Word: sacvan
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According to Sacvan Bercovitch in The Puritan Origins of the American Self, they found that meaning in their stubborn and persistent identification of America as the New Jerusalem--a land of the elect that was itself elect, whose history was sacred history, and whose (inevitably successful) struggle for redemption would usher in the Millenium. For Bercovitch's Puritans, New England history and the individual's striving for grace are closely intertwined. Since public and private salvation are symbolically inseparable, history assumes the character of individual sanctification and the would-be saint in turn relies on the redemptive quality of first...