George Henry Boughton, Pilgrims Going to Church

“TODAY, the most progressive lands in America remain the regions firmly steeped in Puritan lore, tradition, and history, or the regions that were settled by New England Puritan diaspora (the West Coast).

“The Puritan’s DNA is rooted in restless iconoclasm, reform, and protest.  It is the only trinity Puritanism ever knew, and it remains the only trinity known to all the descendants and inheritors – consciously and unconsciously – of puritanism today.  After all, it is only in Puritan and Calvinist countries where iconoclasm still manifests itself today.  It is precisely modern secularism’s revolutionary, iconoclastic, utopian, and progressive spirit as to why most sociologists and philosophers see secularism as ‘the preservation of certain Biblical habits and ideas even after the atrophy of Biblical faith.’ Alan Simpson’s 1954 article captured the essence of Puritanism in its title: Saints in Arms: English Puritanism as Political Utopianism. The Puritans may be dead, but their soul is still marching on.”

— Hesiod’s Corner, “Puritanism and the Utopian State of Mind“

— Comments —

Hurricane Betsy writes:

..the Puritans saw only the “godly society.”  As such, they actively sought out to create this new utopian society in all the lands they settled in America. 

I never thought about any of this at all.   Yes, it certainly explains things, superficially anyway.  The author doesn’t opine as to WHY some people, even hundreds of years ago back in the old country, believed they could establish a garden of Eden (utopia) on earth.  They were at some point members of the Church of England yet the idea that they could never truly supercede the all powerful, all-knowing, nature of the Creator somehow bypassed them.

Laura writes:

He does explain. They rejected hierarchy theologically and that led to social egalitarianism. Check out what he says about this in his several posts on the Puritans.

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