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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Um... it was also a big part of the Presbyterian mind-set, as well. <shrugs> Are you going to tell me they weren't a big influence?
Whether Calvinism is explicitly part of the doctrine of the majority of American Christianity or not doesn't mitigate the fact that it aligns very closely with the politics of the Republican Party.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Braeburn: The Puritans (who founded most of the New England colonies, directly or indirectly) were English Calvinists; I'm sure you've heard of the "Puritan work ethic."
So yes, Calvinism was very big in America.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Rand Paul is not the man his father is.
That's the difference between Ron and Rand, though. Ron Paul never had much patience for stunt acting even when his actual beliefs sounded cartoonishly insane. Rand Paul has bought into Tea Party smoke-and-thunder tactics.
edited 13th May '13 2:06:12 PM by Ramidel
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I was going to mention the Puritan influence. It pervades us to this day, infecting American attitudes about sexuality and poverty, among other things.
edited 13th May '13 2:04:47 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Puritans also valued hard work and modesty so..... I'm not really sure that that's as true as people think it is. Particularly since it wasn't just Puritans coming in around that time; the more mercantile sorts went south and set up plantations for tobacco and the like.
Yeah, I think the whole "Puritans influence us to this day" is waaaaay overestimated.
No, it really isn't. It's why swearing and sex get you "M" or "R" ratings while killing hundreds of people only gets you "T" or "PG-13"; it's also why nudity taboos are such a big deal here compared to Europe.
edited 13th May '13 2:11:25 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Puritans were also one of the most influential movements to have a concept of romantic compatibility (as opposed to marriage-as-baby-contract), which is today the main focus of a healthy relationship of any stripe. So yeah, their influences were more of a mixed bag than people give them credit for.
But yes, most of the special brand of crazy we see today is a relatively recent revival circa the last few decades.
edited 13th May '13 2:34:31 PM by Pykrete
Oh dear lord. "Romantic compatibility" — i.e., the "soul mate theory" has damaged so many relationships... that's from the Puritans? Damn them!
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Pykrete said romantic compatibility, not soul mate theory. How did you even get the second from the first? And yeah, that was progress away from the whole marrying for alliances/business contract sort of thing, since they valued fidelity in a marriage.
Romantic compatibility is "hey, I love this person and I want to spend the rest of my life with them" at its most reasonable. Not "there is this one person and one person only for me."
edited 13th May '13 2:58:04 PM by AceofSpades
Yeah, woops.
I suppose that the idea of marrying for love as opposed for economic reasons is a good thing, overall.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The Puritans have gotten a bit of a bad rap...I wouldn't want to live with them, but there's a bit of a tendency to blame them for everything that's wrong with American Christianity, when really the Puritans mostly died out (requiring convincing proof of a religious conversion experience to join the group, even for the children of Puritans, didn't exactly boost membership) before the American Revolution.
Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.Aren't the Pennsylvania Dutch (i.e., Amish) descendants of the Puritans in spirit at least?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Do the concepts of a "cultural template" or "cultural foundation" mean anything to you?
In short, a culture can change over time to not resemble what it started out as closely as you might think on the surface, but artefacts of what it was can still be found if you dig a bit, as they were built from what was there to start with.
Not to mention the constant resurfacing of memes and ideas based on old, seemingly abandoned chestnuts. <shrugs>
edited 13th May '13 4:03:27 PM by Euodiachloris
Does the fact that Puritans weren't the only ones immigrating at the time mean anything to you? The people who were starting plantation farming and creating the slave labor existed at the same time. Aside of the religious influences, where I consider more recent movements to be more relevant, I also consider the stuff going on in the southern colonies a bit more relevant to today than the Puritans, of all things. I think people just like making stale, trite jokes about Puritans and prisoners.
Yup. Grew up in South Africa, remember: we got a whole load of weirdos, too. Funny how the nuttiest of all stripes seem to have left an impact, there, too.
And, a larger proportion of the indigenous population even managed to survive: hasn't stopped the weirdness that a selected colonising population of extremists of all kinds brought. <shrugs> Your point?
edited 13th May '13 4:17:05 PM by Euodiachloris
Great: did I focus on "puritan"? And, if you take that word to mean "protestant reactionaries" in general... it is very, very apt.
And, that's what I was focussing on, thank you very much. <_< Puritans, Calvinist, Presbyterians, Quakers, Dutch Reformed, Huguenots... you name them, they all had some things in common. And, then you get the other types of reactionaries: the criminals. Woot. They also happened to have a few things in common, too. Like, being brought up protestant of one kind or another... if they got much of a bringing up. Company employees were, in fact, the minority for a large part of the early histories of any Colony, as they mostly were contracted for 5-year stints at a time with family elsewhere... and bits on the side where they were working.
edited 13th May '13 4:28:57 PM by Euodiachloris
I forget the title but there was a book a couple of years back that identified four major cultural strains from which what we think of as american culture developed: The Puritans, the younger sons of English nobility who attempted to create their own de facto nobility via the plantation system, the Quakers and the Scots-Irish. If anyone can Id the book would be most grateful.
Trump delenda est
