bramblewild
Member
- Dec 13, 2024
- 31
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Review: Hot Protestants
I recently finished listening to an audio version of this book.I’ve also gotten an ebook version of it.
This book is about the rise and fall of Puritanism, from the mid 1500s to near 1700, in England and in New England.
One of the strongest impressions I got from listening to this book is that of conflict. It seemed like everyone was bickering and fighting with everyone else. And it wasn’t just with words. People lost their lives or were physically mutilated or were persecuted in other ways for differing beliefs. Nor was it all one-sided. The book recounts how the New England Puritans were displeased when the King of England ordered them to stop whipping and hanging Quakers:
Massachusetts also started to dial down the harshness of its punishment of Quakers in early 1661. But the General Court did not pull its head entirely out of the sand about the new Atlantic political order until November, when a banished Salem Quaker disembarked in Boston harbor brandishing a letter from Charles ordering that the whipping and killing of Quakers end. The horrified General Court complied, but only as a gesture of respect to Charles, it insisted, not because it had to obey his orders. The shock of Quakers being untouchable by whips or nooses finally gave political traction to the idea of sending agents to Charles… (p. 190).
The reaction to Norton’s return was quite different than what he might have expected. The dominant response was that Norton had failed badly in his mission to England. He had wantonly allowed Charles to believe, mistakenly, that he could make demands on Massachusetts outside the terms of its charter. Beyond a few token gestures, the unmoved General Court chose to stonewall the royal letter, although it gladly resumed the whipping of Quakers… (p. 191).
Another thing that struck me was their relationships with the Indians, especially when it came to religion.
The English had always made pious, empty noises about the missionizing goals of their colonies. “Come over and help us,” says the Native American on the 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Yet for already overworked New England ministers faced with what one called the “veriest ruins of mankind,” it was easier to agree with the illustrious John Cotton about the Native Americans’ place in God’s plan for humanity. The Native Americans’ mass conversion was to take place only after the mass conversion of the Jews. Since the Jews remained stubbornly Jewish, the Native Americans must remain, for the time being, Native American, and there was no point in putting energy into trying to convert them.
But in March 1644 a number of sachems placed themselves and their followers under Massachusetts sovereignty. They agreed that the General Court’s requirement that they learn about the English God made sense: “We do see he doth better to the English,” they explained, “than other gods do to others.” In November 1644, the General Court ordered the county courts to “civilize” the now-subordinate Native Americans and teach them about God. The order seems to have drawn a mostly listless response from the colonists. The same order given to the colony’s ministers a year later might have been the spur that goaded Roxbury’s minister John Eliot to study the local Native American language, Massachusett, a necessary tool for any serious effort to convert the Native Americans. (p. 195).
These newest of Native American stories, about how their God used the English to complete his bringing of his truth to them, meant nothing to most of the colonists. To the dismay of Eliot and the Praying Indians the other churches did not extend to the Natick church the standard Congregationalist courtesy of allowing its members to take the sacraments with them. As would soon be violently re-emphasized to the Native Americans, the very best Waban and the other new Christians could hope for was second-class citizenship of the puritan city on a hill that they had climbed so hard and from so far away to enter. (p. 200).
Questions could be asked about this book. Is it being too negative, for example? But such questions could also be asked about the more positive, even hagiographic, versions of the Puritans found in other works.
Perhaps it’s not so bad for those some people want us to think so highly of to be brought down a peg, so that they are seen as men and not as angels or as spiritual supermen. It is not a bad thing when our idols are pulled down.
I recently finished listening to an audio version of this book.I’ve also gotten an ebook version of it.
This book is about the rise and fall of Puritanism, from the mid 1500s to near 1700, in England and in New England.
One of the strongest impressions I got from listening to this book is that of conflict. It seemed like everyone was bickering and fighting with everyone else. And it wasn’t just with words. People lost their lives or were physically mutilated or were persecuted in other ways for differing beliefs. Nor was it all one-sided. The book recounts how the New England Puritans were displeased when the King of England ordered them to stop whipping and hanging Quakers:
Massachusetts also started to dial down the harshness of its punishment of Quakers in early 1661. But the General Court did not pull its head entirely out of the sand about the new Atlantic political order until November, when a banished Salem Quaker disembarked in Boston harbor brandishing a letter from Charles ordering that the whipping and killing of Quakers end. The horrified General Court complied, but only as a gesture of respect to Charles, it insisted, not because it had to obey his orders. The shock of Quakers being untouchable by whips or nooses finally gave political traction to the idea of sending agents to Charles… (p. 190).
The reaction to Norton’s return was quite different than what he might have expected. The dominant response was that Norton had failed badly in his mission to England. He had wantonly allowed Charles to believe, mistakenly, that he could make demands on Massachusetts outside the terms of its charter. Beyond a few token gestures, the unmoved General Court chose to stonewall the royal letter, although it gladly resumed the whipping of Quakers… (p. 191).
Another thing that struck me was their relationships with the Indians, especially when it came to religion.
The English had always made pious, empty noises about the missionizing goals of their colonies. “Come over and help us,” says the Native American on the 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Yet for already overworked New England ministers faced with what one called the “veriest ruins of mankind,” it was easier to agree with the illustrious John Cotton about the Native Americans’ place in God’s plan for humanity. The Native Americans’ mass conversion was to take place only after the mass conversion of the Jews. Since the Jews remained stubbornly Jewish, the Native Americans must remain, for the time being, Native American, and there was no point in putting energy into trying to convert them.
But in March 1644 a number of sachems placed themselves and their followers under Massachusetts sovereignty. They agreed that the General Court’s requirement that they learn about the English God made sense: “We do see he doth better to the English,” they explained, “than other gods do to others.” In November 1644, the General Court ordered the county courts to “civilize” the now-subordinate Native Americans and teach them about God. The order seems to have drawn a mostly listless response from the colonists. The same order given to the colony’s ministers a year later might have been the spur that goaded Roxbury’s minister John Eliot to study the local Native American language, Massachusett, a necessary tool for any serious effort to convert the Native Americans. (p. 195).
These newest of Native American stories, about how their God used the English to complete his bringing of his truth to them, meant nothing to most of the colonists. To the dismay of Eliot and the Praying Indians the other churches did not extend to the Natick church the standard Congregationalist courtesy of allowing its members to take the sacraments with them. As would soon be violently re-emphasized to the Native Americans, the very best Waban and the other new Christians could hope for was second-class citizenship of the puritan city on a hill that they had climbed so hard and from so far away to enter. (p. 200).
Questions could be asked about this book. Is it being too negative, for example? But such questions could also be asked about the more positive, even hagiographic, versions of the Puritans found in other works.
Perhaps it’s not so bad for those some people want us to think so highly of to be brought down a peg, so that they are seen as men and not as angels or as spiritual supermen. It is not a bad thing when our idols are pulled down.