Transcript Kambriel: Rappaccini's Daughter Veil

American Religion & Puritanism
Pop Quiz
Click the correct letter
(A, B, C, or D)
$ 100
A leading religious group in early American
society goes under the name …
A: The Twelve
Apostles
B: The Puritans
C: The Vegans
D: Credence Clearwater
Revival
The Puritans / Puritanism
Terminology
1. Puritanism - The beliefs and practices
characteristic of Puritans, most of whom were
Calvinists who wished to purify the Church of
England of its Catholic aspects
2. Puritanism - Strictness and austerity in
conduct and religion
3. Puritanism – “The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy”
(H. L. Mencken, Chrestomathy 1949)
Puritanism
- religious reform movement within the Church of
England in the 1560s
- term of contempt assigned to the movement by its
enemies
Oliver Ormerod, English clergyman:
“We call you Puritans not
because you are purer than other
men but because you think
yourselves to be purer.” (1603)
Puritan family around 1563
Religion in Colonial New England
Three important religious groups
• Pilgrims
-
founded the Plymouth colony
(Massachusetts)
saw the Church of England as impure
strongly separatist
independence of local churches
• Presbyterians
-
Calvinist theology
secretive, against Bishops
authority of the Scripture
• Puritans
settled in Virginia and
Massachusetts Bay, predominant group
developed „church-centered
societies in the New England colonies
“Only the ‘truly elect’ should be
admitted to church membership.”
Early Wave of Immigration to New England
Perry Miller, “The Puritan Way of
Life” (1950)
“Without some ”understanding of
Puritanism, it may safely be said, there
is no understanding of America.” (p. 4)
HS Brandt 32 111 Puritan America?
Religious Fundamentalism, Bible Politics,
and the Rhetoric of Redemption — 17th Century to Present
HS Brandt 32 111 Puritan America?
Creed
Religious Fundamentalism, Bible Politics,
and the Rhetoric of Redemption — 17th Century to Present
Men are saved by their faith, not by their
deeds. (Miller, p. 10)
In order to be saved they must receive from
God a special infusion of grace (Miller, 17)
Certain souls are predestined to heaven, others
are sentenced to damnation (Miller, 17)
Speech by ....
George W. Bush
Speech held at Whitehall Palace, London, Nov 19, 2003
“At times Americans are even said to have a puritan streak.
And where might that have come from?”
(LAUGHTER)
“Well, we can start with the Puritans.
To this fine heritage, Americans have added a few traits of our
own: the good influence of our immigrants and the spirit of
the frontier.”
$ 200
Complete this phrase from John Winthrop‘s
famous speech held in 1630:
“Consider that wee shall be as a …”
A: Ttown in a
Forest
B: Citty upon a
Hill
C: Capittal at a
Lake
D: Mettropolis on a
Mountain
“City upon a hill” (1630)
John Winthrop (1588-1649)
We shall be as a city upon a hill.
The eyes of all people are upon us.
(John Winthrop,
„Model of Christian Charity“)
John Winthrop (1588-1649)
- Governor of the Massachusetts
Bay Company (1629)
- Christian mission
(evangelization of the heathens)
- Obligation for America to
become a beacon of godliness for
all of humankind
Biblical image of the EXODUS
“We shall find that the God
of Israel is among us, when
ten of us shall be able to
resist a thousand of our
enemies; when he shall
make us a praise and glory
that men shall say of
succeeding plantations, ‘the
Lord make it likely that of
New England.’ ”
COVENANT WITH GOD
Thus stands the cause between
God and us. We are entered into
Covenant with him for his work.
Covenant
God has entered into a quasicontractual agreement, not just with
individuals, but with a people.
collective destiny
Winthrop and his colleagues were [...]
actually early American precapitalists who
were about to initiate a process of divinely
supported material progress that would lead
to violent conquest, unquenchable
imperialism, and self-righteous and selfobsessive nationalism.
(Emory Elliott)
$ 300
Which Puritan minister held a sermon at
the departure of Winthrop‘s fleet for New
England in 1630?
