Can 400-Year-Old Puritan Poetry Speak to Today's Teens?

Before launching into a year of American Literature in my Worldview English classroom, I marinated my students in poetry from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotionals over the summer. (My students are all still speaking to me.) Then when school began, I sprinkled some Anne Bradstreet poetry on them and dusted them with John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” sermon*.

I wanted students to get to know who the Puritans really were – to have a cup of coffee with them, so to speak.

I was about to assign The Scarlet Letter - that junior-year English classic even our parents and grandparents read in high school. I appreciate that book as much as the next inordinately zealous literature lover, but I caution Christian educators from assigning it without counterweights in place.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter from a place of acidity stemming from long-standing family grievances due to his family's Puritan background - the kind of bitterness scripture warns will pollute many (Hebrews 12:15) if not healed in the light and the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

Taking the time to build background knowledge about the Puritans before launching into Colonial Literature is important because secular, revisionist culture since the nineteenth century emphasizes the negative, focusing on areas where the apostle Paul would have declared some Puritans had “the appearance of godliness but [denied] its power” (2 Tim. 3:5, ESV).

This stubborn concentration on the discouraging aspects of our heritage has poisoned societal attitudes toward traditional Christian values. But with counterbalances in place, students are able to understand nuance and can distinguish historical facts from revisionist bias. They are able to recognize that sin has tainted every time period, but that God’s glory shines through the gloom in every era as well.

Not only are my students still talking to me since I assigned Puritan poetry over their summer break, but they rose to meet the challenge and soared. They witnessed ardent Puritan expressions of questioning, yearning, suffering, and faith which are anything but hypocritical. Unthwarted by any Puritan “thee” or “thou”, students saw straight through the antique language to the beating hearts and real voices reaching through the centuries to meet them where they are.

(Click HERE to view samples of some of their journal responses.)

Why is this important?

Political activist Charlie Kirk (who is now in the presence of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ), said it best while speaking to young people during one of his college campus events: “This audience will determine the future of Western civilization.”

On another occasion, Kirk said, “It’s time we started talking to the next generation not talking down to the next generation.” That’s reminiscent of the apostle Paul’s encouragement to Timothy, his young protégé: “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers” (I Timothy 4:12, NIV).

At a time when the college board has “dumbed down” the SAT, the "Common Core" has ushered in “woke” materials, and “vegetative education” requires no critical thinking, we can refuse to play along. The more I hold students to a high standard, the more encouraged I am by their responses. Most young people want to think critically, they want to be challenged, and they want to defend their beliefs with vigor.

My challenge to myself and every other Christian high school and home school educator has always been to provide Biblical counter views for each literary era, including the transcendentalism of the early 1800s, Darwinian naturalism of the late 1800s, existentialism and nihilism of the 1900s, and of course, the postmodern relativism that swallowed all of those views and spit them out as woke soup. Most importantly, students must be enabled to spot all of the above in the popular culture in which they are afloat today.

Join me as I share my journey with you here, this year.

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*If you are interested in the Puritan Literature resources I use to introduce students to seventeenth century Colonial writing, you’ll find many of them in the "Study Guides" section of my free Resource Library for subscribers.

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Find more resources for the Christian secondary English classroom in my TPT store HERE.