Showing posts with label Edmund Morgan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edmund Morgan. Show all posts

Friday, March 7, 2008


Why The Puritan Dilemma?

My son convinced me to read the book, "The Puritan Dilemma" by Edmund S. Morgan. This book is about the puritan John Winthrop. I took my time in getting around to it. My son has such an appetite for reading in the first place, I could hardly keep up with him. Finally, I took up the pages of this provocative book. I suppose one of the most critical lines is found in the Editor's Preface "The Puritans thus found it necessary, almost at once, to begin to delineate the lines between the freedom of the individual to follow his own dreams and the responsibility of the society for maintaining order." Who then is to decide where those lines fall?Winthrop, one of the most influential movers and shakers of the Puritan development on the shores of New England certainly had no trouble determining when and where those lines were to be drawn. Was Winthrop a dreamer of a Utopia that could never be? Is it possible today to have what Winthrop dreamed of? Is it something that we should even desire?