Ghosts of the Puritans envelop America...

[skooooo]

Speaking metaphorically, I see current political and cultural trends as if the 'our' Puritan forefathers were exacting revenge on modern America. Wasn't there an article in the Guardian yesterday discussing the mood in America in roughly these terms? This time around, the Puritans are not driven by hard work and production, but by greed, consumption.

Why after 300 years has America not rid itself of this impulse?

[rkc3]

1. We'll be burning them unholy queers at the stake soon enough.

And shielding our eyes from the next eclipse - might cause the end of the world to follow.

[sui generis]

2. fact of the matter is

the Puritans were expelled from England for being too radically fundamental.

But it's not the Puritans who were the "founding fathers" of our constitution, always an important thing to remember. In fact, much of what the founding fathers embodied philosophically was in response to puritanism and other forms of extremism.

[skooooo]

3. Good points....

Now we're stuck with them.

[PATRICK]

4. Native Americans

Throw nutty sectarian invaders a turkey dinner.

Is there any tribe still in existence that would act consider a different tack if they could have been there with what they know now?

They should have thrown their lot with the Vikings, but who would have guessed?

[sui generis]

8. well, if what they know now includes chemistry, physics

social organization, industry, plus the history of the native american interaction, I am sure that they would have blown the nina, the pinta and the santa maria right out of the water and probably every other ship to follow, and I would be sitting here typing with a british accent.

[PATRICK]

11. Here goes the empty speculation

The largest Indian Empires most equipped to resist were untimely faced by the most ruthless and backed up invaders whose religious motivations were way second to pure greed.

The harsh lands in the north were ill suited to mass drama. The French could hardly keep their whites growing in Canada. The English were tenuous and least well financed or imperial minded. All were inevitable. Theoretical vulnerability could have done many of them in in their early stages. Bush seems to have inherited the cursed luck of the invader and the untimely helplessness and ignorance of the conquered.

This in a modern educated land with a huge variety and freedom in its forums and structures in a time of peace and prosperity. Historians will be amazed and disgusted beyond words to describe. Our shame, not our bad luck.

[dirtyduck]

5. puritans with bible under one arm and blunderbuss under the other...

as my uncle said.

[skooooo]

6. What's a blunderbuss?

[dirtyduck]

7. it's an old school muzzle

but I was curious too so I looked it up, it's also considered a person who is clumsy and stupid!

[starroute]

9. The Puritans have always gotten a bad rap

The Puritans were educated, intelligent, and civic-minded. They'd barely gotten off the boat when they started up a printing press and founded Harvard. Whatever fanaticism they began with had largely been wrung out of them by 1700 -- they even apologized for the Salem witch trials once things settled down and tried to make amends to the victims. The liberal tradition of New England and of the midwest states that were settled from New England is a legacy from the Puritans.

The South, on the other hand, was settled mainly by rich landownders, indentured servants, and whores. All those southern plantations were a final echo of feudalism. The South never really accepted democracy, never really accepted equality, never really accepted the rule of law. The present-day "culture wars," to the extent they really exist, are nothing but a continuation of the 17th century English Civil War, with the South on the side of the nobility.

I'm overstating things slightly for effect, here -- so please don't flame me on behalf of the South. I'm simply trying to make the point that most of what we value about America we owe to the Puritans, and I'm tired of seeing them badmouthed for every outbreak of religious intolerance.

[skooooo]

10. Where else did the religious intolerance come from..?

I agree they were not "all bad", but still, they were intolerant of anything outside their belief system.

[starroute]

12. There was a lot of diversity among the original immigrants

In the 1600's, New England attracted anyone who couldn't get along with the established system. Many of the immigrants were fairly narrow-minded, but a lot of them were free-thinkers or even highly eccentric. There were Quakers in New England. There were Anabaptists. There were various sorts of mystics, like Anne Hutchinson's Antinomians. There were believers in universal salvation like William Pynchon. There were people who went native and absorbed beliefs from the Indians.

A lot of these non-conformists were given a hard time by the orthodox Puritans, especially after 1650 when the more anarchic spirit of the first generation of settlers started to ebb. But there were there from the start and they were deeply influential in the long run.

Many of them wound up in Roger Williams' Rhode Island. Williams, founder of the Baptist Church, had invented the idea of separation of church and state because he believed in absolute freedom of conscience and though that state control over religion could only lead to the degredation of faith. He was prepared to welcome almost anyone to his colony.

Even the orthodox Puritans were far from being fundamentalists in any modern sense. They were very receptive to the latest advances of science and were eager to cast off what they regarded as the superstitions of the past. Part of their belief structure is still present among the Southern Baptists -- but the spirit is very different.

[China_cat]

13. Yes, there were Quakers in New England

expelled by the Puritans and 3 were hanged (including one woman) for coming back after the expulsion. For no other reason than that they were not 'proper' church members.

And England was not the only country to get rid of them (you might want to read up on the oppression BY the Puritans, before you start sympathizing with them too much). The Dutch took them in and then finally sent them to sea when they tried the same political take over they had tried in England.

Puritanism; the fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.

[skooooo]

14. Tend to agree...Puritans deserve the bad rap they get..

Of course you can find good things about them too, I suppose. Even Charles Manson probably loved his mom.