The Puritans in American History

Who Are the Puritans?

All right, we are live now on the conversations that matter podcast actually a little bit early for the podcast I set it for 1010. So People are gonna start streaming in here in a moment, but before everyone comes in I just want to say this the the two men that I'm having on the podcast today mean a great deal to me.

They are professors that I was privileged to sit under at Liberty University who are very knowledgeable about American history the founding era and today what we're gonna be talking about which is the Puritans and I'm very grateful for both of their Time.

We have dr. Sam Smith who is the I think you're still the chair of the history department. Is that correct? That's right. And then dr. Kerry Roberts who is a vice dean In the College of Arts and Sciences, is that still correct?

Right. All right. Well, thank you so much for giving some of your precious time to me and to the audience to talk about what I think is an important topic the Puritans and their legacy in American history.

I'm excited to get into it. So I appreciate it. Thank you.

What a good cop bad cop, right.

Is that the strategy here? Well, uh, we didn't really discuss a strategy other than. We're just gonna talk about the Puritans. I think I gave you some examples of. Oh, here we go. It's already happening.

It's already happening. Is this going to be a more anti Puritan slander John? Okay, so I think I gave you some examples of some of the Puritan enthusiasts. They're not happy with the 1607 project and I know both of you watch that.

I know dr. Smith you were in that and You said some things actually you said some positive things about the Puritans. You also said some negative things and so I want to parse that out a little bit today and maybe start out with just a Basic question for those who might not know who are the Puritans when we talk about Puritans?

What are we talking about?

We're talking about 16th and 17th century reformed Anglicans. There's a rich history of the development of Puritanism in England and then of course in Scotland. Of course Henry the eighth broke with the Roman Catholic Church and in the 1530s and then when.

Although it was that was a that was not a theological Reformation. So a lot of the Catholic doctrine remained in the Anglican Church. Some of that began to change after he died with Edward the sixth. Who had a very short reign and there was kind of a growth in these reformed Anglicans during the reign of Henry of Edward the sixth.

Then when Mary Edward's sister who was a Catholic became the Queen of England there was a massive persecution of these Nonconformists and so really during that Time period of the Marian persecutions Puritanism really began to grow.

But once Elizabeth becomes the Queen there's kind of a mediation. Let's try to maintain as much of the Catholic Doctrine and liturgy as we can and and have what they called a middle way and this was not good enough for Some of these Calvinist Anglicans who Had begun to see that there needed to be a different way than even a middle way.

And so these were dissenters from religious establishment. And they began to grow they were persecuted even more. They grew kind of there was a friendliness somewhat between the Puritans and James the first for a time but then under Charles the first there was a really a resurgence of Persecution of Puritans and that's when a lot of them began to come to America.

So you have English Puritanism Scottish Puritanism, which is more or less Presbyterian. And then you have American Puritanism which would become Congregationalism.

That's kind of a short Intro to the Puritans if you will. One of the things that I've Become familiar with I wasn't as familiar with before those that some people have some lines. They draw some will say that you know Puritans went who came over to the United States that original generation kept some of these ideas, but because they were Compromising in the generations after that that Puritanism ends with the theological Commitments.

When the commit commitments died you don't have Puritanism anymore. Do you see a cutoff anywhere as Jonathan Edwards of Puritan? How far does this era extend?

Once you get into the 18th century historians generally refer to people like Jonathan Edwards as sort of Transitional figures if you will from old Puritanism to something new. There's a lot of the old Puritanism still in Jonathan Edwards, though.

Especially theologically and so I think the transition begins to take place. In what sometimes is Perry Miller called a declension. Is that when their religious ideals and social ideals? Could not harmonize.

You know John Winthrop in his famous sermon a model of Christian charity. That he preached on the way over in 1630 1629 and 30 on the Arbella where he said we're going to be a city on a hill. He said We will maintain the status quo and then there's three words a lot of people miss in that sermon and more also.

