a listener asks about Puritanism in America

A listener to the RCIA Hollywood podcasts was kind enough to write on 2/21/08:

Hi Mr. Emmer,

Thanks for starting to upload RCIA Hollywood Podcasts again.

As I told Ms. Nicolosi via email last year, I came across the Tiber in the Easter Vigil of 2007, and I wished that my RCIA experience was as thorough as what the Catechumens are receiving in your program. It has been great going through the podcasts. It's been quite reinvigorating. I have especially enjoyed the bibliography posted. I never would have read any of the books or watched any of the movies listed without this site. What a treasure chest!

This most recent podcast I must applaud you on as the sound quality has improved by leaps and bounds!

Please keep up the good work.

I wanted to ask you a question about your comments in the Catholic Vision of the Moral Life. You referenced that America was not founded as a Christian Country; especially, your comments about Puritanism being a dualistic faith.

As a former UCC member, and having Mayflower ancestors, I would like to more about this concept. Any recommended readings?

Thanks.

PS: I am also subscribed to your DoxaPod Audio. I didn't know that you were related to both sources.

Thanks for the feedback! Finally (three months later) I am getting around to a thorough response to your question.

First, I meant to say that America was not founded as a Catholic country.

When Puritans came to America, they imported their Calvinist theology with them, a theology that is deeply dualistic. Literature that would demonstrate the way this dualism played itself out would be: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards, The Scarlet Letter and Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

After reading all of this literature, I wrote a poem based on Young Goodman Brown which explores Puritan dualism.

You might also be interested in a paper I wrote in college about the Puritan roots of Thoreau's transcendentalism. I think it goes a long way toward explaining the way American Catholics tend to misunderstand the place of authority and conscience in the moral life, as well as the role of the Church as a mediator of grace and revelation. I've posted the entire paper on my blog.

Finally, I, too, am a descendant of those who came to America on the Mayflower; John Alden (whose story is recounted in The Courtship of Miles Standish) is an ancestor of mine. So perhaps you and I are related!

Thanks again for writing, and for your patience in waiting for a reply!