with an Introduction
by Michael A. Hoffman II
The
Puritans are among the favorite targets of those who chatter most about
"inclusivity" and the need to avoid giving offense to exotic people
of other religions.
But
they are not the only detractors the Puritans have. Presumably anyone who
enjoys life, is against money-hoarding, who likes a drink on occasion and
despises Christianity will also "have a go" at our Puritan
forefathers.
The
playwright Arthur Miller has made his mark on the theatre largely from his
burlesque of Puritan culture in The Crucible.
The
summer of 1996 saw another cinematic rendition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The
Scarlet Letter, which was distorted into a feminist melodrama by the
multi-millionaire starring actress who shall also remain nameless, making
Hester into a N.O.W. harpy with the all the subtlety of Soviet realism.
It
was unfair to
But
I have a problem with
Samuel
Eliot Morison has sketched the best short corrective to the encrustation of two
hundred years of prejudice. He reveals that the American Puritans had a
political economy based not on miserliness but upon medieval Catholic concepts
of the fair price and the just wage.
Yes,
the Puritans worked hard and disparaged idleness, but that's an essential
virtue in a pioneer society.
Puritan
children were fluent not only in the Geneva Bible (which predated the more
famous King James version; a version which the monarch had authorized in the
hope of supplanting the
And
Puritans liked their liquor! Hard liquor was consumed by the men and
"small beer" and "hard" cider by a large portion of the
populace, including young children (the fermentation process acted as a
prophylactic against some of the diseases borne by poor quality well-water). Of
course drunkeness was forbidden and punished. All of this was in accordance
with scripture (I Timothy 5:23) .
Nowadays
we are led to believe, by the soothsaying we witness from the vast majority of
that sect best termed Judeo-Churchianity, that a society based on adherence to
both the Hebrew ("Old") and Christian ("New") Testaments
would have to be sunk in the same greed, stupidity and buffoonery as our
latter-day, "televangelists," who make the word of Yahweh of none
effect by substituting for divine law, their man-made humanism and treachery.
But
the Bible is an undiscovered country for most of us and the fact that it is
paid lip service and waved about by a host of prominent mountebanks, is no
reflection on its actual contents, statutes and teachings.
For
one thing, the Bible has a great deal to say about how government is to operate
and how society is to be ordered; and about justice for the poor, the oppressed
and non-hostile aliens.
While
the "lawnorder," Judeo-Churchian, "con-man-servatives"
point the finger of criminal culpability mostly at street criminals, the Bible
points it at both killers and robbers as well as those who kill and rob with a
pen and a briefcase: lawyers, for example and bankers who charge interest.
While
we like to speak of the "barbarity" and "sadism"of Puritan
punishments, such as being put into the stocks for public humiliation, this was
an early
I
am certainly not argung that the Puritans in any way approached perfection or
constituted the true religion. In my book They Were White and They Were
Slaves , this writer documents the many cases of Christians in early
But
as modern
The
modern hatred directed against the Puritans has a hidden agenda. It is not a
hatred of their errors and a respect for their virtues, but a hatred for all
things Christian, with the Puritans as a stand-in for all who take the Bible
and faith in Christ seriously. --M.H. II
----------------------
THERE is no doubt that the Puritan is
unpopular nowadays. The tercentennial of
The
average man was not convinced. He regards the fathers of
Every
age will conceive the past in its own terms; and for this reason the Puritans
have suffered almost as much from well-meaning historians as from thoughtless
critics. Around 1800 the general schoolbook idea of the New England Puritans
was that they were rebels against
The
right approach to the Puritan founders of
This
group was composed largely of yeomen farmers and artisans, led by clergymen
educated at
In
spite of the anti-Catholic bias of the Puritan, he was much nearer to the
medieval Catholic in his ideas than to the twentieth-century Protestant. Here
is no paradox. Your Yankee Puritan railed at the "Papists," and set
up a polity as unlike the Roman as any church could be. But these differences
in opinion and practice were nothing in comparison with the fundamental unity
of purpose.
What
was the central core of Catholic thought in the Middle Ages? That man was
created for the glory of God, and that the unique duty and purpose of man was
to serve God and do His will. This was just what the Puritan thought about
life. Only he also believed that the Catholic Church had taken a wrong turn
since the death of Augustine, that it had become corrupt in doctrine and
perverted in emphasis; and that William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was
cherishing these corruptions instead of going through with the Reform.
The
Puritan cast off all these accretions of the centuries, repudiated all the
compromises that the church had made with circumstances and with human nature,
and found his absolute, his supreme court of authority, in the Bible. He
preached a "naked Christ" (as he called the Christ he found in the
Gospels) with no trimmings; he erected the Congregational Church, which he
fondly supposed to be a copy of the primitive apostolic church. He yearned for
a direct approach to God - to learn and to do God's will.
