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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (72521)	3/30/2011 12:53:06 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Respond to of 218430

Puritanical? It depends on what you mean by that. VVV? I'm reading some Wikipedia. In general, we could do with increased Puritanical thinking: <Peter Gay writes of the Puritans' standard reputation for "dour prudery" as a "misreading that went unquestioned in the nineteenth century", commenting how unpuritanical they were in favour of married sexuality, and in opposition to the Catholic view of virginity, citing Edward Taylor and John Cotton.[14] Much of the religious history of the Puritans is written with a degree of anachronism or denominational bias, also. The analysis of "mainstream Puritanism" in terms of the evolution from it of separatist and antinomian groups that did not flourish, and others that continue to this day such as Baptists and Quakers, can suffer in this way, as well as risking an incoherent view of where the burden of belief lay for the "godly". The national context (England and Wales, plus the kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland) frames the definition of Puritans, but was not a self-identification for those Protestants who saw the progress of the Thirty Years War from 1620 as directly bearing on their denomination, and as a continuation of the religious wars of the previous century, carried on by the English Civil Wars. Christopher Hill, who has contributed Marxist analyses of Puritan concerns that are more respected than accepted, writes of the 1630s, old church lands, and the accusations that Laud was a crypto-Catholic: “ To the heightened Puritan imagination it seemed that, all over Europe, the lamps were going out: the Counter-Reformation was winning back property for the church as well as souls: and Charles I and his government, if not allied to the forces of the Counter-Reformation, at least appeared to have set themselves identical economic and political objectives.[15] ” Puritans were politically important in England, but it is debated whether the movement was in any way a party with policies and leaders before the early 1640s; and Puritanism in New England was important culturally for a group of colonial pioneers in America, but there have been many studies trying to pin down exactly what the identifiable cultural component was. Fundamentally, historians remain dissatisfied with the grouping as "Puritan" as a working concept for historical explanation. The conception of a Protestant work ethic, identified more closely with Calvinist or Puritan principles, has been criticised at its root, mainly as a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy aligning economic success with a narrow religious scheme. There were substantial works of theology written by Puritans, such as the Medulla Theologiae of William Ames, but there is no theology that is distinctive of Puritans. "Puritan theology" makes sense only as certain parts of Reformed theology, i.e. the legacy in theological terms of Calvinism, as it was expounded by Puritan preachers (often known as lecturers), and applied in the lives of Puritans. In the relation of churches to civil power, Puritans believed that secular governors are accountable to God to protect and reward virtue, including "true religion", and to punish wrongdoers. They opposed the supremacy of the monarch in the church (Erastianism), and argued that the only head of the Church in heaven or earth is Christ. The idea of personal Biblical interpretation, while central to Puritan beliefs, was shared with Protestants in general. Puritans sought both individual and corporate conformity to the teaching of the Bible, with moral purity pursued both down to the smallest detail as well as ecclesiastical purity to the highest level. They believed that man existed for the glory of God; that his first concern in life was to do God's will and so to receive future happiness.[16] Like some of Reformed churches on the European continent, Puritan reforms were typified by a minimum of ritual and decoration and by an unambiguous emphasis on preaching. Calvinists generally believed that the worship in the church ought to be strictly regulated by what is commanded in the Bible (the regulative principle of worship), and condemned as idolatry many current practices, regardless of antiquity or widespread adoption among Christians, against opponents who defended tradition. Simplicity in worship led to the exclusion of vestments, images, candles, etc. They did not celebrate traditional holidays which they believed to be in violation of the regulative principle. ... continued...> Mqurice