So they started out with this really high elevated admirable perspective. But it was unrealistic. It was something that just simply could not be maintained. Why. It could not be maintained. That's a matter of debate, but it was not maintained there was at least and even in their minds a Massive declension by the 1660s.

You see the Jeremiah's sermons and so forth so You could say Maybe the halfway covenant of 1662 would be a marking point of this Declension. You know, I don't know that there's any one place but they began to be very distressed.

That they could not maintain the ideals or the ideology that they had really.

You know invested in. Well, I think it might be profitable to explore that a little bit. The difference between What did you just say their theology and then their social views or their expectations? What was that tension?

What what were they? Hoping for that was unrealized. That set them up for failure in your mind.

Um, I think there's a there's an early on a philosophical underpinning of the of the Puritan experiment. It's the the old Cambridge Platonists or the neo-platonism that really Had a lot to do with the way they thought about theology.

I think in some ways it hurt their own theological aspirations. Even all the way, you know from the mid 1600s even to Jonathan Edwards. There was a strong investment in Neoplatonism which you know is kind of a quasi Gnosticism.

Plotinus was a third century Greek philosopher who kind of resurrected Plato's ideal and ideals and The idea was this Union back to the origins back to the soul spirit over matter very Gnostic even though Plotinus strangely enough wrote against the Gnostics he had a lot of anti-gnostic views, but really Neoplatonism was a type in my opinion of Gnosticism Jonathan Edwards, if you read George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards, he talks about how that Edwards was deeply invested in Neoplatonism.

Perry Miller's article from Edwards to Emerson Explains how that the philosophical underpinnings of Puritanism, especially with Edwards Became a bridge even to things as radical as transcendentalism. So There's so much to appreciate in the Puritans so much good theology Etc.

But there were some real questionable things that they were very much invested in that I think threw a damper on what they're what they were trying to do.

Puritan Regions Today

Well, I think there's probably three major things to talk about and we've already started talking about two of them, but That would be the extent to which they were or were not influential because that is of course One of the big stories about America you'll hear even in the most right-wing Think-tanks and Christian conservative outlets.

It seems like the Puritans are they're almost founding father status when it comes to Evangelicalism in the minds of modern evangelicals in the United States. So So that emphasis is something I think we need to talk about and then obviously what we've already been talking about are the positive and perhaps negative Contributions that the Puritans have made and so we can go in many different directions here.

But for this is to satisfy my own curiosity, and it's also include you. Dr. Roberts. I know you spent some time in England teaching and I know there's certain regions of England I think you know in in the eastern part East Anglia if I'm not mistaken.

That's more. Is that more Cavalier and then In the or that's more Puritan rather I think and then the western parts are more Anglican but there's different. I don't know how the map exactly works out did you notice differences between these regions just like we in the United States see the Northeast as Different than the south, you know when it comes to Puritans nominating that area.

We're sure anyone who's ever traveled throughout the British Isles recognizes that there are still distinct Regional differences now those those regional differences are fluid. They evolve and change over time.

The Puritan migration comes primarily from from eastern England East Anglia. And as the name implies it was settled by Angles and so there there was a kind of ethnic composition to them. But it was not only from that part of England where New Englanders came from.

They also came from the far southwest of England south of Wales from Somerset and Dorset and those Areas were where the woolen industry was most prevalent at the end of the Middle Ages and There there are some important geopolitical circumstances that occur Where the the British are shut out of the European wool market and it causes that area to undergo a pretty extreme depression.

So you you've got a collection of people with very distinct theological perceptions of the world around them that are also financially in trouble and They they had a kind of middle-class life Before these economic problems occurred and they really are also trying to to preserve that Now.

So so to go into what Salm is talking about with their neo-platonic views what where you see this really show up is in their understanding of human society human organization the world around them they they have a view of human beings coming together to form an organic whole when they establish Their their communities and their societies.

There's there's no room for what we might call today parallel societies. Coexisting in the same place and time. Everything is treated as part of one unified Unified well city. I mean that I mean the city on the hill right there.