If
he despised the ancient pageantry of worship, it was because he would have no
false and sensuous symbols between himself and his Redeemer. If he rejected the
intercession of the saints, it was because he would meet God face to face. If
he preferred a barn to a Gothic cathedral as a place of worship, it was from no
quarrel with beauty as such, but because beautiful architecture, stained-glass
windows, and church music seemed to him screens between the Christian and
Christ. This program was impossible to carry out in the England of Charles I
and Archbishop Laud. The Puritan felt that the Christian way of life could not
be followed in a frivolous and corrupt
They
supposed that all the essential truth of divine revelation had been discovered
by 1630 and that, except for details, their theology would be immutable and
perpetual. As a bulwark they planned a system of education. Children must be
taught to read, that they might read the Bible; parsons must be trained in the
three learned tongues, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, that they might read the
Scriptures and the early church fathers in the original. An ignorant ministry
was dreaded by the Puritans even more than an illiterate population; and they
took good measures to guard against both--creating within a few years of the
founding of
The
system, with its emphasis on the Bible, public speaking, mathematics, and Latin
and Greek literature, equipped boys admirably for the purposes of that day.
The
New England Puritan, then, established a tradition of free, popular education,
which became the American tradition. That remarkable group of scholars,
scientists, and men of letters which appeared in
Elnathan
Chauncy, a Puritan Harvard President's son, copied Herrick's Hesperides
and Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar into his college notebook.
Anne
Bradstreet, in a frontier village by the Merrimac, wrote lines reminiscent of
Shelley: "If winter come, and greenness then do fade, a spring returns,
and they more youthful made."
Theology
was to be sure, the chief interest of the Puritan intellectual class; but
theological speculation is no intellectual blind alley. It was Jonathan Edwards
who said "virtue is a kind of beauty." The New England villages which
survived the colonial period are the most perfect architectural groups north of
Mexico; and the clipper ships which later kissed the waters of Puritan seaports
were the most beautiful objects that the hand of man has produced in these
states. Notwithstanding, we have often been told that the Puritan hated beauty,
looked on creative art as sinful, and made a virtue of ugliness.
The
Puritan was not insensible to beauty, although he could not regard it as an
independent quality, separate from use or morals. His attitude toward art was
one of indifference rather than active dislike - which is not far from the
average American attitude today. The Puritans cared nothing for "objects
of art," as such. Unlike the English gentry of their day or American
millionaires of ours, they did not import old masters from
These
objects had to be useful, otherwise they were "vanities." The only desirable
form of pictorial art was a family portrait; the only music wanted was psalm
tunes.
All
else would have been a "waste of precious time." Here was a Puritan
concept essentially modern, not medieval, and one that has gone into the very
marrow of American life. A medieval churchman cared not how his flock spent
their time, so long as they performed their duties; man's leisure was his own.
But to the Puritan, idleness was a cardinal sin, for every second of time was
God's gift to men, to be improved in His service. Not, however, in religious
devotions; man could best serve God in his daily occupation. Intellectual or
manual labor, honestly performed, was more pleasing to God than the
unprofitable meditations of a recluse, or the self-scourging of an ascetic. But
one must keep occupied. "We resolve to approve ourselves to the Lord in
our particular callings," reads the
This
was an excellent code for pioneer communities in
Puritanism
has been called a protest against medieval economics. The beginning of laissez
faire American success-worship has been connected with Puritan theology.
This is all moonshine. The founders of
It
is true that certain American political institutions, such as the ballot and
elections at fixed dates, may be traced to early
For
all that, the Puritan gave something to American political institutions. His
legacy was public spirit, and a respect for law and order. If there was little
office-seeking among the early Puritans, there was no dodging of
responsibility; and the standard of official integrity was high. I have found
no record of malfeasance in public office in any
There
was a debate on this in the early days of the Massachusetts Colony. Governor
Winthrop argued "that in the infancy of a plantation, justice should be
administered with more leniency than in a settled state, because people were
then more apt to transgress." But Haynes and Dudley, Hooker and Cotton,
maintained "that strict discipline, both in criminal offenses and in
martial affairs, was more needful in plantations than in a settled state, as
tending to the honor and safety of the Gospel. Whereupon Mr. Winthrop
acknowledged that he was convinced."
From
that day on, strict laws and strict enforcement thereof were the code of the
Puritan colonies; and to a remarkable degree they succeeded in checking the
social dissolution that comes from frontier life and the loss of old-world
sanctions. This stern discipline fell heavily on frontier individuals; but it
gave to the Yankee race a law-abiding tradition.
New
England in the long run proved to be no more a City of
--Samuel
Eliot Morison
The
Campaign for Radical Truth in History http://www.hoffman-info.com
Return to 17th, 18th and 19th Century British and
American History