Getting up to Speed on the Puritans
As I contine my studies, the field that I have chosen is Puritanism. While reading Common-place, I noticed this remark:
The process of getting up to speed on the Puritans, to the point of feeling even vaguely comfortable writing about them, can be overwhelming. It requires a deep and painful immersion experience. The primary sources are voluminous, dense, and sometimes impenetrable. . . . The modern scholarship is pretty voluminous and dense as well, and although few contemporary scholars can match [Puritan writers] for opacity, it’s not for lack of effort.
In writing my paper last semester, my lack of reading in even the secondary sources was remarkable (and was remarked on). Clearly, I have a lot of reading ahead of me before I’m up to speed on the Puritans.
Posted 5 Oct. 2006 at 3:53 pm | Permalink
This sounds like a life long enterprise. I think you should solicit sponsors and turn a profit from it.
Posted 8 Nov. 2006 at 4:59 pm | Permalink
The Puritans had great ideals and there are many things to admire about them although it is dubious whether we ought to emulate them. The Puritans were a curious mixture of strong points and foibles. They loved Scriptural truth and they were diligent in their pursuit of it but they were unable to replicate their Christian beliefs in the next generation. Their grand ideals fell short in practice. As a student at BJU, I was thoroughly infatuated with them and matriculated in Dr. Panosian’s Puritanism class. Both the teacher and subject matter were much fun.
Puritanism is still trendy in intellectual-wannabe, particularly Reformed, Christian circles today. However, we must take a long realistic look at them before rushing off to imitate them. Much of their appeal, I think, is a romantic notion of far-away time and of a mythical truly Christian dominated culture. We opine for those good ole days when things were good and righteous but as a Baptist, I see those times through less friendly eyes. Also, their influence, IMHO, on the Christian character of America is much overblown. It was the great awakenings, not Puritan influence, that forged America’s Christian consensus. Furthermore, their influence was short-lived and debatable as evidenced by the many sermons on the unconverted clergy, the halfway covenant and Stoddardism by the time of the late Puritan period of Jonathon Edwards. The Puritans lost their children. Perhaps, we can learn more from their mistakes than their ideals.
As for the volumious reading required to understand the Puritans, there are gems buried in the tons of tailings. The question is whether the time and effort is worth digging through the mass of material to find gems that can be more easily mined elsewhere. Happy digging!