Puritanism and National Identity

Abstract The story of Puritanism and national identity is mostly an American story, not an English one. Only in the United States have the Pilgrims and puritans served an outsized role in defining national history. At Thanksgiving each November, a remembrance of the Pilgrims stakes out an origin story for the nation. Celebrating high moments and forgetting or erasing violence has historically allowed Americans to identify with a noble purpose standing behind the rise of the nation—the peaceful coming of a bedraggled band of Pilgrims seeking freedom. Such a story fits with American exceptionalism, which this chapter spells out in three terms: as a model nation, a redeemer nation, and a chosen nation. Explaining how temporal depth, collective memory, and origin stories work, this chapter describes how Pilgrims and puritans came to have an outsized role in the making of a national history for the United States.