Customer Reviews

Puritan New England (Landmarks of Faith: A Travelogue of American Spirituality) [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Landmarks of Faith: Puritan New England will teach you things you never learned in school. Here you will learn the story of Anne Hutchinson, America's first female preacher; Roger Williams, the dissident who founded Rhode Island; and Mary Dyer, the Quaker believer who was hanged in Boston Commons for her religious beliefs. There is also a short section featuring the more commonly known Salem Withcraft trials. This is a fascinating video by a master storyteller, and I reccomend it to those interested in colonial history as well as to those interested in the subject of religion in America.

If creative entertainment and technical production proficiency are your primary standards for selecting a videotape, try this one. But, if you are seeking a balanced and representative big-picture review of the cultural history of Puritan New England's real-world history, by-pass this one. The most unrepresentative characters receive disproportionate attention; -- the most impacting contributions of mainstream Puritan New England lives, literature, industrial and cultural heroes (e.g., Winthrop, Mather, Bradstreet, Bradford, Adams, cod-fishermen, etc.) are too quickly sacrificed for limelighting the quasi-exotic. The video should be re-named to fit this historical imbalance.