Colonial Church

This is a story of power, set against Puritan America and the English Civil War. Williams's interactions with King James, Francis Bacon, Oliver Cromwell, and his mentor Edward Coke set his course, but his fundamental ideas came to fruition in America, as Williams, though a Puritan, collided with John Winthrop's vision of his "City upon a Hill."

The classic American novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, now restored from the original first-edition text. The Scarlet Letter is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpiece and ranked number 16 on The Guardian’s 100-best-novels list. Praised by Henry James as “beautiful, admirable, extraordinary,” this classic dark romance weaves intricate characters with vivid scenes to examine the risks of desire amid the Puritan life. While nearly all other modern publications feature the second-edition text—which introduced hundreds of changes—the original first edition is the most fluid and expressive ...

The culture wars have distorted the dramatic story of how Americans came to worship freely. Many activists on the right maintain that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation". Many on the left contend that the Founders were secular or Deist and that the First Amendment was designed to boldly separate church and state throughout the land. None of these claims are true, argues Beliefnet.com editor in chief Steven Waldman.