A: John Wool
C: John Acrylic
B: John Cotton
D: John Polyester
John Cotton (1595-1652)
One of the most influential
representatives of the colony
of Massachusetts
Banned Anne Hutchinson in 1637.
Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643)
Hutchinson was persecuted for
antinomianism - the belief that grace,
conversion, and study of the
scriptures were sufficient for salvation
and that churches and the clergy were
basically superfluous.
- She “infected” other members of
her family with her beliefs
(according to John Winthrop who
led the trial)
John Cotton, God’s Promise to His
Plantation (1630)
John Cotton, God’s Promise to His
Plantation (1630)
“God makes room for a people in three ways:
First, when He casts out the enemies of a people
before them by lawful war with inhabitants.
Second, when He gives a foreign people favor in the eyes of
any native people to come to sit down with them either by way
of purchase […] or else when they give it in courtesy, as
Pharaoh did the land of Goshen unto the sons of Jacob.
Thirdly, when He makes a country though not altogether void of
inhabitants, yet void in the place where they reside. Where there
is a vacant place, there is liberty for the sons of Adam or Noah to
come and inhabit, though they neither buy it nor ask their leaves”
$ 500
Which community was founded by the
English cleric Roger Williams in 1636?
A: Fate
B: Destiny
C: Providence
D: God‘s Will
Providence, Rhode Island (1636)
Roger Williams (1603-1683)
Father of American
Baptism
Fighter for religious
freedom
Separation of State and
Church
$ 1,000
An important literary genre
in early colonial America was the …
A: Thriller
B: Captivity Narrative
C: Detective Novel
D: Arztroman
The Captivity Narrative
“Yet the Lord still showed
mercy to me, and upheld me;
and as soon as he wounded me
with one hand, so he healed
me with the other.”
Mary Rowlandson (1682)
“I cannot but take notice of the
wonderful mercy of God to me in
those afflictions, in sending me a
Bible: one of those Indians […]
came to me, and asked me, if I
would have a Bible, he had got it
in his Basket”
(Rowlandson, p. 19)
The Captivity Narrative
(Mary Rowlandson, Hannah Dustin, etc.)
- Captivity as God’s test for the believers
(and as punishment)
- Redemption as God’s mercy
REDEMPTION
- saved from evil
- delivered from sin
The captivity narrative functions as
…… a spiritual autobiography
… a sermon
… a jeremiad
$ 2,000
In 1692, the infamous „Witch Trials“ took
place at …
A: Salinas
B: Salieri
C: Salem
D: Salome
The Salem Witch Trials (1692)
“[A]t prodigious witch-meetings, the wretches have proceeded so
far as to concert and consult the methods of rooting out the
Christian religion from this country, and setting up instead of it
perhaps a more gross diabolism than ever the world saw before.”
(Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 227)
The Trial of Martha Carrier
(Salem, August 2, 1692)
“This rampant hag, Martha Carrier, was the person of whom the confessions
of the witches, and of her own children among the rest, agreed that the devil
had promised her she should be Queen of Hebrews.”
(Cotton Mather, Wonders, 1692/93, p. 231)
Cotton Mather (1663-1728)
- Prominent Puritan minister, author,
and pamphleteer (e.g., Magnalia
Christi Americana, 1702)
- Grandson of John Cotton
„The New Englanders are a people of
God settled in those [territories] which
were the devil‘s territories; and it may
be easily supposed that the devil was
exceedingly disturbed, when he
perceived such a people here
accomplishing the promise […] made
unto our blessed Jesus.“
Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the
Invisible World (1693), p. 225f.
$ 4,000
The period of renewed interest in religion
in the 1720s to 50s was called …
A: The Great
Awakening
C: The Great
Depression
B: The Great
Expectation
D: The Great
Gatsby
The Great
Awakening
Period of renewed
interest in religion
(1720s-1750s)
Jonathan Edwards
(1703-1758)
American theologian and
philosopher
Main impulse for the
Great Awakening
Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God (1741)
„God is a great deal more
angry with great numbers
that are now on earth [...].
