Word: puritanism
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...peak in 1952 and 1953, it took a good deal of courage to write and stage The Crucible. The play was picketed not only by a number of right-wing groups, but also by the American Bar Association on the grounds that its portrayal of the 17th-century Puritan judges was unsympathetic. Ironically, in 1954 Miller himself was denied a passport to attend the Brussels premiere of this very play because the State Department felt he was supporting the Communist movement...
...suits the Puritan environment, David Jenkins has designed spare wooden sets with a minimum of props. John McLain's lighting could stand improvement, notably in the fourth act, which takes place in the Salem jail. The cell is supposed to be dark, with only a few moonbeams getting through; but the stage is bathed in bright light. Somebody was asleep at the switch...
...loves-with some misgivings-the deep American belief in human perfectibility and goodness. Yet an element of this belief is the fact that America lacks an adequate sense of evil. In the Enlightenment tradition, evil is explained away as a curable flaw. But even in the puritan and evangelical tradition, the American sense of evil is curiously shallow and optimistic, more concerned with behavior (sex or drink, for example) than with the deeper states of sin. The devil can be banished, and evil can be fought; evil is seen almost as a mere "problem" to be solved. There is little...
Practicality and a Puritan bias toward plainness have made the white clapboard church, not the soaring stone spire, the nation's quintessential symbol of worship. Yet some Americans prefer to honor God in grandeur. One was George Washington, who dreamed of "a great church for national purposes in the capital city." It was only a century later that members of his Episcopal Church began making plans to build a towering Gothic cathedral atop the highest point of land in the District of Columbia...
...whole-are becoming increasingly cynical about the honor code and system. Part of the reason is the code's extreme rigidity. Part is the growing feeling among some cadets that their fellow students on the Honor Committee are as sternly self-righteous-and occasionally as sadistic-as a Puritan elder in early Massachusetts. Says a high Pentagon official: "We have to moderate their enthusiasm to be inquisitors...