David E. Stannard accredited this group’s sense of vulnerability for the elaborate mourning of its “Way of Death.” “Wayward” cases defined this group’s moral boundaries per Kai T. Erikson’s study of deviance. Sacvan Bercovitch formulated “dissensus” in his version of this group’s “origins thesis.” An epiphany about this group in the Congo inspired its “myth and symbol” analysis in Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness. The “Merton thesis” credits modern science to English members of this group, whose idea of “ordered liberty” defines the first of four folkways in D. H. Fischer’s Albion’s Seed. This group’s egalitarian “habits of mind” fused the “spirit of liberty” and “spirit of religion” according to Alexis de Tocqueville. For 10 points, what group’s 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity” introduced the defining image of American exceptionalism, the “city on a hill”? ■END■
ANSWER: Puritans [accept Separatists or separating Puritans; accept Puritan origins thesis, The Puritan Origins of the American Self, Wayward Puritans, or The Puritan Way of Death; prompt on Pilgrims, Protestant settlers, Nonconformists, Independents, colonists, or colonial Americans; prompt on Americans until read]
<American History>
= Average correct buzz position