# Puritan Punching Bag



## VirginiaHuguenot (Nov 9, 2005)

About this time of year (leading up to Thanksgiving which the Pilgrims and Puritans celebrated and Christmass which they did not) one often sees editorials which castigate the Puritans for supposed hyprocrisy in coming to the New World to seek freedom to worship God and then denying it to others. 

Anyone who first learns about the Puritans in public schools or colleges as I did will do so through the lens of intellectuals and media who portray them as did H.L. Mencken: "Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

This is reinforced in so much of the literature that is part of the typical modern English curriculum. Nathaniel Hawthorne's _The Scarlet Letter_, Herman Melville's _Moby Dick_, Washington Irving's _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, and Arthur Miller's _The Crucible_ are some examples show the fascination with reveling in the dark side of Puritanism and/or Reformed religion. 

In Scotland too some of the best literary minds have used their talents to satirize Presbyterianism or portray it as cold and too strict: Robert Burns' _Holy Willie's Prayer_ and Sir Walter Scott's _The Heart of Midlothian_.

Such works have had tremendous influence in equating Puritanism with Victorian morality. With so much talent aimed at turning "Puritan" into a dirty word, it is no wonder that such negative portrayals have even rubbed off on the church. Revisionism is a powerful literary device. So many people today learn their history about the Puritans through movies too (re 1995's _The Scarlet Letter_). If we wonder why the Puritans are misunderstood, it is at least in part because of a concerted effort on the part of artists who see them through dark lenses and produce art that leads society to do the same.

[Edited on 11-9-2005 by VirginiaHuguenot]


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## LadyCalvinist (Nov 9, 2005)

Andrew, I totally agree with you. It is a shame to see people who were some of the godliest people the Lord has raised up be so grossly misunderstood and treated with such outright contempt and hatred, but then those who hate God will always hate those who love God. The very lives of people like the Puritans is a rubuke to the ungodly.
But is not just the Puritans who are mischaracterized and misunderstood. For years I wanted nothing to do with evangelicals even though I was not happy with the mainline churches I was attending. It took something close to desperation for me to actually go to an evangelical church, when I did I finally heard the gospel.


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## Arch2k (Nov 9, 2005)

> _Originally posted by VirginiaHuguenot_ "Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."



I have to admit, although I have heard this many times, and I know it is a mischaracterization of the Puritans, it still makes me laugh. 

Overall, I wholly agree with what you've said Andrew. The more pure Christianity is, the more the world will hate it. I am thought a fool for not celebrating Christmas (even in my own church). May God grant us grace.


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## cupotea (Nov 9, 2005)

I know what you mean, Jeff. I find Hawthorne funny! He called Cotton Mather the "good friend" of the devil  I'm sorry that The Scarlet Letter is the most famous of his works because in my opinion it's one of the worst. Read Young Goodman Brown, or any of his short stories. They're great!

As for The Crucible, it's pretty accurate (if you take out the relationship between John Proctor and Abigail Williams). I think most of the judges were just naive and following the law--the judges from Boston didn't understand the local politics in Salem. But the people doing the accusing were a bunch of bloodthirsty you-know-whats.

I often tend to come across something even worse; people attacking the Puritans because of Michael Wigglesworth. I think the most hated line of Day of Doom is "I do save none but my own Elect" (I don't have it in front of me, but it runs something like that). That poem doesn't get nearly enough credit!

[Edited on 11-9-2005 by Cottonball]


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## WrittenFromUtopia (Nov 9, 2005)

Yeah, I think back on what I learned about the Puritans in high school and now in college, even, and it is laughable. Anti-intellectual.


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## bond-servant (Nov 9, 2005)

> _Originally posted by VirginiaHuguenot_
> 
> If we wonder why the Puritans are misunderstood, it is at least in part because of a concerted effort on the part of artists who see them through dark lenses and produce art that leads society to do the same.



Well said. Sad, but well said.


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## JohnV (Nov 9, 2005)

Defamation of character is hardly new to the Christians of any age, it seems to me. It still goes on today, in full force. 

In the research that I've done concerning my own circumstances, I have found that there is some of this that is deserved. Though Puritanism to us is an idealized expression of the Christian faith, there were and still are instances where people wearing the garb of the Puritan heritage are seemingly more zealous to justify themselves than to follow that Puritan thrust that we love so well. There are pretenders now, and there were back then too, I would imagine. And these "bad apples" spoil it for the whole bunch. 

