Puritan Advice

[roo_ster]

"Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness."
----Increase Mather

That is all.

Oh, one more quote by Increase Mather:
"It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned."

[LadySmith]

So the Puritans really weren't uptight, tee-totaling, "hang 'em all" types after all?
Whoa.

[Jocassee]

The term "puritan" has been appropriated in the last 100 years ago to indicate H. L. Mencken's vision of those people, "afraid that someone somewhere is having fun." Hawthorne got a few things right but he was separated by some years as well, and is not very historical.

[Gowen]

So the Puritans really weren't uptight, tee-totaling, "hang 'em all" types after all?
Whoa.

No, read The Light and the Glory by Peter Marshall & David Manuel.  He tells a story of a Quaker girl going into a Puritan Church service stark naked.  She walked up to the alter turned around and walked out, without a word.  Times was interesting.

[Waitone]

The early days saw Puritans go to Sunday meeting fully armed.  The preacher was armed as well.  Now here is the good part.  Quite often the preacher was paid for his service with whiskey.  Puritans were not what early American literature made them out to be.

[Perd Hapley]

You mean the Puritans were Puritans, and not Fundamentalist Baptists?   

[LadySmith]

I'm not seeing any downsides to being a Puritan so far. Where'd the slander come from?

[Perd Hapley]

Well, it's not like they didn't prosecute "witches," or forbid various activities on Sundays, or conjoin church and state.

Free-love, Libertarian, ACLU members, they were not.

[roo_ster]

Increase Mather worked hard to ameliorate the witch hunt courts and sought to exclude pretty much the only testimony that could convict the girls.  But, he also refused to condemn the trials.

Then, there was the mooshing of the church & state, at the local level.

My post was not an attempt to white-wash them, but to show that they were quite a bit more complex and three-dimensional than some propagandists would have you believe.

[RevDisk]

I'm not seeing any downsides to being a Puritan so far. Where'd the slander come from?

No downside.  Unless you're a witch or another unacceptable religion like a Quaker or Amish, then you might not be fond of Puritans.

[roo_ster]

No downside.  Unless you're a witch or another unacceptable religion like a Quaker or Amish, then you might not be fond of Puritans.

Yup.  A lot of the early colonies were segregated by religion.  Puritans up in Mass, Baptists in RI, Anglicans south in Virginia...

As for the Puritan intolerance of other religions, they were trying to build a City on a Hill.  And it damn near killed them all off in its purest form, when it was small & communal.  See, even folks with the vaunted Puritan Work Ethic^TM don't perform well in a communal/communist setting.

[MicroBalrog]

The Puritans were not nice people in the modern sense. However we owe them credit for creating the social mechanisms that help hold up America, and by extension, most of modern civilization.

[lee n. field]

So the Puritans really weren't uptight, tee-totaling, "hang 'em all" types after all?
Whoa.

Nope.

another unacceptable religion like a Quaker or Amish

The Puritans were not nice people in the modern sense.

Nobody was.

Times was different then.   Read up on the Muenster Rebellion .

[Mabs2]

No downside.  Unless you're a witch or another unacceptable religion like a Quaker or Amish, then you might not be fond of Puritans.

Careful guy, some of the members of this forum are Quaker and Amish.

[RevDisk]

Careful guy, some of the members of this forum are Quaker and Amish.

I was refering to being unacceptable to the Puritans, not to myself.   I'm very familiar with Quakers and Amish as they're everywhere around here.  Very decent folk.

I can assure you that when we pagans raise to power, we will not use our enormous political power to oppress the Quakers and Amish.  Just everyone else. 

[freedom lover]

I'm not seeing any downsides to being a Puritan so far.

They wouldn't let you masterbate or have sex with whoever you wanted. They wouldn't let you drink alchohol. They made you pay taxes if you did not go to their church. That basically means no one on this board would have the freedom they want.

I can assure you that when we pagans raise to power, we will not use our enormous political power to oppress the Quakers and Amish.  Just everyone else. 

What political power? You guys are a rare breed. Unless that was also part of your joke?

[Balog]

They wouldn't let you masterbate or have sex with whoever you wanted. They wouldn't let you drink alchohol. They made you pay taxes if you did not go to their church. That basically means no one on this board would have the freedom they want.

Ummm, did you read the OP? Or do you just enjoy showcasing your ignorance and prejudice?

[freedom lover]

Ummm, did you read the OP? Or do you just enjoy showcasing your ignorance and prejudice?

I am not ignorant, just a prejudiced, absent minded man.

[Jamisjockey]

Children, please.

[Balog]

I am not ignorant, just a prejudiced, absent minded man.

I just find it amusing to bash a group as teetotalers, when the OP was a quote praising alcohol.

[Matthew Carberry]

Also, they didn't "not let you masturbate", they said it was a sin and had moral consequences, which was a reasonable interpretation of Scripture in their understanding.

They didn't have "masturbation police" peering through windows and checking laundry hampers.

As for "not letting you have sex with whoever you like", all societies and cultures have some sort of regulation of sex through societal pressure or law as those societies and cultures all have to deal with issues involving the progeny that may result.  It is only recently that we've had reliable means to evade that consequence.

The Puritan solution wasn't any more strict than most and better than quite a few.

I can't defend religiously based taxes except to point out you didn't have to live in a Puritan-established town if you didn't want to pay the tax.  It's not like they forced you to live there against your will. (yes, I'm familiar with indentured servitude but there was an element of freedom within it by design if not always in practice)

I assume the people on this board would have been among the ones who left Puritan Massachusetts and founded Rhode Island (a more libertarian and gun-infested Rhode Island to be sure).

[MicroBalrog]

Here's a problem: Over 90% of human males masturbate. Absolutely, 100% of human males have a variety of sexual urges (some evil, most not). Arguing that acting out on those urges is a sin can be reasonable or unreasonable (depending on the nature of the demand). Arguing that HAVING these urges is a sin is going to cause giant, horrible problems.

If you try and teach male children that having any kind of sexual desires at age 14-18 is a sin (not actually acting on them, but HAVING them) and that masturbation is sinful, you're not going to end up with boys who don't masturbate, you're going to end up with boys who have guilt trips about it.

[Matthew Carberry]

Here's a problem: Over 90% of human males masturbate. Absolutely, 100% of human males have a variety of sexual urges (some evil, most not). Arguing that acting out on those urges is a sin can be reasonable or unreasonable (depending on the nature of the demand). Arguing that HAVING these urges is a sin is going to cause giant, horrible problems.

If you try and teach male children that having any kind of sexual desires at age 14-18 is a sin (not actually acting on them, but HAVING them) and that masturbation is sinful, you're not going to end up with boys who don't masturbate, you're going to end up with boys who have guilt trips about it.

Well done, you've successfully taken what I wrote, discarded it, created a new argument and then successfully argued against it.

[MicroBalrog]

Well done, you've successfully taken what I wrote, discarded it, created a new argument and then successfully argued against it.

My point is that nobody argues that there were supposed mystical 'masturbation police'. All Freedom Lover did was point out the sexual ethic of the Puritans was unhealthily restrictive.

[Antibubba]

I'm not seeing any downsides to being a Puritan so far. Where'd the slander come from?

They would have been very suspicious of a cat lady who refused to marry.