Perry Miller

In a covenantal nation like the United States, words are the very ligaments that hold the body together, and what words we choose become everything.

The rise and fall of Perry Miller.

Historians often treat Miller as a foil, but the Father of American Intellectual history retains untapped potential to inspire new modes of inquiry.

Whatever the “City on a Hill” is, the phrase was not discovered by Kennedy or Reagan.

A review of "Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America."

A now-famous Puritan sermon was nothing special in its own day.

In his new book, Daniel Rodgers not only offers a close reading of Puritan history but also seeks to rescue their early critique of market economy.

The 19th century recovery of John Winthrop's sermon, "A City on a Hill."

More importantly, our misappropriation of “puritan” has allowed scholars to ignore and the public to misunderstand religion.

Entangled with, yet critical of, colonial oppression and the evils of slavery, the true history of Boston can now be told.

How not to learn about the American past.

For Freud, “chosenness” was a psychopathological fantasy in need of explanation.

A review of Daniel T. Rodgers’ "As a City on a Hill: The Story of America’s Most Famous Lay Sermon."

Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge’s strange elegy for capitalism.

Divisions in society and religion that still exist today resulted from the "Great Awakenings" of the 18th Century.

How American landscape painters, seen as old-fashioned and provincial, gained cultural power by glorifying expansionism.

Making history more appealing to the public may come at a cost.