We are a Puritanical People - Whether We Like it or Not | Locke didn’t invent the American tradition—he codified it. The system he described was already being lived in New England towns and covenant churches. Catholic integralists like Vermeule and postliberal critics like Deneen have misunderstood what they seek to replace. The American republic was never morally neutral. It was morally dependent—on religious dissent, civic responsibility, and moral formation from below.
I commend your reasoning and careful explanation. Needless to say you will have detractors~as I see right away. I agree with your implication ~that our government cannot simply impose and mandate morality. “It all starts in the home,” isn’t that the old saying?
This is ahistorical nonsense. Propaganda from the theocratic/theonomic right wing rad trads, of both the Protestant and Catholic variety.
The USA was populated in a highly regional way. The Puritans only dominated New England, and their thought had begun to fade by the 1780s. Virginia was the most populous and most important state, dominated by Anglican traditions and the thinking that grew out of the English revolutions of the 1600s.
New York was mostly about commerce. Pennsylvania was Quaker and pluralistic. There were pockets of other traditions like Catholicism in Maryland.
By the time 1776 rolled around, the thinking of the Founders was Enlightenment centric. Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Blackstone, Rousseau, Voltaire … and through them reaching back to Greco-Roman influences like Cicero, Livy, Plutarch, Aristotle.
Not a theologian in the bunch. Mayhew, at a stretch, though he was influenced by Locke.
Of the Big Seven Founders, the two born Puritan were Franklin who fled it, and Adams who evolved out of it to Unitarianism. Jefferson, Washington and Madison were Virginians, more Deist than Trinitarian. Hamilton was a lapsed Presbyterian and mostly focused on the power and prosperity aspects of the architecture of the new state. Jay was the most traditionally religious, but a Huguenot, not a Puritan … and virulently anti-Catholic, to the point of trying to exclude Papists from the religions tolerated in the New York Constitution.
You can argue that the USA, in our time, should not harden the wall of separation between church and state and clarify it along the French lines of laïcité, which many of us favor. What you can’t do is argue the Founders were anything other than men of the Enlightenment.
I don't recall asserting the Founders weren't men of the Enlightenment. That is obviously true. But America was not born of the Enlightenment. 40% of the full sweep of American history happened prior to the Founding period. I am also not suggesting that America was a Puritan nation in the sense of denominational orthodoxy. My point (which I thought was rather clear) is that one of legacies of the Puritans is the American tradition of religious pluralism. I'm fully aware, rest assured, of the religious diversity of our Founding Fathers (in fact, thats my main point). The Great Awakening emerged as much from Samuel Davies (from Virginia) as from Jonathan Edwards. The main point, around which I am curious if we are aligned, is that we are absolutely a liberal nation, but not a facsimile of European liberalism. European liberalism had to break off the chains of both throne and altar (think of expanding Hartz's thesis from no history of feudalism, to no history of state religion), while America proved to be the ideal setting for Locke's vision. There are many historical and empirical distinctions between teh American liberal tradition and the European liberal tradition. Many of these differences have their roots in the nearly 200 years of history prior to the Founding and Puritanism along with the religious AND civic traditions it created - help explain these differences. I would value your input on my broader thesis: https://americanideologue.substack.com/p/a-framework-for-the-american-ideology and here: https://americanideologue.substack.com/p/the-five-habits-of-american-liberty
Even allowing for your title and subtitle to be somewhat to the clickbaity side, the simple "we are a Puritanical people, not Lockean" is a massive distortion. Locke was the most quoted thinker by the Founders. His own life arc ... beginning in a Puritan household and then moving away from those doctrines through his years as his wisdom grew ... was later mirrored by the nation itself.
If you're trying to argue that the first of our four centuries of existence was dominated by Puritan thought, I'll give you New England. But even there, by the time we get to the Revolution, its signature features of intolerance and theonomy had been mostly blanched away. "Puritan New England" had largely died out by 1720-1730.
As I said in my previous comment, the colonies were not New England centric at that point.
"Puritanical" connotes Salem Witch Trials and hangings, established churches, opposition to toleration and medical science ... some of the most un-American and anti-Enlightenment acts and beliefs there are. Salem in particular is taught as one of the young nation's greatest shames.
If you're trying to hang your argument on, say, Cromwellian Puritanism and how those revolutionary ideas from a century earlier contained some of the seeds of later American revolution against tyrannical monarchs invoking the Divine Right of Kings, okay. I'll give you that one.
