years, its influence continues on the mores and norms of America and Britain. This ambitious work contains nearly 700 entries covering people, events, ideas, and doctrines—the whole of Puritanism. Exhaustive and authoritative, it draws on the work of more than 80 leading scholars in the field. Impeccable scholarship combines with eminent readability to make this a valuable work for all readers and researchers from secondary school up.
""One Small Candle tells how the religious values of the Pilgrims prompted their settlement of the Plymouth Colony and how those values influenced the political, intellectual, and cultural aspect of New England life a hundred and fifty years before the American Revolution. It begins in early seventeenth-century England with their persecution for challenging the established national church, and their struggles as refugees in the Netherlands in the 1610s. It then examines the challenges they faced in planting a colony in America, including relations with the Native population. The book emphasizes the religious dimension of the story, which has been neglected in most recent works. In particular it focuses on how this particular group of puritan congregationalists was driven by the belief that ordinary men and women should play the determinative role in governing church affairs. Their commitment to lay empowerment is illustrated by attention to the life of William Brewster, who helped organize the congregation in its early years and served as the colony's spiritual guide for its first decade. The participatory democracy that was reflected in congregational church covenants played a greater role in the shaping of Massachusetts churches than has previously been accepted. This outlook also influenced the earliest political forms of the region, including the Mayflower Compact and local New England town meetings. Their rejection of individual greed and focus on community was an early form of an American social gospel. ""--