They're they're engaging in an errand into the wilderness to build a city that all are going to be a part of. Now there are a lot of good things that come out of this. John the English philosopher and historian David Hume was one of the very first to notice this now Hume had very missed views on the Puritans.

He called them gloomy enthusiasts. Enthusiasts. Enthusiasm being that the term used in his day for basically what we mean by evangelicalism today. But but Hume recognized that what the Puritans were introducing to English society was a kind of consecration of Common life and this is coming out of the Reformation.

It's an opposition of the medieval Catholic view of how we organize human society and that there's this kind of great chain of being. Those closer with God had a more privileged Occupation in the world, but but but what the Reformers and but through them the Puritans insisted upon is that any occupations capable of glorifying God and So the things that Hume liked most which was conserving common life.

He found the Puritans as instrumental in achieving that. So that common life is capable of pleasing God and glorifying God just as much as As as as as kind of a churchly life might might have been previously.

So that's a very powerful thing and it's from this that David Hume argued very early in the in the 18th century that the Puritans were one of the key driving forces to capitalism and the development of commercial habits commercial virtues and The kind of material wealth that capitalism is going to be bringing to the world.

So this is a part of Max Weber's thesis, right? But he is a century ahead of a right right. That's how. Yeah, I didn't realize you had written about this as well. So you have a more commercial interest than developing in New England and Just because I know you were in England teaching I mean do you see the cultural differences to when you were there were people from these regions that had been Puritan Different than regions where there was a more of a cavalier stronghold in the way that they interacted with you.

Or does that pretty much?

Necessarily, I mean I have taught things in in Britain, but I mainly went to school there. Oh, I Went to college in in South Wales. And that was illuminating to me. I came from Mississippi. I wasn't really a country boy.

I was more of a suburban boy, but But there was no suburban, Mississippi it was all kind of country and in the 1970s when I grew up, but I go to Britain and Go to South Wales for school, and I immediately saw those cultural differences immediately.

I couldn't figure out Why I was getting along with the Welsh Students and the Irish students and even there was a stray Scott here and there. I got along really well with this and I got along really well with other American students from other parts of the South notably, South Carolina.

But I didn't get along with people from from parts of London from the Midlands from from Eastern England Any more than I really got along with Americans from That strange place John called, New York. So it right right.

It struck me that those this is how I actually became interested in history because It raised a lot of questions in my mind. I thought we were all the same. We're all committed to liberty and individualism.

I I never really fully Understood cultural differences until I was put in a place where I had to understand and that raised questions that were historical.

I think I have a similar Experience not not being in England, obviously, but in the United States having so much of my family from Mississippi where you're from all around, you know Meridian Hattiesburg Jackson area and Going down there for the annual family reunions and Contrasting that with the life that I had in upstate New York and how different that the people were and I think most people in the United States if they've traveled if they've gone to school somewhere that they weren't that they didn't grow Up in they interact with other people and there's a reputation that we have in New York in New England For asking questions like, you know, what do you do for a living instead of where you from?

You know, it's different in different regions and valuing someone more based upon Commercial values. How much do you make? What's your socio-economic status the New York City's bustling, you know energy that people some people like some people don't but these are all just some of the things it's the tip of the iceberg of the things that Make I think more of a Puritan dominated area different than let's say a southern or Appalachian or even some of the western areas and And and that has I think intrigued a lot of people who have watched the 1607 project who have never heard Anything critical about Puritan New England before and they've heard a few things.

I thought it was fairly mild, but for some people if all they've ever heard are really positive things from the Christian industry or from you know, a conservative American history textbooks They start realizing their own experience doesn't quite match that they They want a story to explain.

Why are these regional differences there? And I think the 1607 project gives an explanation that has been there for a long time just maybe not maybe not focused on quite as much in recent years and I don't know what the alternative stories are.

