The Essence of Puritan Conscience Essay

Every society represents itself a mixture of social groups privileged to a greater or lesser extent, which are trying to preserve their lifestyle or improve it through using social distance or exclusivity, as well as by means of monopolization of economic opportunities. In order to understand the stability and dynamics of the society, we should try to understand the aspirations of social groups in relation to the values and ideas prevailing in the society or, vice versa, to identify a social group for each of the considered ideas or values. In his famous work “The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism”, Max Weber approached the study of religious ideas from the view point of their relation to the collective actions and, in particular, from the standpoint of social processes in which “the inspirational ideas of some social groups become the beliefs of the masses of people” (Chalcraft 205).
Taking Calvinism for the basis of puritan ethics, Weber concludes that it was Puritanism that “stood at the cradle of the modern economic man … and contributed to the development of the rational bourgeois economic life” (Weber 172). Further in this paper, we will consider the reasons Weber put into this statement, and develop the idea why the Puritan society in early colonial America was a successful model to be served for the future of America.To the Puritan mind, it was still impossible not separate the spiritual life of man from his public life. Society was perceived not as a gathering of disparate individuals, but as a single organism that exists for the singular purpose, all members of which are in agreement with the general.
Therefore, in the era of Puritanism state could admit the existence of only one church within its borders with all citizens obliged to attend it and support with donations and taxes. In England, the Puritans were fighting not to uphold the principles of tolerance ensuring the peaceful coexistence of different creeds. If they came to power in Europe, their opponents would have been exiled no less ruthlessly than themselves, and the whole Church of England would have been reduced to unity with puritanical views. Having failed to succeed at home, they left for America, where they had the opportunity to establish a society where the truth could reign forever. Transferring there, as they believed, the true English church, the Puritans hoped to shield it from delusions and splits by the power of civil law. The main function of the state was, according to those views, to protect the church from the external and internal strife. Therefore, the dissidents were subjected to severe persecution in New England: the colony was founded with the goal to make any deviation from the truth impossible.
But the political theory of the Puritans included a component determined by the new era. This was the concept of governance according to law and social contract.
Puritan thinkers embraced the basics of parliamentarism in their social theory. As a Puritan John Davenport expressed it, “in the same action God through public voting appoints someone the governor, another one the magistrate, and not otherwise” (Miller 149).
The assertion that the will of the people declared through voting expresses the divine will is an attempt of the religious consecration of the democratic principle. According to P. Miller, this theory provides a good illustration of the ideal sought by the whole Puritan thought: in politics, as in the field of natural science, to conform the definitions of God to the aspirations of men, the laws of Revelation to the guidance of reason and experience (Miller 149-51). There is no intention to discredit any of the sources of knowledge, but rather to integrate the divine and natural, revelation and reason into a coherent whole.
However, trying to combine incompatible elements, Puritanism could not long remain a creative force. When religious enthusiasm weakened, theological and practical aspects of the theory broke away from each other. It became clear, why not just church members but the entire nation could not be considered partners in the social contract.
By the end of the 17th century, the nature of people in the new environment changed; they attributed much more importance to economic rather than spiritual interests. Mastering Frontier contributed to dispersal of centralized communities that were under the strict guidance of the clergy, and the people that resided inland were less inclined to follow the rules of the Puritan community life.
Paradoxically, a significant role in this shift of interests from heavenly to earthly was played by the very Calvinism creed. Protestantism in general, as is known, was built on the denial of the spiritual benefits of monastic asceticism, contemplative life, and serving in church institutions. The postulate of “justification by faith” transferred the spiritual life within the scope of subjective experience and feelings. Under these conditions professional activities and economic activity obtained a special spiritual and moral significance. Successful mundane activities became the only way for a man to fulfill his divine calling (Beruf), and simultaneously the only objective measure of his prosperity in the spiritual life, in pleasing God (Chalcraft 207- 8). Especially important in this sense was the role of “business ethics” in Calvinism, where business success was equated with virtue and salvation, and poverty, by contrast, was perceived as morally suspect.
However, the success in business leads to an increase in wealth, and this, in turn, affects the inner ordering of man. This pattern was well expressed by the founder of Methodist stream, John Wesley: religion must necessarily produce diligence in work and frugality, and these qualities cannot produce anything other than wealth (Wesley 115-16). But the growth of wealth leads to the growth of pride, passion and love for the worldly in all its forms.
Such method could become the principle of asceticism and self-restraint, not secular in order to increase capital, but religious for the cleansing of the soul from passions. But the latter is known to be completely rejected by Protestantism. As a result, according to Max Weber, the 17th century, an epoch of seething religious life, left its heritor-utilitarian a terribly clear, self-righteously clear conscience in the process of money gain, which contributed to the further extinction of religious life in New England the response to which were emotional outbursts of “Great Awakening” (Weber 211-13).
Therefore, if a person can prove his/her faith, he/she is entitled to demand salvation from God. According to John Preston, “one can plead with Him basing on His own obligations worded and sealed, and He cannot reject the claim” (Miller 72). He has no choice for it is part of His Covenant. Accordingly, the salvation was no longer the painful uncertainty, but was based on legal status. If Calvinism denied freedom and role of human in salvation, its successor, theory of covenant linked the Divine will by the legal conditions. Thus, the theology of Puritanism was penetrated by the ideas borrowed not from the Revelation, but from the law, from the representations of reason and common sense.