It’s interesting to note that our religious extremists who cause so much international consternation have a history. The puritans were made most unwelcome throughout Europe before being shipped over here. Is it any surprise that the loonies, once given space to breed, did so?
curses!
Foiled again! You have deduced the Europeans’ plans, now you must be shipped back to Europe!
Yes you know the Puritans were messed up when even the English couldn’t stand having them next door. Sweden exported all its religious, practically every last one, during the 1800s. Now finding a religious extremist is like finding a teetotaller (sp?)(often the same person): they’re loud but very very rare.
Yes the puritans poisoned our cultural history, but they aren’t anteceedents for most of our “religious” bigots. Most of them came later.
Touche. My religious history on the intolerant christian sects is rather lacking. I’m pretty sure that most of them did not originate on asia, africa, or australia. I assumed they were largely shipped over from europe. If not, then from what population did they spring?
inbreeding?
I think they just forgot their history more than anything else. We were founded by a bunch of religious extremists, but they certainly weren’t all the same religion.
Oh, I think that streak of americanism is European in origin. If nothing else, the major themes of the religions which have become the fundamentalist mainstays in the US stem from european religions. I just don’t buy that the puritans specifically contributed a giant share of the stock. In fact, the massachusetts bay colony became relatively small to the general, relatively homogeneous population of the US colonies in pretty short order.
I think if you’re going to look back to the very original colonies, it’s fair to identify New Sweden (various) , Maryland (catholics), and probably others as hotspots of religious intolerance, but I’d say they were pretty significantly offset by the very tolerant Rhode Island, and more significantly Pennsylvania, the site of the largest english-speaking city in the world outside of London, at the time, and a very open harbor to a wide range of religious groups, many of whom have deep religious divisions among them. Catholics and protestants, baptists and otherwise, all settled within the governance of the Pennsylvania colony, and the state was not terribly secular, but rather was run in strong accordance to what were becoming Quaker ideals, which only seems secular in that it is fairly abstract.
I think your theory has merit, althuogh I wonder if it may have something to do with the “conversion” to americanism that is so common among our immigrants (all immigrants?). Alternatively, it might have to do with the wave of relatively lower class society which arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s driven by famine and unrest. One common armchair theory is that fundamentalist religion flourishes in ignorance, and a sea of uneducated immigrants would be fertile ground if this theory holds any water.
Hmm, that’s enough empty pontificating for the night.
Actually, the parts of our country founded by religious intolerance (Massachusetts by Puritans, Maryland by Catholics, the upper midwest by Lutherans) are actually the most progressive and least fundamentalist parts of the country today. Some of this may have to do with MA (for instance) adapting to huge waves of Irish and Italian catholic immigrants, but I think there’s something about the sort of Christianity they tended to follow, which emphasized helping the poor in addition to all these other things. Education and a social safety net then led to modern progressivism. Or so goes the story I’m making up right now.