You know, essentially what I'm saying is that the Puritan set up a society that was just different And those differences even manifest themselves today. Would you agree that those differences? That the The effects of them are still felt today Hundreds of years later, I mean, is that possible just as a historian that we're the products of our great-grandparents.

Remember we're playing good cop bad cop. So I'm gonna let we are. Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna let Sam.

Explain all the merits there. I didn't know. Wait. So who's the good cop and who's the bad cop? I'm unclear.

Oh down was the good guy. I'm just he's got a beard. You can't trust people with beards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Their influence is Felt today in in a judgment an assumption. I'm going to make I'm guessing I bet most of the folks that you're surrounded by who Love the Puritans, I'm just guessing John, but I bet they're reformed Baptist art.

Is that the case?

Yeah, there's some presby's in there too, but mostly.

Yeah, but mainly reformed back and from the South ironically. Yeah. So, I mean Baptist in the South came out of New England Puritans. I mean it was it was New England missionaries that went first to Charleston and then to other parts of The colonial satellite, Virginia that set up the first Baptist churches in That region and so there is a long-standing connection between Baptists in the South notably Southern Baptists and the Puritans that and that was that connection was kind of lost Around the turn of the 20th century, but it was really regained with Gusto starting in the 1980s.

Interesting, okay. Can I jump in here, please? Talking about the differences in the regions. I mean two books that Everybody should read and John, you know what? I'm about to say Albion seed by David Hackett Fisher.

He shows these differences in the different regions. He shows how Cavalier culture comes into Virginia after the 1640s. Not really in 1607 those early settlers in Jamestown were more from East Anglia than Southwest England but he shows the transition from Southwest England to the Chesapeake and he shows the North Midlands in England to the middle colonies like Pennsylvania.

He shows East Anglia Settlement into New England and then the borderland regions. In you know the back country South and up the Appalachian. And shows that there are distinct cultural differences. Differences folkways if you will that can still be seen today and even can be seen in the way people vote.

The way people build their homes the foods they eat. The way they say things nobody mistakes me as someone from Boston. And so There are Unique differences and that is something I think that should be celebrated not to try to homogenize Everything into one kind of New England founding.

Listen, I Do not discount the important role of pure that the Puritans made in America's founding. But I would not want to lift it higher than it should be either and that is what has been done I believe by a lot of historians a lot of well-meaning theologians.

Look New England is a derivative of Puritan culture in many ways sort of a secularized Puritan culture and Most people think that this is the centerpiece of American history. And it's a wonderful part of American history in many ways.

But I don't think it's the centerpiece and the historian that I think people should read that that in my mind proves this is Jack Green in his 1988 book pursuits of happiness. Where he does this deep dive?

Into the different regions kind of like David Hackett Fisher did and he's trying to solve the problem. Or the question is New England as so many believe the centerpiece of American history because that is sort of the assumption when you when I talk to students in my colonial history classes.

Most of them when I talk about religion, they automatically default To Puritanism, they know very little about Anglicanism in Virginia Southern Presbyterianism in the Carolinas Reform Baptists in Charleston Etc.

It's just all about the pilgrims and the Puritans and that's a wonderful part of our history. They gave us so much they taught us about the importance of descent from Establishment. They taught us about the importance of commitment to Orthodoxy very Bibliocentric and Christo centric in their preaching very much oriented toward Preaching to the mind not just the emotions and so forth.

I could go on and on of the value of this but as I mentioned earlier There was a problematic philosophical underpinning in a lot of the Puritan experiment that caused a rapid decline. And what Jack Green shows in Pursuits of happiness and Jack Green so far as I know is not is not a believing Christian.

Johns Hopkins University professor Very well-known colonial historian. He concludes that there's only one region in Early America that went through this type of declension and it was New England. He shows how that even in the middle colonies in the Chesapeake and in the borderland regions.

They developed up from a lower state to a more Developed state in developing institutions, etc. Whereas New England starts with this very high mark city on a hill. And more also that that John Winthrop talks about not just the status quo.

