Blaming the Puritans for Rick Santorum

The following Op-Ed was submitted by Dr. Francis J. Bremer, author of John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (2003); Puritanism: A Very Short Introduction (2009) and numerous other studies of early America.  Two new studies of early New England will be published in the coming year: First Founders: American Puritans and Puritanism in the Atlantic World and Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, a Puritan in Three Worlds.  He is professor emeritus of history at Millersville University and has been a visiting fellow at Oxford and Cambridge universities in England, and Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

In a recent opinion piece in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review the author John M Barry, author of a new biography of Roger Williams, compared “Christian conservatives and GOP presidential candidates” to the puritan founders of colonial New England, juxtaposing their position to that of Roger Williams, whose advocacy of greater freedom was labeled a “war against religion.”  In a column published in the New York Times that is in essence a riff on Barry’s piece, Joe Nocerea links the ideas of the seventeenth century Massachusetts governor John Winthrop with presidential candidate Rick Santorum, and claims that “Rick Santorum’s views were discredited more than 350 years ago.”

These comparisons muddy the historical record as well as our political discourse by playing into an oversimplified understanding of puritans and puritanism that depicts the religious roots of America, and particularly puritan roots, as the inspiration for all that is repressive and oppressive in American history.  This is as much an oversimplification as the nineteenth century hagiographic view that the puritans in fleeing England sought religious freedom as we know it.

It is unfortunate that popular impressions have been little influenced by modern scholarship, so that most Americans have not progressed beyond H. L. Menken’s understanding that puritanism was the lurking fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.  But if we are to understand where we are as a nation we need to recognize that the role of religion, and of puritanism in particular, is a mixed legacy, the unraveling of which might actually help us to better understand the complexities of our modern debates.

Puritanism was a complex movement and its leaders differed among themselves as to where to establish the perimeter fence that set the boundary between beliefs and practices that were acceptable and those that were not.  Indeed, there were puritan men (and women) who believed that as God’s elect they did know precisely how others should believe and act.  But there were others whose humble sense of being unworthy of God’s gift led them to hope that, as Winthrop himself put it, the colonists would through dialogue and experience come to a greater understanding of truth than they previously had.  Winthrop actually labored to keep Williams within the perimeter fence of Massachusetts and warned him of the orders given for his apprehension, allowing him to flee to the region that became Rhode Island.

There are as many reasons why I would be reluctant to live in the New England of John Winthrop as I would be to live in America during a Santorum presidency.  But depicting our heritage as one in which all were either intolerant oppressors in black steeple-hats or forward looking advocates of liberty is hardly the way to move us away from the rush away from the center that seems characteristic of current political life.

Recognizing that there were reasons why we would be uncomfortable living amidst the puritans, and that there are some aspects of the movement that suggest parallels with modern conservative politics, it is important that we recognize the positive aspects of puritan belief and practice.  In his “Christian Charity” lay sermon Winthrop attacked the advancing spirit of individualism of his age – “the care of the public must oversway all private respects by which not only conscience, but mere Civil policy doth bind us; for it is a true rule that particular estates cannot subsist in the ruin of the public.”   And, more famously, “we must be knit together in this work as one man.  We must entertain each other in brotherly Affection.  We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities.  We must uphold a familiar Commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality.  We must delight in each other, make others Conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our Commission and Community in the work, our Community as members of the same body.”  It is hardly surprising that this sermon has been quoted by John F. Kennedy, Michael Dukakis and others whose views are anathema to Rick Santorum!

It was the puritans who passed laws requiring that all children – women as well as men, servants as well as free – be taught to read, and established America’s first public schools and first university within the first decade of settlement.  An educated populace was important because their churches were congregational – governed by the vote of lay members and not clergy – and all public officials (town and colony) were elected annually.  They were not democratic in the modern sense, but their emphasis on lay participation in decision-making helped fuel our democratic institutions.  It is not surprising that their reading of the social obligations found in Scripture continued as a force in American life, fueling the reform movements of the nineteenth century (including anti-slavery) and the Social Gospel of the early twentieth century that helped shape the agendas of Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.

The Exchange welcomes op-eds from faculty and staff. Please send to Janet.Kacskos@millersville.edu.