But what made the Puritans so American, as they self-consciously invented America, wasn’t just the Protestant zealotry. Rather, it was the paradoxical combination of their beliefs and temperament. They were over-the-top magical thinkers but also prolific readers and writers. They were excruciatingly rational fantasists who regarded theology as an elaborate scientific endeavor. They were whacked-out visionaries but also ambitious bourgeois doers, accomplished managers and owners and makers.