We're really going to show people how to establish a Christian society. Wonderful aspiration but it didn't last and So to take that as the centerpiece of American history I think is a mistake because it really is not as admirable as it is.

A Flattening Tendency

So there's just to jump in and add to this when you think about the kind of neoplatonism that Sam described earlier in the conversation this this emphasis on seeing Human society as a singular whole. Right everything everything's one in the same.

There's no division between Family and community between church and state between vocation and Friendship all is treated and subject to the same Standards and concerns. Well, one of the things this does is it fosters among New England Puritans a sense that all things are subject to spiritual questions that that everything can and should be spiritualized.

And to go back to David Hume. Hume said that the Puritans and in the British Parliament, even even in debates on tonnage and poundage. Very Routine kinds of questions about governmental operations said even those debates became subject to theology and and metaphysics.

And and what that ends up doing is it makes the Puritans? Incapable of Envisioning a Larger society that is made up of more cultural groups than just New England Puritans. So it fosters within them this insistence if we're going to have a country.

It's got to be a New England country. If we're gonna have a founding it's got to be a new England founding if we're going to have a beginning. It's got to start at Plymouth not at Jamestown. So this inability to understand the complexity of society fosters an inability to understand the kind of Transactions and the transactional relationships needed to Create a country like the United States.

I think it would be good if we could have some concrete examples and then maybe trace I know you said neoplatonism but maybe where the spirit arose from if this is a pietism if or what avenues the neoplatonism or whatever this Flattening tendency came from so, you know.

The first example that jumped to my mind and I'll see if maybe you think this is a good one is I was in Boston Doing the Freedom Trail years ago, and there's a story about a man who came back From being out at sea and he had been out for more than a year and he comes back and he kisses his wife Right on the the front step of their house and then he spends the rest of the night in jail.

Because you're not supposed to do that in public and there's no. And I understand there there has been some backlash against some of the modern leftist Interpretations of the Puritans that makes them even more rigid perhaps than they were but you can't tell me there's not a rigidity to that.

There's not a situation that should be considered in that. Do you have other examples maybe of of what you're talking about? Dr. Roberts with this flattening tendency.

Well, I think you see it across the span of New England colonial history, I mean, it's not it's not something that is. And it has some good things by the way, John. It has good repercussions as well as bad.

So here here's one one simple example. The Massachusetts General Court think that's what they call their colonial assembly. It had over 600 delegates in Massachusetts. Colonial, Massachusetts. We're not talking about You know just hundreds of thousands of people here.

We're not we're certainly not talking about millions upon millions, but they had 600 plus delegates and all of that was in an effort to try and achieve as As close to unanimity and their political decisions as they possibly could.

Many historians have recorded how New England tell meetings. They would have votes, but they wouldn't record the votes in other words. There may be a division between say 60 of the votes and 40 of the votes on some important decision but when it was recorded it was recorded as Sort of unanimous because they couldn't allow that kind of division to be publicly embraced.

And so that that to me is part and parcel of this. I think Sal may have better examples than I do, but that's what immediately comes to my mind. Go for it. I've always always Tell students the funny quotation from HL Minkin that Puritans are people who are worried that someone somewhere may be happy.

Now, of course, that's a you know, I'll laugh at that but that's a Caricature. That's not really true, but there's some truth to it if you read Michael Wigglesworth, for example. And his doomsday poem which was one of the best-selling pieces of American literature on end of the 1800s and he was professor at Harvard.

He was a minister. He was asked to be the president of Harvard so Michael Wigglesworth is not an outlier Puritan. He's very much a mainstream Puritan but He really. If there was ever a Puritan who was a killjoy it was him.

He hated his body. He constantly wrote about How much he hated? Can I say it he hated farting? Because it it was a sign of his own degradation and sinfulness. He hated when his Wife was struggling in childbirth.

He was more thinking about how what this would teach him spiritually rather than you know his wife or the care for his wife and one of his children who was Close to death. He was musing over. What is God teaching me?

