The Puritans Were Not The Founding Fathers

We're doing well as a country when the Religious Right is unhappy. When James Dobson and Pat Robertson are upset, the canary is alive in the coal mine!

It's like -- look at us, we're still a democratic nation! The Ten Commandments haven't replaced the Bill of Rights. Evolution is still being mentioned in schools. Planned Parenthoods haven't been completely outlawed. And it's STILL against the law to stone homosexuals, pornographers and uppity women (pending a two-thirds majority vote in Congress).

I'm no pollster -- but I am willing to bet that there is a big chunk of folks who think that the Puritans and the Founding Fathers were the same people. Yes, the group of people that branded an 'H' on the cheeks of accused heretics were the same people responsible for the phrase 'freedom of speech'.

But that's what the Religious Right wants us to believe. It gives them a sense of entitlement. They'd have us assume a bunch of pious, simple folks clad in wool and buckles made their way across the Atlantic -- plagiarized the chapter in the Bible about forming a republic, called it The U.S. Constitution and then had July 4th fireworks.

The Puritan rule -- early 1600s, the Founding of the United States of America -- late 1700s. There is less time between the Lewis and Clark expedition and Sputnik.

John McCain now famously told Beliefnet that the United States is a Christian nation. Pundits and preachers alike parrot that this country was founded in religion. It's a nifty little sound bite.

The politically ravenous use it as a ruse. The tale is that in the 'olden days' things were somehow better than they are now. More innocent. Free of New Ageism's tolerance and dreaded hate crime bills. If we can just go back to that time -- if we can just get back to the time when we were more devout -- then we'll all be better off. It's elusive, but just around the corner.

It's a fabrication that an exclusively religious -- peaceful and ultimately blissful era ever existed. It can't happen 'again', because it never happened in the first place. The Puritans came to this land to practice THEIR religion without being persecuted and (at least in the Boston colony) quickly persecuted those who didn't practice their religion. Quakers were hanged and tortured for blasphemy. Native Americans were killed for being heathens. And sassers, gossipers and adulterers got their ears cropped or their noses split.

Looking back to colonial days for religious precedent is like looking back at the Black Plague for health care reform.

But for the politically ravenous, selling the idea that a Christian state is a birthright and a good idea -- gets the untaxed revenue flowing. Revising history and bleaching out some of the objectionable stains makes a new sense of purpose by making, well -- 'new sense'!

There is the idea that American Christian's are right and entitled "because we were here first!"

Long SIGH.

So when Christian Conservative leaders threaten to support a third-party candidate because they don't like Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, it's a relief.

It's like when Rick Santorum failed to get re-elected; it proved that we can come back from the brink of theocracy.

And yes, we are having an 'ideological struggle' in the Middle East and that kind of seems like a different way of saying 'holy war', but if James Dobson doesn't see any of the GOP candidates as being his future lap dog -- there's hope.

Comments

[Boris]

The Mass. Bay people were given a charter to start their own legal system. The best thing they did was ban lawyers. But, they were so self righteous in the practice of criminal law that they violated the terms of the charter and became 'disestablished.' They lost their freedom because they refused to extend the birth rights of Englishmen to those settlers who were NOT members of their church.

The crediting of democracy to these people comes only from the fact they voted on their leaders. But, they disenfranchised so many...ie, you could not vote in Mass. Bay unless you were a 'proven' Christian member of a church. You had to be visited by the holy spirit and the visit had to be witnessed. By the second or third generations, however, the children of the settlers had lost the spirit.

The Puritans practiced democracy like the Soviets did. You had to be the 'right' people, the right religion, the right political group to vote in the 'democratic' elections.

Credit is given by many post WWII historians that, somehow, the practice of electing leaders in the early churches transfered over to the fledgling American government. It was the idea of everyone(white, land owning males) voting for leadership was the basis of our democracy. Well, it would be so if the limitations on the eligibility weren't so obviously undemocratic.

[gulopartisan]

The notion of the Puritans as the founders of a country dedicated to democracy is laughable. All you need is the distinct pleasure of watching Richard Harris as Cromwell to pick up enough of the surface of English religious politics. The Puritans were antinomian swine and their spiritual grandchildren, the Mormons, play the same hypocritical games. Truth, freedom, and equality are their enemies and tools of Satan.

[Kendo Nagasaki]

Since societies began there has been an alliance between the war chief and the witch doctor.

We still have the same structure working its magic.

[Kendo Nagasaki]

Churches are not charities.

Is it not time to end their tax free privilege?

[BobOnThis]

And end the marriage tax!

If we are all created equal why do people who undertake a predominately religious ceremony, marital vows, get special tax considerations?

Doesn't sound like seperation of church & state to me... looks a hell of alot like another special interest group looking favored status.

Helps to remember the puritans were run out of Europe, twice, for their extreme religious views...

[superba]

Yay! Great great post. How do I recommend??

[SergeantD]

Today just happens to be the anniversary of Roger Williams banishment from the the Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissension.

