The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century

A classic examination of the English intellectual heritage of colonial Puritans. All serious students and scholars of American literature and history must read this book.

Perry Miller (1905-1963) was one of the most important of the consensus historians of the middle part of the twentieth century and his work on the American Puritans was required reading for all students of history when I attended graduate school in the late 1970s and early 1980s. "The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century" was one of his masterworks, exploring the intellectual history of the Puritans through a deep investigation of the thought of the Puritan divines. In this book, as well as its successor, "The New England Mind: From Colony to Province" (Harvard University Press, 1953), Miller asserted a single mind for America that could be traced to the Puritan belief system. Even while there was an "American mentality" it was tormented by self-doubt and a certain schizophrenia. He suggested that the spiritual unrest present among all Americans that may be traced to the early Puritans. This volume emphasizes the rise of a religious utopian experiment by the Puritans. He finds much of value that the Puritans bequeathed to the United States and suggests that America has always been about noble ideals accepted by all. Miller's consensus interpretation celebrated the long tradition of shared American ideals and values while de-emphasizing conflict. He believed that this made the United States and the people that made it up somehow better than everyone else. Miller questioned the ideas and people who challenged the cherished principles that he saw so well expressed in the writings of Puritan elites, noting in many of them strains of authoritarianism, anarchy, and narrow- and simple-mindedness of all varieties. Much of this approach to the American past in vogue when Miller was involved in his work advocated a basic idealism that he believed was in constant jeopardy from forces of fear, anti-intellectualism, and authoritarianism present in society. This is an important book, and having recently reread it, I find it still valuable as a statement of Puritan intellectual thought. Its creation of a single mindset, however, is certainly questionable. For instance, the "other" of Puritan society is not represented. What of the dispossessed, minorities of all types, non-Puritans, and women in Miller's recounting of Puritan thought? They are essentially omitted from the story and including their perspectives would certainly have altered Miller's account. His concept of Puritanism was essentially the same one that was offered by the elites of early New England. Nonetheless, this work represents a seminal statement in American historiography and remains worthy of consideration for any student of the subject.

A PURITAN MIND is not the normal kind of book one would read about Puritan life in the 1600s, Colonial America, as it pulls more on quotes from religious Puritan documents. You have to already know the history of all the A, B and C-list people in Puritan history to appreciate this book. I'm a playwright who is focused on a story that crosses into the Puritans in their utopian society in Massachusetts.

Contrary to what a previous reviewer might have you believe, Miller's book is not a propaganda piece advocating Puritan theology; it's an examination of the intellectual history of America, specifically New England in the time of the Puritans. Americans all live under the shadow of the Puritans; to not understand this is simply ignorant. To attack a serious and brilliant scholarly work as though it were right-wing rhetoric is just plain silly. The Puritans are far too easy to caricature by our modern standards, but are much more complex and interesting to look at from within the context of their own times. Truly, theirs was an amazingly complicated (though logically tortured and ultimately impossible) faith to sustain. Few point out the complexities and contradictions of this faith from such an informed perspective as Miller. In my opinion, this is his masterwork. I implore readers to avoid the (incorrect) characterization that the modern right-wing ministers (Dobson, Falwell, etc.) are the direct intellectual descendents of such giants as Jonathan Edwards; Richard, Increase, and Cotton Mather; and Anne Hutchinson. Theology changes radically over time, and the Protestant Christianity being preached today is radically different than it was in the 1600s. Though the ideological foundation of this "New Jerusalem" called America was built by the Puritans, there are few ministers who now possess their eloquence, their willingness to sacrifice everything for their beliefs, and their dedication to their craft. (Not to mention a VERY rigid doctrine of predestination, much more rigid than you will find virtually anywhere in America today.) I don't advocate their philosophy or theology as something to live by. However, if your desire is to better understand the true Puritans and the history of America, it would be hard to do better than Perry Miller's great work on the subject.

In the 20th century the study of the Puritan Origins of New England and the US as a whole, took a new start. Perry Miller was to 'blame' for this. With his studies of Puritans he has shown that Puritans were not as harsh, narrow-minded and alienated from the rest of the world, as was the image throughout the 19th and early 20th century. In fact especially the Puritans were very interested in new scientific and religious developments from the enlightenment onwards. They did however use them for their own purposes. In New England Mind, The Seventeenth Century, Perry Miller goes into this. He tries to explain how the Puritans tried to balance between hart en mind. How they incorporated new scientific developments into their worldview, yet never allowed for any limits on Gods authority and power. Miller succeeds very well in showing how their religion was a whole out of two very different parts and how they as humans found their in our eyes harsh religion consoling. This book only goes into the ideological legacy of the 17th century. If you would like to read more try the sequel; From Colony to Province. This is an excellent book, which opened up an entire era to our modern minds. Even though the ideas put for the floodlight are rather heavy-handed, Miller succeeds in explaining them clearly and even got me to smile.