But it was very it was very self-centered in many ways very foreboding and melancholy. Now some may say well Michaels Michael Wigglesworth is an outlier. I don't. I don't necessarily think so. He was a highly respected Puritan preacher and leader and I could give you many other examples.

Thomas Shepard during the antinomian controversy you know heresy hunter par excellence. I think if you look at the antinomian controversy not to defend Anne Hutchinson in some of her views. But the way they conducted that those trials the church trial and the government trial Against Anne Hutchinson really reveals this.

What has maybe become a stereotype of Puritans, so, you know, yes, it is a stereotype. Yes, they were probably a lot happier than most people realize. But when you read the Puritan sermons and you read a lot of Puritan literature, especially New England I'm not talking as much about the British Puritans here as the New England Puritans there is.

There's an orneriness. There is a Precisionist that is at least in our modern minds very off-putting and That's not to take away, you know the great things that they did look I tell I tell people reading the Puritans.

Studying the Puritans is like eating a pecan. You have good in the pecan but every once in a while you come across a shell and you have to spit it out. And that's what historians have to do. They can't get locked into a one track.

These people are all good. These people are all bad. I apply the same standard of critique to people like RL Dabney James Henley Thornwall as I do to Jonathan Edwards. I find Great things in both and I find problematic things in both.

And you know, I think that's that's the way if you're going to approach these subjects you have to treat it that way. There's there's more to the Puritans than just sermons. Yeah. You're right.

So if anyone out there who's listening has questions, I am already Taking note of some of the questions that have come in and I will ask dr. Smith and dr. Roberts your question. If you're on YouTube Facebook or X Dr. Smith.

Dr. Roberts. I was going through this transition probably when you first encountered me as a student and questioning some of the things that I had absorbed from the Puritans. And I know one of the things that started me on this track was reading that Richard Weaver essay.

The I think it's the two diarists where he compares Cotton Mather Mather with William Byrd and shows that even though William Byrd Has many faults as you said in the documentary, dr. Smith Cotton Mather has this navel gazing tendency this perfectionistic instinct that really makes his life somewhat miserable.

And I recognize that in myself and I was reading you know, Thomas Watson and John Owen and some of these guys that have really good things to say on some things but I noticed the effect that too much of that had on me and and I looked an awful lot like Cotton Mather and always assessing myself and trying to make sure that I Push everything in my life through this narrow channel of evaluation so that I can consider it worship.

You know my brushing my teeth to the glory of God I don't know was I worshiping as I did it and this overthinking tendency. You know that to me is maybe the negative part of it. That's that that pecan shell.

Is that what you're talking about? Dr. Smith when you talk about the pecan shell there.

Yes, and so I'll give you an example One of the big problems I have with Puritan theology There are exceptions is the doctrine of assurance. There's so much precision ism if you read William Perkins or Thomas Brooks or Jonathan Edwards religious affections.

There's such a high bar higher a higher bar. I believe in scripture allows. Or you know helping people with assurance here. Here's the The odd thing Puritans have some of the best counsel you can read for example read JC Riles book holiness.

He has a chapter there on assurance and he has a lot of quotations from different Puritans on how to help people who are doubting wonderful stuff. So Puritans have great literature on how to help people who are doubting.

But the reason they talk about this so much is because in their preaching On salvation they conflate sanctification and justification to such a degree that Reasonable people can never reach a sense of assurance in their faith.

I think there's a major problem in Puritan soteriology on the doctrine of assurance. And I Would I would say read David Engelsman's book The gift of assurance. He's he's a reformed preacher. I disagree with his idea that assurances of the essence of faith I don't believe it is.

I believe the Puritans are right on that but He does point out this massive problem With assurance in the Puritans. Charles Hodge in a systematic theology points this out as particularly a problem even with Jonathan Edwards.