It keeps us from becoming proud, for ideally the Puritans were not in the practice of being proud, but instead humble. I guess that spoils the happiness of some, who want to spend their lives in both worlds, profligating during the week, and then going to church on Sunday ( and Thanksgiving, but not Christmass; in other words they are outwardly following the practice in an orthodox manner, according to the main body of belief ), all the while being very openly critical of those who had/have other practices, either more holy or less holy, but especially practicing comtempt for those more holy. Its not really Puritan ethic, but they're Puritans all the same, according to their own testimonies. But the reason we can see that is because the Puritan spirit does still live in the humble hearts of some.


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## PuritanCovenanter (Nov 9, 2005)

> _Originally posted by WrittenFromUtopia_
> Yeah, I think back on what I learned about the Puritans in high school and now in college, even, and it is laughable. Anti-intellectual.



Good thing I quit High School the day I turned 16. I have had to learn it the easy way. I just started reading them. I didn't have anything to unlearn.


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## Kaalvenist (Nov 9, 2005)

> _Originally posted by joshua_
> What're some of the best books by Historians, dispelling the negativity of the revisionists?



Leland Ryken's book _Worldly Saints_ is a good treatment of the Puritans, dispelling many of the rumors that have grown up around them (he says where he doesn't agree with them, too, which helps to show his lack of bias). I recommended that book last week to a guy in my battalion who quoted that line from Mencken.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Nov 9, 2005)

> _Originally posted by Kaalvenist_
> 
> 
> > _Originally posted by joshua_
> ...



 Also see _Puritans at Play_ by Bruce C. Daniels which sheds light on how the Puritans enjoyed life within the boundaries of God's law contrary to Mencken's perspective.


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## JohnV (Nov 9, 2005)

I have spoken to Dr. Michael Haykin, and listened to some of his lectures on Jonathan Edwards and the Puritans, and I would think that he treats of it too. His works are available from Joshua Press, I believe.


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## SmokingFlax (Nov 10, 2005)

Correct me if I'm wrong but ...all of those authors that Andrew mentions aren't even close to the time of the Puritan movement -which I feel pretty much lost it's force in the mid 1700's. If they were more contemporary of the Puritans than I might be more inclined to consider their viewpoints/criticisms.

I too have had to shake a lot of the negative stereotypes of the Puritans from my public schooling. "Puritan" is pretty much a slanderous term with most everyone I know.


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## Plimoth Thom (Nov 10, 2005)

Most of my Puritan studies have been on the New England puritans rather than the English, and from secular historians and archaeologists. Surprisingly most of what I've read from these secular historians is about dispelling the Puritan myth, though few have dwelt on their religious beliefs, these are mostly cultural/social histories.

_Albion's Seed: Four British Folkway's in America_ by David H. Fischer has a large segment on the Puritan East Anglia settlers of New England.

_The Times Of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony_ by the famous late historical archaeologist James Deetz and his wife Patricia Scott Deetz, is all about dispelling the popular Thanksgiving and Puritan myths.

_John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father_ by Francis J. Bremer is an *excellent* biography of Winthrop and history of the founding of Massachusetts Bay plantation.

_The Puritan Family_ by Edmund S. Morgan is a good history of New England puritan family life with no discernable bias.

Now the general public is completely ignorant of who the Puritans were and what they really believed. Usually when someone uses the term "puritanical" they're actually talking about a Victorian belief rather than Puritan. I usually take the time to correct them, that they mean Victorian, not Puritan.


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## cupotea (Nov 10, 2005)

I just remembered this morning that it was actually partially the bad wrap given Puritans that turned me on to Presbyterianism. 

In highschool, we had to read Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. He describes the setting as a _puritanical_ town, where everyone is _Presbyterian_. While he of course meant it as an insult (and I was offended by that), I thought, Hey, Presbyterians must be alright!


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Nov 10, 2005)

I appreciate your comments Cottonball. I was hoping you would post on this thread (are you in Salem currently?). I too think Michael Wigglesworth is underrated. 

For what it's worth, it's interesting (and sad) to search Google using the terms "Puritan Taliban" or "Puritan George Bush." The revisionistic mythology goes on... <sigh>


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## SmokingFlax (Nov 10, 2005)

Quote:

"I just remembered this morning that it was actually partially the bad wrap given Puritans that turned me on to Presbyterianism."

Cottonball, I have a similar type of experience. After reading an extremist liberal editorial writer in the daily paper make a fear-filled disparaging and slanderous remark about John Calvin (by relating him to the Taliban, etc.), I reasoned in myself that this guy must be pretty good if this relativistic, leftist, political idolator is so terrified of him. If they only knew.