Your article was impeccably timed; Moreover, it was thoughtful and precise.

The more frustrated America's evangelicals become, the better off we all are.

[Purple Girl]

No kidding. I've been doing family research and have found both my grandfathers parents were run out of Scotland because of their religious beliefs (convenants?)then hooked up w/ the quakers (in the US) (but they couldn't dance & play music- so they became Presbyterians. Personally I'm a recovered Catholic (dad's side) and have come to realize that considering the source I'm proud to be a Heretic (it's so easy to qualify). If the true Messiah returned these idiots would have him executed. However if they do crown one savior- we're all screwed.

[laocoon]

It is amazing how inarticulate the people who wrote the bill of rights were. they intended to establish nondenominational judeo-christianity as the country's religion and ended up with a first amendment that seems to say flatly that no religion shall be established. We usually think of individuals like Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton as being competent in the (King's) English but apparently they were unable to correctly express what they originally intended. They also got mixed up in trying to explain that all power would be vested in one branch of government, the unitary executive, and ended up with those mis-statements about 3 branches. We obviously needed "no child left" behind back then.

[Democrab]

Yup, Franklin and Jefferson were probably a couple of extreme philanderers, the type of fellows that would be shunned by today's religious right.

Dobson and company just haven't found someone yet who can "cast the first stone."

Perhaps a deal with Mephistopheles would be the proper course to explore to satisfy that pompous desire.

[mrcontinental]

The religous right never allows facts to interfere with their dogma.

They are simply in it for the money and power, it's as simply as that.

[laocoon]

I think it is amazing at how English must not have been the native tongue when the Bill of Rights was drafted and adopted. While the people intended that this would be a Christian Nation somehow they misstated this and it became the first Amendment. They intended it say "Congress shall establish non denominational Christianity as the religion of the United States." Makes you wonder if we haven't misread the entire document throughout history. Maybe the Declaration of Independence was a poorly worded note of submission to the crown that was misread by King George. Tragic.

[Zanti]

"Makes you wonder if we haven't misread the entire document throughout history." The present King George would agree with you. And he would sense no irony in your statement....

[NoMoFearNoMoHate]

I've recently heard something that I've had little time to investigate but is very intriguing - that the early population of the United States (read Constitution Era) had a large number of Buddhists.

I'll be looking into it further to hopefully counter the 'christian' hogwash if it is true.

[PADDYWHACK]

No,they were thrown out of Holland,how bad did they have to be ?.They were a bunch of sex obsessed witch-murderers.They had the Right's fascination with sex to the ultimate degree and were abominably cruel to women for their imagined evil sexual powers.Sociopaths to a man who the hell would want to be descended from them.

[betterthansane]

Ran out of space in the previous post....here's the rest

In the early years after the Puritans arrived they were obliged to conduct lots of their affairs with and buy from the Dutch in New Amsterdam. These traders were clever, moneywise and enterprizing and were engaged in a wide range of very profitable undertakings. They were viewed with suspicion by the high-minded religious settlers. Many of the Dutch businessmen of the time were named either Kees (pronounced like case) or Jon (pronounced like yon). So the religious types began to call the transactions with the wiley Dutch "Jon Kees" deals. Eventually it simply became Yankees....

[betterthansane]

Since Thanksgiving is just around the corner and the celebration of the founding of the Plymouth Colony by the Pilgrims will again be marched out for admiration as the founding of this nation, it's probably worthwhile to dispell some of the mythology about our precedessors.

Only about half of the folks on the Mayflower were reaching out to the American shores because of religious problems. They didn't start their journey in England but sailed from Delftshaven in The Netherlands (home of religious refugees of every stripe) where they had lived for more than a decade having fled England in about 1607 from small villages in the center of the country where they were called Separatists, not Puritans. The Puritans were Church of England through and through. The Separatists weren't and had created their own brand of faith before and during their time in Holland. (Today you can attend services at The Pilgram Church near where the Separatists embarked.)

The other half of the folks on the ship were a motley crew of civilian and military adverturers, some by design and some by necessity and were in it for the commerce, not the religion.

Half were called Saints and half were called Sinners.

There is a detailed diary by the first Governor of the colony, Bradford, online and it's worth a read if you are interested in the first religious/commercial endeavor in the USA.

Worth noting is that the city of New Amsterdam (now New York) was already in its earliest days at the time, the Portugese were fishing off what was to be Maine, and the Separatists were helped and assisted by the local Native Americans, one of who actually spoke English - his name was Squanto.

It is time that we at least acknowledge that many of our founders were in it for the money.....and nothing much has changed...we remain Saints and Sinners....but these days it's harder to tell who's who.

[bethinCary]

That's why Article 6 of the Constitution was put in.

No religious litmus.
The Constituiton is absolut rule of law. No secret college organizations. No religious organizations. No foreign lobby organizations-or those with dual citizenship- putting other countries' Constitutions above our own.