That's not the sense I took away from your piece, though. You seem mostly to want to contrast our Founders' concepts of Liberty/liberality (to use Washington's term ... 'liberalism' did not enter the vernacular until the 1800s), which relied on a strong tie to morality, if not outright religiosity, to the Continental/French more strongly secular version. "To overthrow both the throne and the altar" to quote your formulation.
This attempt to Christianize the USA's origins is standard fare from the rad trad right. I know you object to Deneen and Vermeule, but you come across as "in the neighborhood".
What our Deists and Freemason Founders meant by 'religion' was much closer to what the Romans (Cicero, Tacitus, Celsus ...) meant by the word than what Cotton Mather did. As for their idea of Colonial morality, it's probably best summed up by Ben Franklin's 13 virtues/'moral perfections", which do not have a narrow sectarian/scriptural origin and owe as much to Socrates and the Stoics as to Jesus and the Puritans. Yes, Old Ben did retain some of those last two influences, but his basis for his virtues was his reason. Religion isn't always absurd. Usually when it's not original.
To a man, though, with only maybe John Jay excepted, their concept of the supreme entity ... Providence ... was pretty close to Spinoza's, and very very far away from jealous, impish, blood-thirsty tribal Yahweh who orders genocides, wrestles with his creation after mostly drowning version 1.0, like a sack of unwanted barnyard kittens, and then rewards multiple generations of cheaters with his key land grants.
I will concede the title of the post exaggerated the actual thesis. You are correct that saying “we were never Lockeans,” overstates what I meant to convey, which is more accurately, ‘we are not a nation whose ideology is derived solely from Locke.’ I’m grateful for the push back. I suspect we agree more than disagree on the big stuff. Locke matters - a lot. The title’s provocation was intended for the post liberals who like to invoke America as an abstraction that emerges from the second treatise. That’s what I am objecting to. Not that we are a liberal nation; one that was perhaps the most fertile ground for Locke’s ideas to grow.
If you're for more separation of church and state rather than less, more reason and less supernaturalism and faith in the political commons, yes, we probably agree on quite a lot.
I give you points for putting out a serious argument and engaging in debate.
Very good article.
The Left has been ignoring God while the Right has been perverting Him for at least a generation.
Great piece. And great last name! :-)
This is the kind of piece that makes me wish I were back in grad school so I could unpack it with students and a professor.
I commend your reasoning and careful explanation. Needless to say you will have detractors~as I see right away. I agree with your implication ~that our government cannot simply impose and mandate morality. “It all starts in the home,” isn’t that the old saying?
This is ahistorical nonsense. Propaganda from the theocratic/theonomic right wing rad trads, of both the Protestant and Catholic variety.
The USA was populated in a highly regional way. The Puritans only dominated New England, and their thought had begun to fade by the 1780s. Virginia was the most populous and most important state, dominated by Anglican traditions and the thinking that grew out of the English revolutions of the 1600s.
New York was mostly about commerce. Pennsylvania was Quaker and pluralistic. There were pockets of other traditions like Catholicism in Maryland.
By the time 1776 rolled around, the thinking of the Founders was Enlightenment centric. Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, Blackstone, Rousseau, Voltaire … and through them reaching back to Greco-Roman influences like Cicero, Livy, Plutarch, Aristotle.
Not a theologian in the bunch. Mayhew, at a stretch, though he was influenced by Locke.
Of the Big Seven Founders, the two born Puritan were Franklin who fled it, and Adams who evolved out of it to Unitarianism. Jefferson, Washington and Madison were Virginians, more Deist than Trinitarian. Hamilton was a lapsed Presbyterian and mostly focused on the power and prosperity aspects of the architecture of the new state. Jay was the most traditionally religious, but a Huguenot, not a Puritan … and virulently anti-Catholic, to the point of trying to exclude Papists from the religions tolerated in the New York Constitution.
You can argue that the USA, in our time, should not harden the wall of separation between church and state and clarify it along the French lines of laïcité, which many of us favor. What you can’t do is argue the Founders were anything other than men of the Enlightenment.
