Analysis Of The Reasons: The Puritans Have Been Viewed As Killjoys
This assignment will be discussing the reasons why the Puritans have been popularly viewed as killjoys, and how the history of emotions challenged this image. The traditional view of Puritans was that they were killjoys and many protestants were unhappy with Elizabeth’s church settlement as they argued that she missed the opportunity to expel bishops and popes and kneeling at communion the term Puritans was used as an insult to slander opponents.
The term ‘Puritan is too useful to be abandoned and almost too weighed down with dubious intellectual baggage to be useful’. The word was given to the protestants that were discontented with the precision and authenticity of the Reformation of the English Church. The Puritans wanted further structural change, a campaign which ‘blocked every turn by the Elizabethan regime the label Puritan became acceptable in the seventeenth century. Peter Lake drew attention towards ‘moderate puritans who fought to change the system from within. The Church of England did its best to force Puritanism out and because of this Puritans endured a generation of persecution before securing a measure of reluctant tolerance. According to Patrick Collinson, the hotter sort of Protestant term was used to imply that Puritanism could have had its own doctrine and polity as his students would put it as zealous Protestantism could be a popular religion.
Puritans have been popularly viewed as killjoys for over four centuries because of the expression Puritan as it takes the meaning of being ‘dour, joyless and repressed behaviour. The stereotype of Puritan emotionlessness has something to do with the Calvinist and post – Calvinist cultures because Puritans who moved to America and became the chosen ones found the emotionalism of revivalist religion unpleasant and saw it as their duty to deplore their society morals. Hence, the famous quote from H. L. Mencken; ‘Puritanism the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. ’ In addition to this, Puritanism is marked by the backward glance, by an endless yearning to return to the old early days of the church also to the purity and innocence of Eden, its moral and spiritual effort was focused towards living as ‘strangers and pilgrims, natives of a better country, that is, a heavenly. However, it was the denial of the world that led to the ‘characterizations of the puritan as a fanatic killjoy. Furthermore, Puritans have been portrayed as a small and ‘isolated band of zealots and busybodies whose self-righteous extremism demanded little sympathy from the wider society. Collinson argues that Puritanism was a respectable movement and the leaders among them were elite for example, the civil war it pitted the Puritans against the Crown forces in which the Puritans won under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell.
It can be argued that Puritans were killjoys to a certain extent as they believed those puritans who was wealthy was blessed by God and was granted heaven. Alongside this they also banned drama, religious music and erotic poetry as they thought music in worship created a ‘dreamy state which was not conducive in listening to God. ’ This can suggest that Puritans were killjoys as they made sure to purify the church and perfect social living and created their own poetry in religious content. Moreover, Puritans have been interpreted as killjoys but it is clear that Puritans emphasise on spiritual disciplines increasing the love of joy and love for God even though Puritan ministers ‘opposed the government-sanctioned playing sports on Sundays’ as this has nothing to do with the religion even though they honoured the Sabbath, it was not meant for leisure or gifts the Puritans believed that they could have a good time by honouring God without any worldly affairs.
Nevertheless, Puritans had their own set of rules to follow within their own religion just like any other religion and for them to be labelled as killjoys is not reasonable as they saw life in a different perspective than any other religion during the four centuries, for instance the Puritans did not separate from society and interacted with the ungodly, they did not dress differently from those around them and in practice it seemed as though they had a foot in both the tavern and the religious meeting. However, they had to follow certain rules as it was part of their culture like any religion would do, for example they had a pattern of secular holidays and fasts, they made sure to read as this was vitally important to Puritans.
The Puritans and non-Puritans were almost alike as they both objected to many of the same things, for example drunkenness, sexual immorality and violence. Therefore, Puritans cannot be viewed as killjoys as some historians write them off as narrow punitive killjoys which does not seem fair as they did not really stop anyone from enjoying worldly affairs, they just had a different meaning to enjoying life as their beliefs was to enjoy life but, in a way it would benefit God.
