Posted on 10/29/2001 6:17:43 PM PST by futurepotus
Btw...taxes were extremely low during the Colonial period. For all their faults, puritans and their offshoots took care of their own problems. Which is one reason New England became an economic powerhouse.
But, for an A.P. class, I'd have to give it a D+.
The over-all ignorance and bias towards Puritans and their philosophy is disappointing. It reads as if your research consisted of skimming the Cliff Notes to Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" while watching the "Scarlett Letter" on TV.
Here are some more specific comments:
The Puritans, who made the trip to Massachusetts in the 1630's, in order to freely attempt to purify the Anglican Church, did not represent the American way.
Translation: “Settlers in the 1630’s viewed the world differently from those who lived two hundred years afterwords.”
Brilliant thesis.
The arrogance of Puritan leaders like John Winthrop was disgusting in itself. Winthrop said, "we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." None of the Founding Fathers of the United States shared these sentiments.
The US was described, by the Founding Fahters, as the great motherland of liberty. What could be more "arrogant" than the Delcaration of Independence? Even today American politicans describe the US as the last great bastion of freedom on earth, with people streaming to its shores, etc., etc.
The Puritans never gave what is now known in America as a fair trial. Nineteen people were hanged as a result of predominantly hostile testimony.
Quite a generalization based on the isolated events in one city.
Incidentally, the Puritans’ courts were based on the English common law and had virtually the same procedures. What constitutes a “fair trial” evolves. The Founding Fathers didn’t practice Miranda Rights, Exclusions of Evidence, and were far far more strict when it came to hearsay. The courts in 1790 differ more from the courts of 2001, than the did the courts of 1630 differ from the courts of 1790.
The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal; a belief that the Puritans did not exhibit. The Puritans had the false notion that only "Saints" could receive God's grace. Reverend John Cotton said, "We teach that only Doers will be saved." If a person living in Salem was not a Doer, he or she was outcast from society, which is not the American way. The American way teaches that different is good. The Puritans were saved, somewhat, when Governor Phips stopped the witch trials.
You misunderstand the Declaration’s observation that all men are created equal. Locke’s statement had nothing to do with salvation; rather, it had to do with the equality of authority -- i.e, no man born of woman had an inherent right to rule over any other man. To the extent the Puritans were anti-royalists, they agreed with the Declaration’s statement of equality.
No outside factor was to blame for the failure of the Puritan society. The culprit was their own weak psychological state-of-mind.
Wow. You are a psychologist too?
How can a “state-of-mind” NOT be psychological?
The Puritans were religious zealots who alienated their fellow man and thought it was right. Any Puritan who wanted the gift of grace was required to go through the conversion experience. The conversion experience was often extremely humiliating, because the experience consisted of the potential member having to confess all of their sins in front of the congregation. The Puritans, in their disillusionment, were unable to see the complete and utter correctness of the beliefs belonging to Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams. Hutchinson, who was eventually banished to Rhode Island, believed in immediate conversion by God.
And now you are a theologian...
What legitimate historian would refer to one denomination as “disillusioned zealots” and another denomination as being “complete and utter[ly] correct”?
The above-paragraph would have got you and “F” in my day.
Separation of church and state was unheard of in the Puritan way of life. The Puritans were governed by John Winthrop's Bible Commonwealth, which met where the town church did, at the town meetinghouse. A moral decision is not always correct.
Wrong. A moral decision IS always correct.
That’s the definition of a moral decision.
The only thing that Americans in the 21st century can learn from the Puritans of the 17th century is that Puritanism is exactly what should not be happening today. If the United States government were solely concerned with religious matters, nothing would get accomplished.
The Puritans were, as you say, “solely concerned with religious matters”, and they built the foundation upon which we sit to this day. I think that is quite an accomplishment.
Education is most valuable when you seek out the truth for yourself,as opposed to taking what is taught at face value.
As a statement of fact today, I, too, would say that today's "People for the American Way" does not represent what, for over 200 years, has been known as "the American Way."
You are 400 years away from the Puritans. Doubtless, you have been schooled in a system that has brought you to your study of the Puritans with certain "blinders" on. The textbooks used in most schools largely were written by 20th Century writers with an agenda, and many literally re-wrote America's history to suit their own narrow agendas.
This I discovered several years ago when I was working on a project involving American history. When I began to delve into the writings of the people of that day, into the prolific writings of the Founders of our nation (both political figures and ordinary citizens), I found a totally different view of the founding philosophy than I had been taught in school and college.
You are to be commended for putting your paper out here and subjecting it to criticism.
May I respectfully suggest that you try to take off any "blinders" imposed on your God-given brain and reason by any so-called historians or teachers of the past 100 years and immerse yourself in the writings of the period you are studying and those preceding it--all the writings you can find through research.
Ideas have consequences, and the ideas of liberty that were the passion of Americans of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th Century are the ideas that have enabled you to live in a land of liberty.
So-called "American Way" ideas of the 20th Century have contributed to the national dilemma we find ourselves in now, for they have taken us backward into ideas of tyranny and coercive government power and control under the guise of "protecting" us from ourselves.
