Innerworldly individualism

"[Book title] looks to colonial history, in particular, seventeenth-century New England, to understand the sources of modern nation building. [author] analyzes how cultural assumptions of collective identity and social authority emerged out of the religious beliefs of the first generation of settlers in New England. He goes on to examine how these assumptions crystallized three generations later into patterns of normative order, forming the foundation of an American consciousness."--Book jacket.