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.
And you're telling us that Unitarians don't deviate from "Puritanism-proper"?
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.
So was Edwards a proto-liberal or a proto-Fundamentalist?
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.
To this day Southern Primitive Baptists condemn any form of revivalism or missionary activity because salvation and damnation depend solely on divine election and on nothing else. As I said, there's a Primitive Baptist web page that actually quotes with approval Cromwell's theologian.
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.
The Southern Calvinists drifted away to Arminianism (except for the Primitive Baptists who retain their original Calvinism). And the liberal Unitarianism of New England was a rebellion against the Calvinism of their ancestors. There may be some continuity (just as there may be some continuity between religious and Marxist eschatology) but the Puritans who became unitarians did so because they rejected the orthodoxy of their ancestors.
You are also forgetting something else. The South is the home of a unitarianism of its own, the so-called "oneness Pentecostals" who reject the "tr*inity" and insist that Heaven was vacant for 33 years. These people are the "holy rollers" and "snake handlers" of the Appalachian highlands, which, need I remind you, adhered to the Union during the Civil War. Kentucky never seceded, West Virginia seceded from Confederate Virginia and rejoined the Union, East Tennessee might have done the same had it not been for the presence of a Confederate army, and western North Carolina and northern Georgia were also home to Union sentiment. What do you have to say to this?
As a Noachide, btw, I do not believe in the "tr*nity."
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.
There is nothing conservative about populism. It is identical to democracy in that it assumes a too optimistic view of human nature and that the majority will always choose the correct course. How any conservative could call himself a "populist" or a "libertarian" is absolutely beyond me. The fact that a libertine central government injects itself into local situations and nullifies local laws does not imply either populism or libertarianism (much less the abolition of the state).
As for agrarianism, for most of its history the entire United States was an agrarian society. The Midwest, though in lifestyle closer to the South, certainly joined New England in the War. And the Pilgrims did not start "grubbing money" the moment they got off the Mayflower. Until relatively recently, New England always had its share of yeoman farmers. Have you ever read the poetry of Robert Frost?
And as for conservatism, I suppose it depends on how you define the term. A "conservatism" whose only job is to conserve whatever institutions exist is just another humanistic ideology. It is the conservation of G-d's sovereignty that matters. And for most of the "19th" and "20"th Centuries New England was very conservative. Do you not remember that in 1936 it was only Maine and Vermont, not the South, that voted against FDR? Huh? Do yuh? Or perhaps you think Calvin Coolidge was some sort of red radical. And of course the income tax (now the bane of "populists") began as a populist measure aimed against "money grubbing yankees" and was supported by the South and opposed by the Northeast. Any comments?
And of course there is the uncomfortable fact that "radical" New England and its "unitarian" clergymen were the ones who opposed revolutionary France and saw Jacobins behind every bush in the "1790's" while the "conservative" South and its aristocrats (such as Thomas Jefferson) supported the Jacobins. Isn't this an embarrassment? The South seems to have come by its "anti-Jacobinism" rather late. Even William Lloyd Garrison and William Cullen Bryant were opponents of the French Revolution and Jefferson's support of it.
Finally, whatever links may exist between John Brown and the contemporary Left (and remember, Brown allowed his children to whip him when they had misbehaved in order to teach them the doctrine of the "atonement" and later expressed horror at the liberal tendency of his sons), the worship of Thomas Jefferson and H. L. Mencken (may his bones rot!) by "conservative Southerners" is absolutely infuriating to me. Just which side would these "conservative Southerners" have been on in Dayton, TN in 1925, GOPCapitalist? I know which side Mencken was on and which side Jefferson would have been on.