The wrath of God burns
against them, their
damnation does not
slumber; the pit is
prepared, fire is made
ready, the furnace is now
hot, ready to receive them;
the flames do now rage
and glow.“ (Edwards, p. 342)
$ 8,000
Whose name stands for the secularization of
America in the 18th century?
A: Benjamin Franklin
B: Benjamin Button
C: Benjamin Netanjahu
D: Benjamin Blümchen
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
“Franklin represents the American errand as the creation of a
secular state that is purified of the corruption of European
politics and a social structure based on inherited title. It is the
secular America that will be a model of democratic
government.“
(Deborah L. Madsen, American Exceptionalism, 37)
Jonathan Edwards and
Benjamin Franklin are
often seen as representing
two contrasting visions of
American society.
$ 16,000
The classical novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
which criticizes the Puritan past, is called …
A: The Crimson Pirate
C: The Scarlet Letter
B: The Red Raindeer
D: Purple Rain
Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
- descendent of Puritan immigrants
- His great grandfather was a judge in
the Salem witchcraft trials
- Dark Romanticism, The Scarlet
Letter (1850)
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
$ 32,000
In a famous phrase, Ralph Waldo Emerson
described the spiritual „unity“ which contains
“every man‘s particular being” as the …
A: Over-Mind
B: Over-Brain
C: Over-Soul
D: Over-Ture
Over-Soul
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(in: Essays: First Series, 1841)
- “that great nature in which we rest”
- “that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which
every man‘s particular being is contained
and made one with all other; that common
heart”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
- independent “man of letters”
- former Unitarian minister
- became alienated from Church
after his wife‘s death in 1832
- Published „Nature“ in 1836
-> Transcendentalism (the
belief that phenomena of nature carry
a higher, spiritual truth)
God-reliance ->
-> Self-reliance
The divine is seen not as an
exterior or „higher“ power,
but as a tangible force within
human experience.
Triad:
Self
Nature
Over-Soul
“I become a transparent
eyeball; I am nothing; I
see all; the currents of the
Universal Being circulate
through me; I am part or
particle of God.”
(“Nature” 1836)
$ 64,000
Which cult became very popular in the
United States in the late 19th century?
A: Muscular
Christianity
B: Body-Building
Catholicism
C: Society of Fit
Jesus
D: Gym Protestantism
Muscular Christianity
(term coined in 1857)
Major cultural movement in the late
Victorian era.
- underlined the need for an energetic
Christian activism, combined with an
ideal of vigorous masculinity.
›Muscular Christian Shepherd Boys‹ (1912)
Jesus pushed a plane and swung an adze;
he was a successful carpenter. [...] His
muscles were so strong that when he drove
the money-changers out, nobody dared to
oppose him!
Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows (1925)
$ 125,000
The wave of „bible epics“ in the 1950s started
with the movies Samson and Delilah and …
A: Quo Vadis?
B: Errare Humanum Est
C: Veni Vidi Vici
D: Per Aspera ad Astra
1951
1950
$ 250,000
In 1954, U.S. Congress passed a bill which
added two words to the Pledge of Allegiance:
A: „we believe“
B: „under God“
C: „our paradise“
D: „in heaven“
The Pledge of
Allegiance was
written in 1892 by
the Baptist
minister Francis
Bellamy. The
words „under
God“ were added
in 1954.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands; one nation /under
God/, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
(1924-1954, with addition since 1954)
$ 500,000
Which evangelist and spiritual advisor to many
U.S. Presidents is famous for his broadcasted
sermons?
A: Billy Bob
Thornton
B: Billy Idol
C: Billy Graham
D: Billy Bookcase
William F. “Billy” Graham
(* 1918)
„I am selling the greatest
product in the world; why
shouldn‘t it be promoted as
well as soap?“
(in: Erich Fromm, The Sane Society,
1955, p. 114)
$ 1,000,000
Which is, according to recent statistics, the
second most influential creed in the U.S.
behind Christianity?
A: Islam
B: Buddhism
C: Judaism
D: Nonreligious/Secular
http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#religions