CREATION STORIES, WHETHER modern or ancient, share an impulse to explain the situation of those telling it. Consider the first creation story we encounter in Genesis. In six wondrously efficient days, God transforms “the complete chaos, and darkness” covering the Earth into an organized universe. The orderly creation of Genesis 1-2:4a, written during a catastrophic period in ancient Israel, is meant to reassure the Israelites that God is indeed fully in charge of the world, and all is not lost, no matter how terrible things seem. Stories of the “founding” of America by the Puritans likewise imbued the country’s early self-understanding with a supposedly divine mandate. That way of thinking continues to inform and justify the behavior of the U.S. to this day.
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