Lux Lucet

Colin Kaepernick exudes joy while celebrating Unthanksgiving on Alcatraz Island, 11/23/2017.

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.

    – H. L. Menken

Is any group more hated than the Puritans, or any holiday more than Thanksgiving?

In this very PC age of tolerance, the only unpardonable sin is to lack it.  Speak ill, even in the most hushed tones, of most any people or creed and the cultural Marxists will hew your intolerant self to pieces.  But their fury is selective.

In truth, while they preach universal tolerance, their application of it is quite particular. Same-sex marriage? That’s in. And shame on anyone who speaks ill of it. Or ask yourself, when was the last time you saw any mainstream news outlet take issue with any facet of Islam? It’s the religion of peace, is it not? At least, that’s the official line.

But when it comes to Christianity, that’s another story entirely. Even considered in a broad sense, Christianity certainly finds itself unwelcomed in the halls of power and influence in our post-Christian society.

But if you want to see some real fireworks, bring up the Puritans. We’re told by homosexual movie director and fashion designer Tom Ford they were “uptight.” Noted libertine Hugh Hefner found them to be ” persecuting.”

“Puritanical” has long been a sort of swear word used to denigrate anyone or anything the speaker finds prudish.

Late 19th and early 20th century anarchist Emma Goldman was clearly triggered by the Puritans,. Evidencing not only a hatred of the Puritans, but also her profound ignorance of their theology, she wrote, “Puritanism has made life itself impossible…Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixed an immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic idea that life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God.”

G.K. Chesterton, erroneously considered a Christian writer by many Protestants, had his issues with the Puritans too. In particular, he hated their, and the Scripture’s, teaching on doctrine of election. Chesterton wrote, “Why should the Calvinist object to an aristocracy? The Calvinists were an aristocracy; they were the most arrogant an awful of aristocracies by the nature of their own belief: they were the elect…The first conception of Calvinism is a fierce insistence on the utterly arbitrary nature of power. The King of the Cavaliers was certainly not so purely willful, so sublimely capricious a sultan, as the God of the Puritans.”

Dislike of the Puritans is not the sole province of homosexuals, libertines, anarchists and papists either. It is alive and well among pseudo-Protestant wanna-be intellectuals as well. I once had a seminary professor whine that the Puritans lacked “imagination,” proffering as evidence their act of closing the theatres in England. But what was worse, at least in this professor’s eyes, seemed to be the fact that they took the Bible and the Reformation seriously and were steadfastly opposed to the real objects of his love, the Roman Church-State and her pope. As Balaam did in seeking to curse, this professor instead blessed the objects of his wrath.

Thanksgiving Day, as it finds its origins in the experience of the Pilgrim settlers of New England, has, in recent years, become a predictable target of the Puritan haters and SJWs everywhere. Who knew a turkey dinner could be so triggering? Actress Mayim Bialik finds Thanksgiving reminds her of, “one of the grossest examples of genocide in recent history.” Further objections to Thanksgiving for Bialik are the “killing of an animal and laying its carcass and eating the skin and the flesh of it,” as well as its proximity to Jewish holidays.

GQ got in on the act this year by publishing an article telling its readers they have a civic duty to ruin Thanksgiving. Colin Kaepernick chimed in by celebrating an Unthanksgiving Day on Alcatraz. In 2015, president Obama helpfully suggested gun control as a Thanksgiving Day table topic.

But when it comes to anti-Thanksgiving rants, one would have a hard time doing better than the Ryan McMaken’s 2007 diatribe published on Lew Rockwell.com. McMacken cannot be accused of SJWism, but he is a Romanist, and a rather militant one at that. Thanksgiving angers Mr. McMacken, because it’s not a real holy day, the defining characteristic of which is, “the veneration of saints and martyrs and prophets and ancient universal truths.” McMaken makes it clear that he would much prefer to take his toys, go home, and venerate St. Cecillia than so much as consider giving thanks to God for his provision for him and for the country he calls home.

To which I say, very well, let him do so.

What I find interesting in all this anti-Thanksgiving Day, anti-Puritan rhetoric is that the protesting pundits – with all their huffing, puffing and threatening to hold their breath until they die – have become the very caricature of the people they dislike: narrow minded, joyless and bigoted. If Puritanical, at least in its usual pejorative sense, can be applied to anyone, it seems to this author that it fits the anti-Puritan, anti-Thanksgiving crowd more than anyone else. Yet the irony seems entirely lost on them.

Leland Ryken is a recent scholar who has studied and defended the Puritans. He wrote, “No group of people has been more unjustly maligned in the twentieth century than the Puritans. As a result, we approach the Puritans with an enormous baggage of culturally ingrained prejudice.” According to Ryken, “The Puritans’ sense of priorities in life was one of their greatest strengths. Putting God first and valuing everything else in relation to God was a recurrent Puritan theme.”

And that’s really the rub, isn’t it? The world hates the Puritans, not because they were a horrible people, but because they were a godly people. Jesus told his listeners that they were blessed when men spoke evil of them falsely for his name’s sake. For my part, I cannot help but think of this passage every time I read another hit piece on the Puritans and on Thanksgiving from those who by their words and their deeds show themselves to be enemies of the cross of Christ.

Let us who know Christ, therefore, be thankful for the godly heritage the Puritans gave to this county, and thankful for that most Calvinist of American holidays, Thanksgiving Day. Long may it continue.