Peter Augustine Lawler on much our democracy owes the Puritans:
There’s little less fashionable today than praising the Puritans, especially for their egalitarian political idealism, their promotion of genuinely humane and liberating learning, and their capacity for enjoyment and human happiness. Praising the Puritans is especially difficult for us because even most of our Protestants have abandoned them. When a European calls us Puritanical we don’t say, “yes, thanks a lot, you’re right.” Instead, we either deny it, saying we’re way beyond those days. Or we admit it, saying that, “yes, we should be less capitalistic, less repressed, and more free thinking, just like you.” But the truth is that the Puritans remain the chief source of the American difference—our ability to live freely and prosperously without unduly slighting the longings of our souls. It’s the Puritans’ idealism that made and even makes Americans civilized.
December 6th, 2010 | 4:52 pm
“Peter Augustine Lawler on [how] much our democracy owes the Puritans:”
A very fine essay. Thanks for highlighting it.
December 6th, 2010 | 6:06 pm
An excellent article, though I disagreed with parts of it. He oversells the contrast between New England and Virginia. Many who came to New England came to catch fish or otherwise trade, settling in Salem (a notoriously non-religious place, contrary to current mythology), Portland, or elsewhere along the coast. These were not anti-religious – little of that would have been tolerated – but neither were they inspired by the vision of a City on a Hill.
The discussion also leaves out the middle colonies, religious in their own way, and how they interacted with neighbors north and south.
David Hackett Fisher’s Albion’s Seed, long but fascinating, covers this in some detail.
December 6th, 2010 | 8:29 pm
[...] to Joe Carter over at FirstThings for the [...]
December 6th, 2010 | 11:14 pm
It is important not to confuse the Pilgrims who settled Plymouth with the Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay Colony [Boston], Salem and beyond. While both rooted in Calvinism, the Pilgrims were much more religious and experienced the broader Christian humanism of the Netherlands, rather than the hard, tough Dissenters within the Anglican Church.
Both groupings sought freedom from religious oppression of the Established Church in England which was far too papist for their liking. However, the Pilgrims were the far more religious of the two groups.
Puritanism still lives, we just do not recognize it. It lives in a secularized form in the remnant of civil religion which remains in America and certainly in the secularist elites. If you take Christ out of Puritanism you have the secularism we see today
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact