Puritanism - questions about Perry Miller, William Haller, and Edmund Morgan

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crhoades

crhoades

Puritan Board Graduate
Can anyone shed any light on the men listed/bolded? Their books? Accolades or Criticisms? I'm digging in a little deeper in the history of Puritanism and would like some sure guides that know the source material. Sample books are listed below.
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Excerpted from J.I. Packers: Why We Need the Puritans from his book The Quest for Godliness found here

In England, anti-Puritan feeling was let loose at the time of the Restoration and has flowed freely ever since. In North America it built up slowly after the days of Jonathan Edwards to reach its zenith a hundred years ago in post-Puritan New England. For the past half-century, however, scholars have been meticulously wiping away the mud, and as Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. Have unfamiliar colours today now that restorers have removed the dark varnish, so the conventional image of the Puritans has been radically revamped, at least for those in the know. (Knowledge, alas, travels slowly in some quarters.) Taught by Perry Miller, William Haller, Marshall Knappen, Percy Scholes, Edmund Morgan, and a host of more recent researchers, informed folk now acknowledge that the typical Puritans were not wild men, fierce and freaky, religious fanatics and social extremists, but sober, conscientious, and cultured citizens: persons of principle, devoted, determined, and disciplined, excelling in the domestic virtues, and with no obvious shortcomings save a tendency to run to works when saying anything important, whether to God or to man. At last the record has been put straight.
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William Haller

The rise of Puritanism;: Or, The way to the New Jerusalem as set forth in pulpit and press from Thomas Cartwright to John Lilburne and John Milton, 1570-1643,
by William Haller (Author)

Elizabeth I and the Puritans (Folger Guides to the Age of Shakespeare)
by William Haller (Paperback - July 1974)

Liberty and reformation in the Puritan Revolution
by William Haller (Author)

Edmund Morgan

The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (2nd Edition)
by Edmund S. Morgan (Paperback - November 20, 1998)

Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea
by Edmund S. Morgan (Paperback - June 1965)

Puritan Family
by Edmund S. Morgan (Paperback - August 7, 1942)

Puritan Political Ideas: 1558-1794 (American Heritage Series (New York, N.Y.).)
by Edmund S. Morgan (Editor) (Paperback - September 2003)

Roger Williams: The Church and the State
by Edmund S. Morgan

Perry Miller

The New England Mind : The Seventeenth Century
by Perry Miller (Paperback - April 15, 1983)

The American Puritans : Their Prose and Poetry
by Perry Miller (Paperback - April 15, 1982)

Errand into the Wilderness
by Perry Miller (Paperback - January 1, 1956)

The Puritans
by Perry Miller (Editor), Thomas H. Johnson (Editor) (Paperback - May 3, 2001)

The New England Mind : From Colony to Province
by Perry Miller (Paperback - April 15, 1983)
 
I've only read Haller's the Rise of Puritanism but thought it quite good. I don't believe he (or any of the other two authors) were religious but by and large they are fair. Perry Miller was a Harvard Professor who did a great deal to clear away the negative sterotypes. They are worth reading but for a Christian perspective on them Leland Ryken wrote a book on the Puritans as they Really Were. And there is the book the Puritans at play. Also Horton Davies wrote several books on the Puritans.
 
I have Morgan's Visible Saints and Puritan Family, and Miller's The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry -- all of which have been helpful to me in my Puritan studies. :pilgrim::up:
 
These were some of the top secular historians of Puritanism, part of the revival in Puritan studies which began in the mid 20th century, and continues to this day. Perry Miller was an athiest who taught at Harvard and devoted his career to the study of New England Puritanism. I haven't read much of Miller, but he was reguarded as the authority on New England Puritanism for quite some time. Edmund Morgan is another famous American secular historian, a student of Miller he also wrote quite a bit on New England Puritanism. I've read Morgan's "The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England" and it is well written history, with a fairly good grasp of the theological ideas behind the practices of the Puritans. Something which many other secular historians lack when dealing with Puritanism. Haller I don't know much about, other than that I've seen several of his books on Puritanism in my seminary library. For an excellent, more recent historian of New England Puritanism, check out Francis J. Bremer. His books, "John Winthrop : America's Forgotten Founding Father," and "The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards" are some of the best I've read on the history of New England Puritanism.
 
Miller knew the puritans's writings better than anybody in his time. Unfortunately, he didn't know any Calvin. On surface level that isn't too bad if all you are going to do is stick with the Puritans. However, that is fatal to your thesis if you are going to play the Puritans off against Calvin!

Although many here were up in arms against Peter Lillback's book, The Binding of God, he originally wrote it to rebut Miller's disciples.
 
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