And so that's one area. I think that there needs to be some rethinking on and evaluating Joel Beakey in his book the quest for full assurance Addresses this in a very comparable way. And a very competent way, I feel like he comes short on some certain things but The reason there's a problem with assurance of salvation I believe even in reformed circles is because they're so invested in This morphology of conversion that comes from the Puritans that I don't think it's healthy.

And it continues to affect contemporary.

Evangelicalism yeah, it comes from the pure. Oh, yeah. Well, John Piper was my inroad I think and maybe the gospel coalition, you know. Well, I wasn't too big into that but in quasi 2010 when the young restless reform movement was starting every Reformed evangelical conference I went to had ye old bookstore, you know with all these Puritan works under a ten or something.

And I thought that's just what we're supposed to read and and and you know, that was a big part of the diet. But you know going back to what you were saying. Dr. Smith about this perfection. You didn't say perfectionistic tendency to this conflation between justification sanctification and having assurance problems.

You know one of the things that I know many have pointed out with the Puritans is In a Brian McClanahan even says this is the original cancel culture. I don't know if that's true. But they you know, they they wouldn't celebrate Christmas.

They wouldn't wear wedding rings, you know, they they wouldn't really read Greco-Roman literature much that was more of a southern thing and. Because that was pagan and so they wanted to excise all these things and filter out to get purity as the name Puritan implies is that because or partially because there was a search for Authentic salvation and and this is how you measure it was getting rid of all these potential vices and.

Stumbling blocks I think that's part of it. I think they they so focused on Evaluating where you are in your sanctification you are truly justified. If you read John Piper's future grace He does essentially the same thing and it I Think it I think it has really Hindered a lot of people.

Look look if you look at North Hampton, Massachusetts during the time of Jonathan Edwards Edwards talks about how so many people He's kind of baffled that so many people are doubting their salvation. It reached a level of neurosis.

There were people who were committing suicide. And I said I say the last thing you want to do if you're not sure of your salvation is to commit suicide. Yeah, Jonathan Edwards own uncle Joseph Hawley Slid his throat because he could not resolve whether or not he was truly converted.

You can read I read an account of a Puritan woman who was so Fixated on the question. Am I elect? Am I not elect? Am I a Christian? Am I not a Christian? Couldn't stand. The uncertainty she had to know one way or the other and Actually threw her infant baby in a well just to prove to herself That she was damned.

Now There's a lot going on there to be sure other than just bad theology, yeah it's an example of. The problem I think that came With some of the Puritan theology. Yeah. Well in the period the puritanical Approach to life, I mean that that was not limited to the Puritans and it I mean it was many ways most common among Quakers a lot of what we think of as being puritanical about alcohol about sexuality about various types of vice Applied much more appropriately to the colonial Quakers and other Pietistic sects than it did to the Puritans.

The issue though and sound this is so clearly Explained is that the Puritans become deeply? Self-destructive as a result of these kinds of theological perspectives.

Pietism, the Halfway Covenant, and the Declension of New England

Well, there's a lot of questions coming in and I want to get to some of these. I have a lot of my own and we don't have the time obviously to go through all of them. But along those lines Judd Saul asks asks the question.

What about the embracement of pietism? You just mentioned pietism. Dr. Roberts were the Puritans Pietistic is that an issue with them? Maybe that's a good thing. I don't know. What do you think? Well.

Cotton Mather kept a close Correspondence with Auguste Franca the kind of the seminal German pietist. And so I think there is a lot of intermixture of continental pietism With Puritanism. So the The Puritan theological construct is very intellectual very Objective in theology, but there's a deep strain of subjectivism that is in Puritanism as well experientialism that a lot of reformed people kind of criticize.

Experientialism and modern evangelicalism today as well they should. But there's a lot of that in the Puritans a lot oriented toward What was called the mystical syllogism? Where Your feelings have a lot to do with determining where you are with God.

And so I see a lot of pietistic strange now the the pietist came along more or less in the 1670s and 80s, so it's as far as an actual Transition of pietistic thought into Puritan thought it would be later.