Every time I consider the Puritans I am reminded England was bonkers in the 17th century.

Those buckle hatted bigots of yore. Oddly enough, aspects of our American way of thought harken back to the Puritans struggle. But maybe not in the way we commonly view them. 

As their movement got into its 3rd generation here in the colonies they really got their knickers in a twist over predestination, who gets to be let in the holy kingdom. But they did spring forth from an era when the papists were not loved by certain English kings and queens.

This historical filmmaker Atun-Shei makes some fun points. He has other great stuff on the American moral dilemmas.

In Defense of Puritanism

Many of us think of 17th century Puritans as dour, conservative theocrats – nothing could be further from the truth. This video will argue that Puritanism was, in fact, a radically progressive social justice movement that directly inspired the principles of the Enlightenment, and first articulated foundational modern democratic beliefs about human rights, civil liberties, and individual freedom.

From the original posted article, the author Jane Borden succinctly explains the effects of those Puritan legacy issues we inherited.

... It undergirds authoritarianism, the search for perfectionism, the illusion of control. Those things are only possible because of this idea of a grace-nature divide, meaning that humans have grace, which is of God and holy, and separate from this evil natural world. Everything in the world is evil, and it can only be made good if we use it to better ourselves.

As you would probably notice from hearing that, the grace-nature divide has fueled runaway extraction economics. It's in the mind-cure movement, in the idea that the physical world is false or can be controlled by the mental or spiritual world. And when you pair it with the notion that poverty is a sin, it's also used as a justification to plunder the lower classes, when even groups of people are seen as natural resources. We see that most egregiously, of course, in the transatlantic slave trade and the extermination or resettlement of Indigenous communities. I believe that's what's happening now in the economy. Because we see wealth as a sign of being chosen and poverty as a sign of sin, the lower classes have become sinners in our eyes. They are part of nature, and therefore something that can be mined without compunction.

So the grace-nature divide is everywhere. Another reason why I didn't try to explore it more on its own is because some of these tendencies are more common in human nature, and some are more specific to the radical Protestants who founded our nation. This duality of the natural and spiritual world is not wholly unique to radical Protestantism, but it has certainly showed up in a variety of deleterious ways.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2025-06-11 14:30:55)

SpacePuppy wrote:

Good and Bad, always hand in hand.

More like, "Two there are, a Master and an Apprentice."