Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author McKenna, George, author.

Title The Puritan origins of American patriotism / George McKenna
Published New Haven : Yale University Press, [2007]

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xiv, 431 pages)
Contents The Puritan narrative -- Revolutionary Puritanism -- Romantic Puritanism -- The holy war -- Puritans in the Gilded Age -- Puritanism debunked and revived -- America blessed and judged : the fifties and sixties -- Intermezzo -- America after 9/11
Summary In this absorbing book, George McKenna ranges across the entire panorama of American history to track the development of American patriotism. That patriotism, shaped by Reformation Protestantism and imbued with the American Puritan belief in a providential 'errand', has evolved over 350 years and influenced American political culture in both positive and negative ways, McKenna shows. The germ of the patriotism, an activist theology that stressed collective rather than individual salvation, began in the late 1630s in New England and travelled across the continent, eventually becoming a national phenomenon. Today, American patriotism still reflects its origins in the seventeenth century. By encouraging cohesion in a nation of diverse peoples and inspiring social reform, American patriotism has sometimes been a force for good. But the book also uncovers a darker side of the nation's patriotism: a prejudice against the South in the nineteenth century, for example; or a tendency toward nativism and anti-Catholicism. Ironically, a great reversal has occurred, and today the most fervent believers in the Puritan narrative are the former 'outsiders' - Catholics and Southerners. McKenna offers an interesting new perspective on patriotism's role throughout American history, and he concludes with trenchant thoughts on its role in the post-9/11 era
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 375-414) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Patriotism -- United States -- History
Puritans -- United States -- Doctrines -- History
Puritans -- United States -- History
Reformed Church -- United States -- Doctrines -- History
Religion and politics -- United States
National characteristics, American.
HISTORY -- State & Local -- General.
HISTORY -- General.
Civilization -- Philosophy
National characteristics, American
Patriotism
Puritans
Puritans -- Doctrines
Reformed Church -- Doctrines
Religion and politics
SUBJECT United States -- History -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
United States -- Civilization -- Philosophy. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85139966
Subject United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780300137675
0300137672