On your subject, you might find a copy of Governor Bradford's Diary of Plimouth Rock, examine the contents, and then go forward through the development of the events that followed. When, in 1776, Jefferson wrote words which he described as representing "the American mind" of the day, they capsulized an idea so powerful that it changed the world and brought about the greatest explosion of liberty, goods, and services the world has ever known.
Even in 1776, Edmund Burke recognized that the great spirit of liberty exhibited by British colonists in America came from their religious belief, and spoke of it in his impassioned "Speech on Conciliation" before the Parliament.
De Tocqueville traveled in America and wrote about it, and another Frenchman, Bartholdi, was so inspired by American liberty that he designed our Statue of Liberty, donated by the French government in honor of our Centennial.
Your paper is your writing of today.
If you aspire to POTUS status, I would encourage you to take no second-hand word of America's founding principles and ideas. Read them for yourself, and one day I look to see a far different paper.
BTW, where is the thread that discussed this?
You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will send some of you to your death. And you will be hated by all for My name's sake. But not a hair of your head shall be lost.we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all persecutions and tribulations that ye endure
They were subsequently chased out of England when the population became weary of thier puritanical form of government. Most fled to Amsterdam. They were accepted there, but there was no real room for growth and they wanted more freedoms of religon and more economic mobility as well. Thinking they could achieve these things they sailed for the American Colonies. The Massachusetts Bay Co. financed the endeavor.
These strongly principaled people created a society and prospered against unimaginable odds and suffering. There are many theories as to the whys and wherefores of the Salem Witch Trials, but on the surface it would seem that a group of teenage girls, thier heads full of stories told by a caribbean slave, started something they couldn't control or stop.
There is a theory that mold on the rye they made into bread had a hallucinogenic effect on the entire population. Who knows?
The "American Way" had not yet been invented by the founders of our Consitution and in thier way they did set up a society where they all had a say in the governance, had elected heads, controlled, of course, by the Puritan religion. They were a remarkable group of people who accomplished much and should be remembered for the pioneers that they were, and the ideals they believed in, rather than for the hysteria and horror of the Witch trials. It is more a lesson in absolute power corrupting absolutely than it is in a system of government and equality and justice that had not yet been invented. Remember, England had already granted freedom to its population with the signing of the Magna Carta, so this experiment was not for political freedom, but for religious freedom from England's Anglican (High Episcopalian) church of state.
May God bless you and yours. We recognize their martyrdom, and celebrate His power over death and uncertainty.
1) You can't talk about the Puritans without mentioning the world from which they came. These guys were the English Revolution, man---they weren't cultish small potato super-religious zombie hicks. They were the "radical" element of perhaps the most important revolution in history---the revolution which first questioned the "divine right" of kings and the power of centralized sovereignty.Learn to think for yourself, man, and don't merely regurgitate what your teacher tells you. Do that and you'll be fine.2) The "shining light upon a hill" was a pep talk given during a sermon, I believe, when the Puritans first left their ship. Hardly a chest-thumping boast, just a really, really good Knute Rockne speech.
3) The Puritans gave us Massholes the "town meeting," which is perhaps the only form of true democracy in the United States. They did do something positive.
AP? For what second grade? If I were your history teacher, you'd be history . . . Maximum of a C-
From my recent meditations of His Word:
"Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the Man that is My fellow," saith the LORD of hosts. "Smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered; and I will turn Mine hand upon the little ones. And it shall come to pass that in all the land," saith the LORD, "two parts therein shall be cut off and die, but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on My name, and I will hear them. I will say, `It is My people'; and they shall say, `The LORD is my God.'"We shall all overcome no matter what tribulation refines us. Our reward will be great.
Some of their members did become extreme concerning their seperation of Church and state but it is not true that this represented all Puritans (who were in fact quite a diverse group).
As for ill treatment of Indians, you could also mention the endeavors of certain puritans to aid the Indians in various ways such as free education, sharing of agricultural skills and other charity work.
Oh for heaven's sake! I get suspended for three days for using profanity, and this is the first thing I see when I get back?! What is this, some kind of test of my will power?
Look: The notion that fundamentalist Christians were one dimensional in the past OR that they are one dimensional today is SUCH a misguided notion that it seems to cross the line dividing mis-information from propaganda.
When I took AP history, the AP stood for "advanced placement." What does it stand for today, "advanced propaganda?"
The Pilgrims were a logical development of the Dissenters movement. The original "Nonconformists." Far from being "solely concerned with religious matters," it was the Dissenters who, in England, built canals, a dynamic banking system, a dynamic educational system, and, for the most part, planted the seeds that would later be exploited by a secular Britain and turned into the Industrial Revolution.
Fundamentalist Christians aren't one dimensional people. They're just people who have a different set of priorities than the secular Establishment. (FYI, commercial NMR imaging was perfected by an Evangelical Christian. One of the advanced versions of the Pentium chip was designed by a Born Again Christian.)
Mark W.
Yep this is your first test..but it will not be your last....LOL....welcome back and take care with those @#&%^ ya know??*grin*
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