I gave Clare Chen a long-winded reply over in this comment box. So long-winded, in fact, that it deserved its own post:
Protestants, especially Calivinists, have a thing for systematic doctrine, Systematic Theology. It is for them, if not the entirety, at least very nearly all of religion. To them, Christianity is not a matter of culture. So the idea of an atheist Christian is preposterous. The idea of an atheist Protestant or atheist Calvinist is preposterous, because to be a Protestant or (a fortiori) a Calvinist is to subscribe to a doctrinal slate. Reject that slate, and you’re out. Simple. Crisp. Clean.
But there are atheist Catholics. Why? Because being Catholic is cultural. It is not only that, but it is also at least that. (And this probably goes a fortiori for Orthodox.) Being Catholic is not so much about accepting a doctrinal slate (tho’ we do have one), but about being a loyal subject of the Church. (For the spergs, no you cannot be a loyal subject of the Church whilst rejecting Her doctrine. I’m talking about subjective emotional, visceral states here.)
This is one major reason various social measures of devotion are so poor among Catholics vis-à-vis Protestants. If you leave the Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian faith, you check the “No religion” box on the survey. Episcopalian maybe you do, maybe you don’t (they’re kinda Catholic-ish). But if you’re Catholic and you “leave the faith”, you still consider yourself Catholic deep down in your soul and so check the “Catholic” box on the form… and then proceed to report you never pray, never go to Church, and are at best ambivalent about the existence of God. (Obviously I’m speaking of tendencies here, not absolutely every single instance.)
And a Catholic atheist is a very, very different creature from a Protestant atheist. The Catholic atheist realizes there is no possible good in the world—nihilism is the only option. Protestant atheists are positively “evangelical” about atheism. They want to Make the World a Better Place™… thru Atheism.
So it is very hard for a Protestant to see the seeds of liberalism in his own religion. Why, we toe the line on the Westminster (or Augsburg) Confession! How could we go liberal? And in a sense, they’re right. They’re related (today somewhat distantly) to progressive memeplex only their version of it froze at an early point in its evolution, and so long as it stays frozen, they can be as reactionary as any Trent-quotin’, Inquisition-lovin’ Catholic.
You’ll find no group more reactionary than Baptist Fundamentalists. And yet look at their memetic makeup: congregationalist, independent, pietist, “soul sufficiency”, private interpretation, testimonial obsessed. Egad, you’d think you’d be looking at UCCers, but their memes froze around 1920 and they retroactively date their Bible to 1611 (Props, Henry VIII).
So when you make the Moldbuggian case: Yep, it was the Puritans whodunit. It is natural for many Protestants to think, hey, those are my people you’re blaming there. You couldn’t slide butter knife between what I believe today and my Puritan forefathers believed then. It wasn’t us. Must’ve been the Joos.
Well, maybe it was both.
But the Puritan Hypothesis isn’t about the slate of doctrine, but the evolving memetic culture. If you extract any Protestant memetic DNA from amber that solidified prior to about 1940 (certainly prior to 1910), sure it all looks pretty non-progressive by today’s standards. But once you compare that sample with others taken each decade, it is quite clear that you’re 1940 sample was an ancestor of today’s NYT editor.
And it also becomes quite clear that the 1940 sample itself was descended from the Puritan DNA that landed in New England three centuries earlier, who “progressed” from demanding Charles’ head, to fomenting a colonial rebellion, to bringing slavery to a violent end, to giving women the right to vote, to banning alcohol, to “No-Fault” Divorce Laws, to “Gay Marriage”, to bombing Syria just for the helluvit. With a lot of twists and turns along the way to be sure, but all in an unmistakable direction: The Zeitgeist—the Arc of History.
I agree with you about the Puritans. You forgot to mention the ban on Christmas. What kind of freak would do that?
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Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton#Divorce
I’m not going to lay out the entire history again. Moldbug and his non-Jew Jim have done that in spades.
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The fundamental concept of Protestantism isn’t theology, but authority. Who has authority? And why? In the old days the aristocrats had power because their fathers gave it to them. The clergy had power because the clergy before gave it to them. In all Protestant ideologies- they are quite different- authority comes not from another person but from some combination of superior intellect, as shown by interpretation of scripture, and upstanding personal behavior, including the accumulation of wealth. In this Protestants are very much like Jews. This sets off a constant power struggle to be the most moral, waves of moral superiority starting with Puritans and Anabaptists, continuing with Quakers, and culminating with Methodists, with Unitarians thrown in the mix.
The typical American of reactionary tendency is too close to the English culture and Protestant religion of some sort to see this. Jews are just stooges of the Puritans, but they are loud and proud so it looks like they’re in charge- which the Puritans don’t mind, it takes the heat off them. This is why it takes a guy like E. Michael Jones to come up with real takedowns of these people.
