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To: Arkinsaw
Puritanism was a regional influence.

Right you are my Southern friend! It was the religion of the first settlers of Jamestown that was truly the faith of America, with the exception of puritanical New England.

An excerpt from the best book ever written on the South, Richard Weaver's Southern Tradition at Bay says this on the subject -

"For while the south was heavily Protestant, its attitude toward religion was essentially the attitude of orthodoxy: it was a simple acceptance of a body of belief, an innocence of protest and heresy which left religion one of the unquestioned and unquestionable supports of the general settlement under which men live."

and while -

"New Englanders cultivated metaphisics and sharp speculation; Southerners generally, having saved their faith, as they thought, from the whole group of pryers, reformers, and troublesome messiahs, settled back and regarded it as a part of their inheritance which they did not propose to have disturbed."

It wasn't the Cotton Mathers of New England, but the Robert Dabneys and earlier men of Faith in the South that appealed to the live and let live attitude of the Celtic South.

13 posted on 10/29/2001 6:43:00 PM PST by Mahone
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To: Mahone; Arkinsaw
Why thank you for helping me prove my point! If they had represented the American way, we'd all be God-fearing Puritans nowadays. Thankfully, we got our freedom of religion.
16 posted on 10/29/2001 6:45:29 PM PST by futurepotus
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To: Mahone
You are sooooo very correct my Southern brother. Some of the most vile PCers of today are decendants of the vermin Puritans, who were decendants of the rank Roundheads in England. Some of the most totalitarian people who ever lived. Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Wendel Phillips were all decendants of Puritans and it showed.
27 posted on 10/29/2001 6:58:36 PM PST by GaConfed
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