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Book Review
Canada and the United States
Darren Staloff. The Making of an American Thinking Class: Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in Puritan Massachusetts. New York: Oxford University Press. 1998. Pp. xv, 276. Cloth $45.00, paper $19.95.
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Darren Staloff offers a fresh approach to an old problem in Puritan studies: what was the relationship of the religious elite to society at large? Staloff proclaims that he came to his interest in Puritanism in the same way as many of his predecessors: by reading Perry Miller. That such a statement can be made today testifies to the persistence of Miller's influence. A generation ago, historians such as Darrett B. Rutman, John Demos, Michael P. Zuckerman, and Philip J. Greven were confidently proclaiming that the story of early New England could be written as social and demographic history with little reference to religious texts. During the 1970s, David D. Hall, this reviewer, and other scholars explored connections between religious and social history by studyingas a professional classthe New England clergy. Our histories of the ministry supported Miller's premise that the influence of Puritanism extended far beyond the inner circle of a clerical elite. |
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