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Oh, so unbelieving ‘racial Catholics’ are not liberal, in the way that unbelieving descendents of Protestants are militant, activist liberals; they’re apparently all just nihilists. In that case, we might expect less hardline, non-atheist but also unorthodox ‘Catholics’ of the cafeteria variety to be apathetic, too, being in between them. But what do we find, with ‘Catholics for Free Choice’, etc? Oh yeah, that’s right; they’re ardent, dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrats there and Liberals here. How’d that happen? They must be secretly mainline Protestant or something.
Forever playing ‘pin the blame on the Puritans’, as though all of the modern world’s ills can be traced back to them. (Never mind the Jews; have you considered Anabaptism’s effects? Or Methodism and Pentecostalism’s? Of course not; such would never occur to you, wouldn’t fit the preferred narrative, would it now, hmmm?)
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Will, the Protestants in the South blame the Puritans, too. Who else are the damnyankees? Note that not all Northerners are damnyankees–just the busybody meddlers sanctimonious power hungry control freaks. “Puritan” is shorthand for the type, it may not always be entirely accurate. Hillary Clinton is a good example–she’s a norther Methodist.
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Will- Calvinism as a theological idea has merit, although I think he went too far in the other direction. The Puritans were Calvinists, but not all Calvinists, maybe not even most, are Puritans. The theologies reflect and were driven by social and economic changes than the other way around. Puritan influence in its undiluted form didn’t last long, because it was too extreme. But still the Puritans had a strong influence in both England and America that has not gone away.
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Will, you illustrate perfectly what I was saying. Your doctrine is their doctrine, and when I blame them, you hear me blaming doctrine. But I’m not blaming doctrine, I’m blaming evolving culture. False doctrine does contribute to the cultural error (getting rid of sacraments, the priesthood, etc.), but it is not all, or even most, of it.
You can create a Judaizing, egalitarian, Holier-than-Thou culture out of just about anything, if you try.
Actually Liberal Catholics have very much Protestantized, or should I say Americanized. They are Cafeteria Catholics, picking and choosing what they want from the Catholic buffet line (which generally amounts to Episcopalianism but with a shabbier liturgy). The more Liberal they are, the less they choose. But the foundational error is the pope in their belly.
Will, as you may (or may not) know, I have been many different kinds of Protestant, and so yes, I absolutely have considered the effects of other Protestant heresies. Pentecostalism is low church protestantism writ stupid. Their average IQs are too low for them to have any seat at the table of power (and it only arrives around 1900. No exactly in 1900). Methodism was nothing but Anglican Evangelicalism (the low-church variety leaving the high-church), a split just like the Puritan one only about 150 years later. Many Anabaptist memes show up Congregationalism, which was an evolutionary development out of the original Puritanism, as well as Quakerism most of which has been grafted onto Congregationalism.
The Puritans of Massachusetts were the elite of the US North. They out-competed and (eventually) won against the elite of the South (Episcopalian). Since 1865 they’ve had their way in America, and since 1945 they’ve had their way in the World. Their doctrine obviously has evolved. The Westminster Confession is a conservatizing influence on society, if it is enforced. But enforcement was given up long ago by most Puritans.
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@ Peter: Hey, I agree about Puritans’ meddling ways, wanting to tell others how to live, and I’ve called them on that, too. I’ve even bashed the ‘Protestant work ethic’ over at Twitter. But I think ascribing all ills to Puritanism simply misses the mark.
@ Thrasy: Yes, I’m a Calvinist, and no Puritan; I’ve attacked their genocidal policies in Britain, their need to force others into conformity, and the like. I just don’t think everything can be laid at their feet.
I’m no fan of “it’s all x group’s fault” argumentation, because life is more complex than that. e.g. I have issues with the Tribe, and will criticize them accordingly. But I laugh at them who blame the Tribe for everything, because it’s absurd.
Same with the Puritans.
@ NBS: I can partially agree; I as a non-Dutchie, find myself taking on elements of Dutch culture I find unscriptural and unconfessional, in the broader Reformed church community of which I am part, such as the ‘Protestant Work Ethic’. There certainly is a difference between doctrine and culture, and as a convert, I’m acutely aware of that, and often doing battle with it.
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Why this works: this is a meme to march with…this is the music to march with.
The next improvement is to call the Race War in America what it is: White vs White.
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The Old WASPS knew how to handle power. They knew how to run things, it’s over of course.
The point I’m making is there are certain things that must be done that should not be spelled out…but there are certain concentrations of wealth that must be deconcentrated. As it’s been quite predatory it’s quite just.
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