Posted on 05/09/2004 6:38:43 PM PDT by quidnunc
America 2004? Actually, no. This was the lamentable state of affairs in mid-17th century England, as it teetered on the brink of civil war. But there certainly is something disturbingly familiar about this description of a body politic dividing into two unbreachable camps.
Like England under Charles I, when the Cavaliers — the royalist supporters of the king — and the Roundheads — Puritan upstarts led by Oliver Cromwell — went at it for seven years of war, the United States today is becoming two nations. This is not merely the age-old split between income groups, as Sen. John Edwards kept suggesting in his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, but something even more fundamental — a struggle between contrasting and utterly incompatible worldviews.
Some describe the conflict as one between the "red" and the "blue" states, the right and the left, conservatives and liberals. But even though no one is about to behead our ruler and overthrow the government, as Cromwell's forces did when they captured Parliament in 1649, I find the parallel of the Cavaliers and the Roundheads to be the most apt. They grew to hate each other so much that they could no longer accommodate a common national vision. "I have heard foul language and desperate quarrelings even between old and entire friends," wrote one Englishman on the eve of conflict, and much the same could be said of us today.
The questions in our own uncivil war are: Is anyone winning? Which America most likely represents the future of our country?
The political division has grown wider in recent years. Now a clear geographic and cultural divide is emerging as well. Demographic studies show that Republicans and Democrats are less likely to live next door to each other, attend the same churches or subscribe to the same media.
America's Roundheads cluster in the South, the Plains and various parts of the West, while the Cavaliers inhabit the coasts, particularly the large metropolitan centers of the Northeast and Pacific Northwest. Each side has its own views, confirmed by its favored media. Fox TV, most of talk radio, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Sean Hannity speak for the Roundheads, supporting President Bush and America's global mission. The mainstream media, the universities and the cultural establishment, including most of Hollywood, are the voices of the Cavaliers, whose elites, like many of England's Cavaliers and Charles I's French wife before them, are most concerned with winning over continental opinion and mimicking the European way of life.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Of course you cannot, as you are either ignorant of that fact or unwilling to admit it for other reasons, among them possibly embarassment of association. The succession to unitarianism is a simple one to follow though:
Puritan (early 17th century) --> Nonconformist (post 1662 Act of Uniformity) --> 19th Century Unitarian--> 20th Century Unitarian Universalist
I wish it were that simple. Here in conservative rural Wyoming the major employers are federal and state government, followed by ranchers and farmers, neither of which could make ends meet without freebies from the government. Who are the real parasites?
It IS that simple. Google up the map.
I agree, however, that there are anomolies and exceptions.
And that is the first problem of your argument. You are confusing the hivings away from Puritanism by groups that have partial and common origins with Puritanism's lineal evolution, which is Unitarian. There is no doubt that fundamentalism had significant New England contributions to it and that it differed substantially from Old Virginia Anglicanism. But those fundamentalists became what they are by deviating away from Puritanism-proper, not by continuing it. Even Jonathan Edwards, the famed fire and brimstone "puritan," exhibited the beginnings of this split. The post "Great Awakening" churches had too much of a revivalist ring to them for the old guard strict English Puritan glastonbury thorn burning fanatics. When the fundamentalist and evangelical calvinists drifted away both theologically and geographically, those old guard strict puritans remained and from them we eventually got unitarianism.
Today's Bible Belt has far more in common with Puritan New England than it ever did with the mint-julep swigging, gambling, cigar smoking, morals-of-the-French-Quarter nobleman of the Old South.
Not really. Today's Bible Belt ascribes to a substantially more populist theology than Puritanism ever was and manages to combine it with two additional elements that Puritanism employed only sparingly or never at all: ideological agrarianism and an underlying strain of political conservatism.
Seeing as it is now the matter of your own discussion, it can hardly be considered off topic. As for the other two allegations, the only way you can test them is to challenge the lineal connection I made. You have not done so nor do you indicate any capability of doing so.
Technically speaking, no. The defining events of Nonconformist theology all happened from roughly 1662 after the Act of Uniformity through the early 18th century, at which time all the colonies were English. As a result there are several denominations and organizations that fall under the classification of the nonconformist label, among them the Quakers and, as previously noted, Unitarians.
And you're telling us that Unitarians don't deviate from "Puritanism-proper"?
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