I don't recall asserting the Founders weren't men of the Enlightenment. That is obviously true. But America was not born of the Enlightenment. 40% of the full sweep of American history happened prior to the Founding period. I am also not suggesting that America was a Puritan nation in the sense of denominational orthodoxy. My point (which I thought was rather clear) is that one of legacies of the Puritans is the American tradition of religious pluralism. I'm fully aware, rest assured, of the religious diversity of our Founding Fathers (in fact, thats my main point). The Great Awakening emerged as much from Samuel Davies (from Virginia) as from Jonathan Edwards. The main point, around which I am curious if we are aligned, is that we are absolutely a liberal nation, but not a facsimile of European liberalism. European liberalism had to break off the chains of both throne and altar (think of expanding Hartz's thesis from no history of feudalism, to no history of state religion), while America proved to be the ideal setting for Locke's vision. There are many historical and empirical distinctions between teh American liberal tradition and the European liberal tradition. Many of these differences have their roots in the nearly 200 years of history prior to the Founding and Puritanism along with the religious AND civic traditions it created - help explain these differences. I would value your input on my broader thesis: https://americanideologue.substack.com/p/a-framework-for-the-american-ideology and here: https://americanideologue.substack.com/p/the-five-habits-of-american-liberty
Even allowing for your title and subtitle to be somewhat to the clickbaity side, the simple "we are a Puritanical people, not Lockean" is a massive distortion. Locke was the most quoted thinker by the Founders. His own life arc ... beginning in a Puritan household and then moving away from those doctrines through his years as his wisdom grew ... was later mirrored by the nation itself.
If you're trying to argue that the first of our four centuries of existence was dominated by Puritan thought, I'll give you New England. But even there, by the time we get to the Revolution, its signature features of intolerance and theonomy had been mostly blanched away. "Puritan New England" had largely died out by 1720-1730.
As I said in my previous comment, the colonies were not New England centric at that point.
"Puritanical" connotes Salem Witch Trials and hangings, established churches, opposition to toleration and medical science ... some of the most un-American and anti-Enlightenment acts and beliefs there are. Salem in particular is taught as one of the young nation's greatest shames.
If you're trying to hang your argument on, say, Cromwellian Puritanism and how those revolutionary ideas from a century earlier contained some of the seeds of later American revolution against tyrannical monarchs invoking the Divine Right of Kings, okay. I'll give you that one.
That's not the sense I took away from your piece, though. You seem mostly to want to contrast our Founders' concepts of Liberty/liberality (to use Washington's term ... 'liberalism' did not enter the vernacular until the 1800s), which relied on a strong tie to morality, if not outright religiosity, to the Continental/French more strongly secular version. "To overthrow both the throne and the altar" to quote your formulation.
This attempt to Christianize the USA's origins is standard fare from the rad trad right. I know you object to Deneen and Vermeule, but you come across as "in the neighborhood".
What our Deists and Freemason Founders meant by 'religion' was much closer to what the Romans (Cicero, Tacitus, Celsus ...) meant by the word than what Cotton Mather did. As for their idea of Colonial morality, it's probably best summed up by Ben Franklin's 13 virtues/'moral perfections", which do not have a narrow sectarian/scriptural origin and owe as much to Socrates and the Stoics as to Jesus and the Puritans. Yes, Old Ben did retain some of those last two influences, but his basis for his virtues was his reason. Religion isn't always absurd. Usually when it's not original.
To a man, though, with only maybe John Jay excepted, their concept of the supreme entity ... Providence ... was pretty close to Spinoza's, and very very far away from jealous, impish, blood-thirsty tribal Yahweh who orders genocides, wrestles with his creation after mostly drowning version 1.0, like a sack of unwanted barnyard kittens, and then rewards multiple generations of cheaters with his key land grants.
Men of the Enlightenment. Lockeans, not Puritans.
When I get the time, I'll read your longer piece.
I will concede the title of the post exaggerated the actual thesis. You are correct that saying “we were never Lockeans,” overstates what I meant to convey, which is more accurately, ‘we are not a nation whose ideology is derived solely from Locke.’ I’m grateful for the push back. I suspect we agree more than disagree on the big stuff. Locke matters - a lot. The title’s provocation was intended for the post liberals who like to invoke America as an abstraction that emerges from the second treatise. That’s what I am objecting to. Not that we are a liberal nation; one that was perhaps the most fertile ground for Locke’s ideas to grow.
Clickbait’s fair game.
If you're for more separation of church and state rather than less, more reason and less supernaturalism and faith in the political commons, yes, we probably agree on quite a lot.
I give you points for putting out a serious argument and engaging in debate.
KUTGW
I look forward to following you. Not subscribing as my emails are already overflowing and I need to do some parsing.