Pilgrims and Puritans have an interesting reputation in American history. Popular culture has long flattened the truth about them to the point that they often come off as cartoon bad guys.

The real story is that they were devout people under enormous pressure to establish a model Christian society in an unfamiliar land. Their experiences were informed by religious zealotry, imperial agency, frontier colonialism, and ideas about divine collective "chosenness."

If our last episode set the stage for how wildly different American Christianity would be from the origins of the faith, this episode is all about how American Christianity took on its specific character. Those English settlers in Massachusetts planted seeds that took deep root in America.

Christian nationalism is the resulting thornbush.