Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority 1750-1800

The author traces a constellation of intimately related ideas - about the nature of parental authority and filial rights, of moral obligation of Scripture, of the growth of the mind and the nature of historical progress - from their most important English and continental expressions in a variety of literary and theological texts, to their transmission, reception and application in Revolutionary America and in the early national period of American culture.