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## cupotea (Nov 11, 2005)

> _Originally posted by VirginiaHuguenot_
> I appreciate your comments Cottonball. I was hoping you would post on this thread (are you in Salem currently?). I too think Michael Wigglesworth is underrated.



Thanks! No, I'm not in Salem anymore. I only work there in the summer, then I have to go back to blasted Toronto, because I'm Canadian and they force us to stay here-- 


(As an aside: you're probably wondering why my opinion about Canada has changed so much in the past year. While I'm still anti-Bush, I'm definitely no longer pro-Liberal party in Canada, not because of the Gomery inquiry but because I started watching parliamentary debates on TV, the ones that nobody is actually ever expected to watch. They totally opened my eyes. I saw the way the Liberal party refers to Christians and I heard Paul Martin say essentially that Christians' opinions don't matter! I really wish the Tories would just shut up about the Gomery report and point out _this_ aspect of the Liberal platform, that the Liberals are so intolerant of citizens of the country! I wish the dignified way that Harper responded was more well-known and that people would see his good side like I did!)

--Anyway, in the summer I work at the former home of a witch trial judge, so I hear it all. I'm pretty used to it now, because every day some idiot says, "Oh, they were soooooo ignorant back then." What annoys me is when they make it personal, "This judge was such a jerk, killing innocent people. What a religious weirdo." 

For one thing, he didn't think they were innocent!!

For two, this particular judge wasn't, in condemning these people, acting on his own religious principles. _He was following the law!_

But they won't listen because he was a "Puritan" so he must have been deeply corrupt. 

I don't need to bother getting into how the Canadian school system portrays "Puritans". As I pointed out above, the prime minister of Canada said that all modern Christians don't matter. That says it right there.


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## cupotea (Nov 11, 2005)

> _Originally posted by SmokingFlax_
> Quote:
> 
> "I just remembered this morning that it was actually partially the bad wrap given Puritans that turned me on to Presbyterianism."
> ...



Isn't it ironic?

That was my first time coming across the term "puritanical" with a negative connotation. I thought, "Puritan" is good, but the context here suggests that it isn't! Then when the teacher discussed the text in class, she focused on the fact that it was a puritanical town, which, she explained, meant that everybody was expected to behave well and that it was intolerant of bad behavior. 

Half the time I still get confused about that. A lot of people describe "Puritans" as horrible. Outside of the context of the Salem Witch Trials, though, it's almost funny when they try to find reasons to explain why Puritans were horrible. They say that the Puritans were extremely _moral_, as though it's a BAD thing!!


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## Plimoth Thom (Nov 11, 2005)

I was recently reading Russel Shorto's "Island at the Center of the World" a history of colonial Dutch Manhatten. In it he was contrasting the liberal tolerant Dutch (qualities which make modern America great in his opinion) to the "extremely intolerant" Puritans in New England. Otherwise it's a good narrative history of New Netherland. But this is the most common reason people bash the Puritans, their "extreme intolerance." 

As an aside, related to the secular world's fear of religion in general and Christianity in particular. I recently saw a commercial for a new episode of PBS' Nova titled "Newton's Dark Secrets." I was interested in what Isaac Newton's dark secrets could be, so I looked up the webpage for the show. What were Newton's deep dark secrets? He experimented with alchemy. And....as "*A devout Christian, his meticulous study of the scriptures led him to conclude that both Catholicism and the Anglican Church of England were based on dangerous heresies.*"


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Nov 19, 2005)

The artistic tradition continues at Yale....

Play Tries Too Hard To Link Two Eras' Zealots

November 19, 2005
By MALCOLM JOHNSON, Special to The Hartford Courant

"Oh, New England!" From atop a tall black pulpit painted with a single eye, Puritan Increase Mather sermonizes his flock in a ringing, magisterial voice. This is the potent beginning to Amy Freed's "Safe in Hell," an ambitious but unconvincing effort to link the devil-fearing colonists of the New World with the Christian fundamentalists of today.

Freed fills the stern mouth of Graeme Malcolm's Increase with the grandeur of 17th-century rhetoric. But she has written a comedy with contemporary resonances, or so she thinks. Thus she has Increase link "Backsliders, Reprobates, Wig-wearers!" with "Late-Comers, Candy-eaters - Coffee-house WITS!" The last applies to then and now, as a Starbucks operates a block from Yale Repertory Theatre, where Freed's new play opened Thursday night.

"Safe in Hell" tells of Increase Mather, powerful father of Cotton Mather, his son who comes up short. When called from North Boston to Salem, where witch-hunting has flared up, Cotton eagerly embraces the hysteria, while his father rejects it. Looking for approval for his role in the Salem trials, Cotton hears Increase cut him to ribbons as "The DEVIL'S CHIEF LIEUTENANT! YOU are the WEAKEST LINK!"

