Overthink. Over-write. Overshare.
The Ghosts in America's Machine
How Calvinist theology and Puritan culture, and the moral narratives they built about work and worth, shaped American society from its founding myths to its modern crises. Each essay stands alone but builds toward one argument: America's moral economy must be reimagined.
Bound by Chains: Calvinism and the Justification of Black Oppression
The same Puritan reflex that equated labor with divine favor was, within a century, repurposed to sanctify slavery. It was read as proof that white prosperity was providence and Black labor was only duty. This piece traces that twisted inheritance from Cotton Mather's slaveholder reassurances through Reconstruction's betrayal to the redlining and 'respectability' politics still shaping the present, drawing on Black theologians and writers — Douglass, Du Bois, Cone, Baldwin — who most clearly named the hypocrisy.
Two Americas: How the Founders Fought Over the Soul of the Nation
Jefferson called Calvin's theology 'demonism'; John Adams warned that liberty without religious discipline would collapse into chaos. The Constitution was built from both instincts, and history shows the more punishing half has usually won.
The City on a Hill and Its Shadows
In 1630, John Winthrop told a shipful of Puritans they'd be watched by the world, a line that's echoed through every generation of American exceptionalism since. This is the piece that starts the series: tracing how a Calvinist theology of visible righteousness became a national myth, and what gets justified once you decide some people belong on the hill and some don't.
Work, Worth, and Community: What Calvinism Got Right
The Puritans built a society that policed itself, first through neighbors, then through conscience. This piece traces how that surveillance moved inward and asks whether what it left behind (discipline, resilience, reflexive self-judgment) adds up to a gift or a curse.
The Myth of the Chosen Nation: Puritanism and the Birth of American Exceptionalism
Winthrop's 'city on a hill' didn't stay religious for long. By the 1800s, it had become Manifest Destiny, and the Puritan idea that labor proves worth had been stripped of its theology and put to work justifying continental conquest, immigrant exploitation, child labor, and the federal troops sent to shoot striking workers. This piece tracks that progression and lands on the line that anchors the whole series: 'American Exceptionalism is simply Puritan anxiety scaled up to the size of a continent.'
