Puritans have always been troublesome. In their own day, they were impatient and prickly agents of change. And after they faded away, their legacy became the subject of constant debate, not only in the British Isles, but in the United States as well. Puritans also fell prey to facile caricaturing. In our own day, their image as grim, self-absorbed, self-righteous, intolerant workaholics is all too familiar to anyone who was forced to read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter in high school or Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in college. And younger folk who are now encountering Puritans through the New York Times's “1619 Project” or any other such revisionist history spawned by our Great Awokening are bound to have an even more negative caricature indelibly etched in their imaginations—one that depicts Puritans as avatars of the worst traits bequeathed to the world by Western...
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