The New England puritans evoke images of a dour Ichabod Crane among unbelievers, and something akin to beatific exegetical savants, idolized if not idols, in the Reformed community.
As is always the case, the truth is in the middle.
Among all the marquee reformers, I have the greatest admiration for Martin Luther. Lest that ever approach idolatry, I can remind myself that, even allowing for his times and culture, Luther was a raging anti-Semite. A true outlier. Nobody is just one thing. We all have clay feet. We all are the chief of sinners.
In reformed circles there is great and worthy admiration for the writings of the puritans. However, they were far from perfect. They crossed he pond to escape persecution from the Church of England. However, contrary what is often attributed to them, they were not seeking freedom of religion. While they were seeking to remove themselves from a kind of theocracy, they were simultaneously eager to establish one. They were looking not for tolerance, but for their own sect to take the reins of absolute ecclesiastical and civil power. Regarding other Christian denominations and viewpoints, their intolerance was on par with, and at times exceeded, that which they fled.
And their doctrine was on the extreme right of covenant theology, to the point, in one regard, of advocating an indefensible position. They were theonomists. They established a state religion, and a religious state, and in their colony they instituted Mosaic law, including the right of the magistrate to punish religious deviations as blasphemy.
It doesn’t mean their writings are not valuable, for they surely are, in certain topics they are among the best of the best. But their theology was far from perfect. Establishing a Christian civil government, replete with Old Testament punishments, is just about the biggest distortion of the New Covenant and New Testament teaching you can imagine. There is no call in the New Testament for the establishment of a Christian theocracy. Indeed, what is taught is that we should pay scant attention to our form of our government, because we, as citizens of a greater kingdom, are effectively aliens wherever we happen to live.
The puritans of New England beat, placed in stocks, poked holes in tongues, cut off ears, imprisoned, banished, and sometimes hanged both Baptists and Quakers. They truly hated their enemies, in direct violation of Jesus’ teaching.
Like many I admire much of what they wrote. But I also sense the irony in that most of those who admire the puritans, should they be transported back in time to puritan New England, would find themselves suffering extreme persecution.
Like I said, nobody is just one thing.
I wonder if it was to keep the community "pure" so as not to bring down God's judgment because they saw themselves as a new Israel entering the promised land. Edwards believed that Jesus was going to return to New England too. Learning about all this is depressing but necessary because I don't want to believe myths. The incipient nationalism/theonomy is depressing all the same. ht: In Search of the City on a Hill, Richard Gamble
ReplyDeleteJudging heroes or villains of the past is not easy. For our heroes we are tempted to ignore or excuse their failings. For our villains we are tempted to focus on their faults and judge them anachronistically.
ReplyDeleteI think you are spot on: don't believe the myths. For true heroes of the faith, their will still be enough left to love and admire even when the myth is dispelled.
"They were looking not for tolerance, but for their own sect to take the reins of absolute ecclesiastical and civil power." We're not past that yet, it seems.
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