Christian Nationalists can’t shut up about trying to bring down the separation of Church and State. They claim that the Founding Fathers — a pack of Deists and agnostics and lackadaisical Church of England members — sought a fire-breathing Christian dominion that, coincidentally, looks exactly like what they want. That’s nonsense.
But what’s even more hilarious is that the Christian nation that would have emerged had the Puritans had their way would look nothing like the Christian nationalist state that the Far Right envisions.
First of all, so many of Donald Trump’s “spiritual advisors” wouldn’t exist. They’d need a new grift. The Puritans (Congregationalists) were not down with competing religions! They actually hanged Quaker missionaries between 1659 and 1661 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, stopping only when England intervened.
Even after Great Britain passed the Toleration Act of 1689, discrimination continued. Puritans would not do business with “dissenters” (those who dissented from the Anglican Church and its Puritan offshoot) nor could dissenters hold office. To add insult to injury, other religions were forced to pay taxes to support the Congregationalist churches.
As a side note, Trump’s current spiritual advisor, three-time-married Paula White, would have been arrested for adultery, which was a crime for the Puritans. There’s only one instance of Puritans hanging an adulterous woman, but hey! White’s been accused of multiple instances of extramarital sex, so who could say? By the way, White replaced Trump’s previous spiritual advisor, Robert Morris, a megachurch pastor who served six months in prison for diddling little girls in the 1980s. Man! Trump’s spiritual advisors sure resemble Trump, don’t they?
Second of all, say goodbye to “Merry Christmas.” The Puritans banned Christmas, both here and under their Commonwealth in England (1649 to 1660) because Christmas was a day for getting drunk and fornicating. (In fairness, it kind of was.) Plus it was a “popish” holiday (no greater invective than popish)!
William Prynne, the English Puritan pamphleteer and member of Parliament, denounced Christmas for being for “amorous, mixed, voluptuous, un-Christian, that I say not, pagan dancing.” As Prynne pointed out, would not a true Christian holiday be celebrated “without drinking, roaring, healthing, dicing, carding, masques, and stage-plays? Which better become the sacrifices of Bacchus, than the resurrection, the incarnation of our most blessed Saviour.” Did I say popish? Even worse, it was pagan! As Prynne wrote: “Our Christmas lords of misrule, together with dancing, masks, mummeries, state players, and such other Christmas disorders, now in use with Christians, were derived from these Roman Saturnalia and Bacchanalian festivals, which should cause all pious Christians eternally to abominate them.” Clearly, Christmas needed to be banned! Oh, no! Good heavens! How could Fox News even exist without lamenting the imaginary War on Christmas? There would have been a real War on Christmas.
Third of all, as you can gather from Mr. Prynne, the Puritans weren’t any more enamored of dancing or the theater than they were of Christmas, boozing it up or gambling. What they called “mixt dancing” — and we would just call dancing — was simply an invitation to promiscuity and immodest dress. Fire-and-brimstone Puritan preacher Cotton Mather (the fun author of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God“) and his father Increase Mather preached against the evils of the social country dances. The latter wrote: ““Temptations thereunto are become too common, viz. such as immodest apparel, Prov. 7:10 laying out of hair, borders, naked necks and arms, or which is more abominable naked breast and mixed dancings.” Shudder!
Now fourthly, let’s go back to the theater (and, by extension, movies), which they hated even more. In 1642, the Puritans closed all the theaters, including the famous Globe Theatre. Why? As you might have guessed, watching plays interfered with praying and reading the Bible and sermons. But even worse, going to the theater meant that the godly had to rub shoulders with the sinners in the audience (and probably onstage) and the prostitutes and conmen that plied their trades there. Who knew what you’d catch in addition to lice and the pox? These plays provided a temptation to the Elect by portraying drinking, adultery, debauchery, scheming, and cross-dressing. (Have you never read Shakespeare?) No surprise, but our friend Prynne published a 1,000-page critique on the evils of the theater, Histriomastix: The Player’s Scourge, or Actor’s Tragedy in 1632 (which you can read here). Prynne explained that plays “are sinfull, heathenish, lewde, ungodly spectacles, and most pernicious corruptions; condemned in all ages, as intolerable mischiefes to churches, to republickes, to the manners, mindes, and soules of men.” Yikes!
So a so-called Christian nation would ban live theater — and by extension movies. Don’t think I’m exaggerating: Modern-day Puritans agree. Reformed Free Publishing Association writes the following:
Four hundred years ago, one had to go to the theater to see live performances. Today, we live in a world awash with the drama of the film and television industries and today’s Hollywood productions are accessible to us and our children in our homes by means of a variety of devices — televisions, computers, tablets, and smartphones to name a few.
The Puritans took a hostile stance in opposition to the productions of the Globe Theater. This stance ought to pale in comparison to our condemnation of Hollywood’s productions. Hollywood is a powerful enemy of the Christian faith. Her productions, in the spirit of Antichrist, promote blasphemy, lawlessness, violence, disobedience, covetousness, murder, theft, fornication, adultery, sodomy, lying, deceit, and every other sin that is contrary to a godly walk. It is no coincidence that, during the last election cycle in the United States and months after the election, lawless Hollywood actors and actresses were among the most outspoken supporters of the candidates who advocated for “women’s rights” (a euphemism for the murder of unborn babies) and “LGBTQ rights” (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning their sexual identity). Hollywood is a mighty engine of propaganda for these sins and perversions as her productions prove.
Hollywood productions (in movie theaters, television, and online) have no place in the life of the child of God and the Christian home. Participation in her dramas, by watching them, is to join the spirit that will bring about the Antichrist, the spirit “that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2).
But what would MAGA do without John Wayne movies? Or anything released by Angel? Or those terrible movies that The Daily Wire releases? (The Daily Wire won’t learn; despite terrible reviews and box office, there’s another one coming out.) Rupert Murdoch would never have been able to purchase 20th Century Fox. And would TV or podcasts have met the righteous high standards set by the Puritans? Hard to imagine that pot-smoking Joe Rogan, Theo Von, or Andrew Schulz would be allowed. And the Manosphere that feeds young men into #MAGA? You’re kidding, right?
If the Far Right continues to want to mix church and state, maybe we should point out what the OG way and Puritan standards look like, and ask if this is what they really want.
--30--
Comments
