The Puritan Effect

The supposedly chosen, biblical, godly Puritans generously committed both sins of omission (neglected justice and the love of God) and sins of commission (ethnocentrism and oppression).  I see this same perverse blending of religion and social evil among white evangelicals here in Iowa in 2016.  Is there a historical connection?  I think so.

Historian G.E. Thomas has explored Puritan ethnocentrism/oppression in an article in The New England Quarterly (March 1975) entitled "Puritans, Indians and the Concept of Race."

He writes:

     The record of Puritan attitudes, goals, and behavior in every major area of interaction with Indians reveals a continued harshness, brutality, and ethnocentric bias, which . . . had fatal consequences for Indians. . . . "

     Continued encroachment of their land became the Indians main grievance and the prime cause of violence between Indians and whites. . . . The Indians' desperation over their tenuous social situation and decreasing land base led to resistance and periodic violence.

     The Puritans handled the Pequot problem with savage thoroughness. . . . in a surprise attack on the Pequot village at Mystic, deliberately burned the lodges of the Indians [killing hundreds, men women and children].

     Starting in 1694, in King William's War, the Massachusetts General Court offered bounties for the killing of hostile Indians, with scalps accepted as the best and most convenient proof.

In a review article entitled "Jonathan Edwards: American Augustine," George Marsden describes Pastor Edwards as a deeply spiritual person, a "theological genius."  Dozens of books and 75 doctoral dissertations have been written about him.

But Marsden also points out some serious flaws.  "Even though he proclaimed spiritual equality, the idea of social equality hardly occurred to him.  He owned African African household slaves, as was common among the New England elite."

Even though cloaked in theology and spirituality, this elitist social order was, in reality, too often arrogant ethnocentrism which led to acts of oppression  against Native Americans.  Social oppression/social justice issues, central in the Bible, were not important to Puritan Jonathan Edwards.  As Puritan numbers grew, they began to see Indians as Canaanites to be destroyed because they stood in the way of an expanding Christian nation.  With relentless zeal, they pursued their deeply flawed idea of an Americanized kingdom of God.

If you wish to trace the Puritan Effect, the demonic thread woven through American history, I suggest you read the following:  Racist America, Race and Manifest Destiny, A Different Mirror, The Wars of America: Christian Views, Cotton and Race in the Making of America, Inheriting the [Slave] Trade, W.E.B. Du Bois: American Prophet, Reforging the White Republic, Divided by Faith and The New Jim Crow, Whiteness and Morality, and Dear White Christians.  If you want to skip the horrific history, read Divided by Faith and The New Jim Crow.  If you do read the horrific history, you will discover how shallow and sanitized your American history courses were.

What is the solution?  I suggest you read 6 articles on the kingdom published on my blog in 2013 and 3 more articles written in 2016.  Only by implementing the biblical kingdom can American ethnocentrism/oppression be replaced by justice and reconciliation.

The Puritans were the wrong kind of pioneers---the pioneers of a demonic blend of religion and ethnocentrism/oppression.  For nearly 400 years, Americans have walked in the Puritan path.  Self-righteous religious people who have gone wrong biblically on social evil are the most dangerous people in the world---much worse than atheists.  My black Mississippi, Lee Harper, sums up this tragic history with this one-liner; "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well with things that appeared just."