SAMPLE ABSTRACT

Stephen Foster, "Puritanism and Democracy: A Mixed Legacy." Conflict & Consensus in American History, Vol. I, 9th edition.

Puritanism was not inherently a democratic ideology, nor the source of the American democratic tradition. It did have characteristics on which American democracy could be built, but it contained more which logically led in another direction. That a relatively democratic social order later developed on what had been Puritan ground was more a coincidence than a logical consequence.

Puritan thinkers did believe that all people had rights; but only the rights to do the "right thing," not to do as they themselves thought best. They believed that people -- the redeemed people, at least -- should be able to choose their own leaders; but also that, once they had selected those leaders, they should subordinate themselves to them. They believed that everyone was equal; but only in being equally sinful before God. In human society, they believed that God's will dictated "Subordination, inequality, authority, unity, suppression of the individual will for the good of the whole, and any number of other concepts that have a distinctly sinister sound today." (p. 25)

What was truly remarkable was that no compulsion was necessary to impose and maintain a repressive, hierarchical social order. Adherence to a common faith led "every man actively and repeatedly [to] consent to his own inequality." (p. 25)

To be sure, Puritan theology and rhetoric sounded a distinctly democratic note in England, but in England, Puritans were a threatened minority. There, freedom and equality were important to them, because they would benefit from their protections. In New England, however, where Puritans dominated, freedom to dissent would only cause wrong-headed and misguided people to stray from God's true path. There, Puritan thought produced a repressive, hierarchical social order. "Apparently, Puritans had to be in a minority before they could come up with anything resembling a doctrine of popular rights. When they enjoyed majority support, as in America, they had no need to grow revolutionary; they never had anything to revolt against." (p. 29)

Later thinkers could and did detect the roots of American democracy in certain segments of Puritan thought. The social and political institutions which Puritans created -- congregational governance, a citizen militia, elected civil leadership -- also pulled in a more democratic direction. But all these things existed, in the Puritan mind, for the purpose of enforcing "a positive pattern of virtue laid down by revealed and natural law." (p. 31) "The drama of Puritan society in New England lies in the extent to which the force of ideological commitment alone could maintain a system of political and social subordination for which the traditional material and institutional bases were lacking and which was undermined by many tendencies within the very ideology which supported it." (p. 25) Despite potential democratic tendencies in ideology and institutions, American Puritanism "was neither democratic nor undemocratic as moderns understand the terms." Its legacy to American democracy was decidedly a mixed one.