The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
She is an atheist so I obviously disagree with many of her conclusions but some of her observations are interesting.
It begins with:
"The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don’t mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.
Take the Reverend John Cotton. In 1630, he goes down to the port of Southampton to preach a farewell sermon to the seven hundred or so colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Led by Governor John Winthrop, a gentleman farmer and lawyer, these mostly Puritan dissenters are about to sail from England to New England on the flagship Arbella and ten other vessels in the Winthrop fleet.
By the time Cotton says amen, he has fought Mexico for Texas, bought Alaska from the Russians, and dropped napalm on Vietnam. Then he lays a wreath on Custer’s grave and revs past Wounded Knee. Then he claps when the Marquis de Lafayette tells Congress that “someday America will save the world.” Then he smiles when Abraham Lincoln calls the United States “the last best hope of earth”. Then he frees Cuba, which would be news to Cuba. Then he signs the lease on Guantanamo Bay.
Cotton’s sermon is titled ‘God’s promise to His Plantation.’…
What Cotton is telling these about-to-be-Americans is that they are God’s new Chosen People. This they like to hear. In fact, they have been telling themselves just that. The Old Testament Israelites are to the Puritans what the blues was to the Rolling Stones- a source of inspiration, a renewable source of riffs…
And like the Old Testament Jews, God has printed eviction notices for them to tack up on the homes of the nothing-special just-folks folks who are squatting there."
She makes the case that this was the beginning of American exceptionalism.
Regardless of one’s worldview, this is a thought-provoking treatment of the Puritans at the Massachusetts Bay Colony.