Cotton has just condemned the Reverend Doakes, who preaches barefoot in outdoor lessons to the Indians. Doakes comes across as the archetypal liberal as played with easygoing bonhomie by Adam Dannheisser. In contrast, Erik Lochtefeld's Cotton is an inept Tartuffe, with stringy black, shoulder-length hair that matches his inky, tight frockcoat. Lochtefeld gives the striving failure a sweaty, sexually repressed personality, rejected by his patronizing father, spurned also by God, who speaks to both Increase and Doakes but not to him. This drives Cotton into forbidden tomes, having to do with Satan's secrets.

The situations of the father and son, and the rival, "green" Doakes, may suggest the Bushes, the elder a religious traditionalist, the son, a born-again backer of creationism and right-wing clerics, with Al Gore as the liberal caricature. This is what Freed intended, but the play, like its dialogue, is so divided between the 17th century and the 21st that neither comes to dramatic life.

In "The Crucible," Arthur Miller sought to write a realistic depiction of the fury that erupted in Salem, to shed light on the witch hunts of the House un-American Activities Committee. But he did not try to model his Puritans on Sen. Joseph McCarthy or Richard M. Nixon.

To its credit, Mark Wing-Davey's production at Yale Rep does not ask Malcolm to behave as that quintessential Greenwich aristocrat George H.W. Bush or Lochtefeld to act as the cowboy/Yalie George W. Bush. The father-and-son situation functions only as a fun-house mirror of the two presidents. Freed is interested in Cotton's fall into extremism, with the Salem trials echoing the invasions of the Patriot Act. But while the comparisons are intriguing to contemplate, they do not add up to satisfying or persuasive theater.

Using grotesque masks and puppets to represent the people of Salem, "Safe in Hell" yokes a surreal farce to its psychological study of a tormented son with an inferiority complex and strange sexual urges. When Cotton comes to Salem, he visits the Doakes family, and performs a quasi-erotic ritual of exorcism on the two giggling daughters, Sofia Gomez's Abigail and Alexis McGuinness' Little Mary. In this bizarre scene, in which the girls first mime symptoms of possession, arching their backs suggestively, Cotton levitates as the nubile adolescents in thin nighties cling to him.

Stirring up the pot is the Jamaican slave Tituba, heartily acted by a sardonic, hip Myra Lucretia Taylor, who leads the girls off the righteous path after urinating in the soup. Freed has married Tituba to an odd figure named Indian Roger, a white man raised by Indians and acted with a mix of romantic charisma and dopiness by Sean Dougherty.

Also stitched into the crazy-quilt plot is loopy, raggedy Maggie Smurt, one of the first to become possessed, as related in a wacky way through extreme buck teeth by Katie Barrett. The portly Jeff Steitzer, an old Massachusetts Everyman, plays her mother, but also portrays a judge and the hangman.

The triple execution takes place in a window that opens up high in the odd, quite ugly vine-covered setting by Leiko Fuseka, which presumably represents the shabby living conditions of the early northern Colonies.

Ultimately, in a vision of a better life in the great beyond, the scenery opens on a flight of white stairs, as angels in tinsel surround the martyred Doakes girls, and a Hawaiian serenade fill the gloomy theater, hung with glowering portraits of the Mathers' forebears.

But even a glimpse of heaven cannot bring salvation to "Safe in Hell."

SAFE IN HELL continues through Dec. 3 at the Yale Repertory Theatre, York and Chapel streets, New Haven. Performances are Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. with a Wednesday senior matinee Nov. 30 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $30 to $50. Box office: 203-432-1234.


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## cupotea (Nov 19, 2005)

Ok, U of T is no longer the most evil university in the world.

Actually, I can't even joke about it. When Nat Hawthorne makes fun of Cotton Mather, it's funny. But this is going way, way too far.

I have to go punch something. Seriously.

[Edited on 11-20-2005 by Cottonball]


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Dec 4, 2005)

Another example of anti-Puritan bias in the literary arts is _Hudibras_ by Samuel Butler.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Dec 22, 2005)

It's probably not the earliest usage of this word but I found the term "puritannically" used in a play by Thomas Middleton called _The Puritan_ (1606).


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Dec 25, 2005)

There is a new movie set to come out soon: _The Puritan_. It looks terrible.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Jun 6, 2006)

From a 6/6/06 CNN article on John Updike and his new book _Terrorist_:



> Ahmad is a young anti-American who hates like some old-time Americans. When he declares that "These devils seek to take away my God," he could be mistaken for a descendant of Cotton Mather or Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan reincarnated and armed for the 21st century.
> 
> "I think certain of our Puritan forebears would find a great deal in common with some of the imams and mullahs," Updike says. "What we're facing in Osama bin Laden is really a revival movement, like the American fundamentalist movement is a reaction to liberalism in the church."



[Edited on 6-6-2006 by VirginiaHuguenot]


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## py3ak (Aug 5, 2006)

Twelfth Night:
Act 2, Scene 3
[speaking of Malvolio]
Sir Toby: _Possess us, possess us, tell us something of him._
Maria: _Marry, sire, sometimes he is a kind of puritan._
Sir Andrew: _O, if I thought that I'd beat him like a dog._
Sir Toby: _What, for being a puritan? Thy exquisite reason, dear knight._
Sir Andrew: _I have no exquisite reason for't, but I have reason good enough._
Maria: [/i]The dev'l a puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a time-pleaser, an affectioned ass that cons state without book and utters it by great swathes; the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him; and on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work.[/i]

Of course, with Shakespeare's usual address it is not easy to determine if this was his opinion: Sir Andrew is not exactly a universally admired protagonical figure.


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## Pilgrim (Aug 5, 2006)

> _Originally posted by VirginiaHuguenot_
> From a 6/6/06 CNN article on John Updike and his new book _Terrorist_:
> 
> 
> ...



I may become a punching bag for writing this, but what the rise of Islam ought to make clear to us is the falsehood of religious neutrality. Will Sharia have to be imposed before the church wakes up? The other alternative is outlawing all public religious expression, which seems to be the direction in which France is headed.

[Edited on 8-5-2006 by Pilgrim]


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## jaybird0827 (Aug 5, 2006)

In one of our former churches we (Mrs. Sulzmann and I) were termed "neopuritans" by an elder who was uncomfortable with us.


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## Pilgrim (Aug 5, 2006)

> _Originally posted by jaybird0827_
> In one of our former churches we (Mrs. Sulzmann and I) were termed "neopuritans" by an elder who was uncomfortable with us.



This was an ostensibly Presbyterian/Reformed church?


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## jaybird0827 (Aug 6, 2006)

> _Originally posted by Pilgrim_
> 
> 
> > _Originally posted by jaybird0827_
> ...



Yes.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Jan 11, 2007)

A good antidote to Puritan-bashing: Puritanism: The Real Thing


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Jan 12, 2007)

Another antidote: Everybody Knows the Puritans Were...


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## LadyFlynt (Jan 12, 2007)

I unfortunately found this in one of the children's books on the Huguenots. There is a Puritan gent in the book who is portrayed as staunch, serious, and humourless "like most Puritans were". For crying out loud...I heard an excerp from a journal once that pretty much showed that they knew how to eat, drink, and be merry (with consequences from feasting in the barn...the chickens I think came back to reclaim their territory if I remember correctly).


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 16, 2007)

Joel Beeke, _Gisbertus Voetius: Toward a Reformed Marriage of Knowledge and Piety_, pp. 26-27:



> Thus for Voetius, faith must become visible. The Christian must strive to please the Lord in every circumstance and detail of his life. He serves a holy and precise God. A key word in Voetius' vocabulary of the Christian life is "precision," which he defined as "the exact or perfect human action conforming to the law of God as taught by God, and genuinely accepted, intended, and desired by believers."[5] In other words, the believer desires to do nothing less or other than the will of God expressed in His law as a rule of life. Such precision compels the believer to live carefully, and to obey God exactly; or, in Paul's phrase, "to walk circumspectly" (Eph. 5:15). If this means being ridiculed with false labels, so be it. It is more important to please God than man. Voetius wrote: "The labels of being a precisionist, a zealot, a pigheaded person have always been applied to Christians whenever they have refused to be lukewarm and compromising.... We must not pay much attention when devotion is decried as superstition, soberness as hypocrisy, tenderness of conscience as strictness, *puritanicalness*, obstinacy, etc., in order to try to make us seem ludicrous."[6]
> 
> Voetius did not deny that one can adhere to a precise form of piety out of legalism, hypocrisy, or superstition. All errant forms of precise living, however, should not detract from living in a biblically precise manner, being zealous for good works, with a heart that is earnestly devoted to the fear of God and a conscience that is intent on obeying His commandments. This kind of precisianism God regards as a "heroic excellence of virtue."
> 
> ...


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 22, 2007)

The Puritans Behind the Myths


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