American Religion & Puritanism Pop Quiz

Click the correct letter (A, B, C, or D)

$ 100

A leading religious group in early American society goes under the name …

A: The Twelve Apostles

B: The Puritans

C: The Vegans D: Credence Clearwater Revival

The Puritans / Puritanism

Terminology

1. Puritanism - The beliefs and practices characteristic of Puritans, most of whom were Calvinists who wished to purify the Church of England of its Catholic aspects

2. Puritanism - Strictness and austerity in conduct and religion

3. Puritanism – “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy”

(H. L. Mencken, Chrestomathy 1949)

Puritanism

- religious reform movement within the Church of England in the 1560s

- term of contempt assigned to the movement by its enemies

Puritan family around 1563

“We call you Puritans not because you are purer than other men but because you think yourselves to be purer.” (1603)

Oliver Ormerod, English clergyman:

Religion in Colonial New England

Three important religious groups

• Presbyterians - Calvinist theology- secretive, against Bishops- authority of the Scripture

• Pilgrims- founded the Plymouth colony

(Massachusetts)- saw the Church of England as impure- strongly separatist- independence of local churches

• Puritans - settled in Virginia and Massachusetts Bay, predominant group - developed „church-centered societies in the New England colonies

- “Only the ‘truly elect’ should be admitted to church membership.”

Early Wave of Immigration to New England

“Without some understanding of Puritanism, it may safely be said, there is no understanding of America.” (p. 4)

Perry Miller, “The Puritan Way of Life” (1950)

”

HS Brandt 32 111 Puritan America? 

Religious Fundamentalism, Bible Politics, and the Rhetoric of Redemption — 17th Century to Present

HS Brandt 32 111 Puritan America? 

Religious Fundamentalism, Bible Politics, and the Rhetoric of Redemption — 17th Century to Present

Creed

Men are saved by their faith, not by their deeds. (Miller, p. 10)

In order to be saved they must receive from God a special infusion of grace (Miller, 17)

Certain souls are predestined to heaven, others are sentenced to damnation (Miller, 17)

Speech by ....

George W. Bush Speech held at Whitehall Palace, London, Nov 19, 2003

“At times Americans are even said to have a puritan streak. And where might that have come from?”

(LAUGHTER)

“Well, we can start with the Puritans.

To this fine heritage, Americans have added a few traits of our own: the good influence of our immigrants and the spirit of the frontier.”

$ 200

Complete this phrase from John Winthrop‘s famous speech held in 1630:

“Consider that wee shall be as a …”

A: Ttown in a Forest

B: Citty upon a Hill

C: Capittal at a Lake

D: Mettropolis on a Mountain

“City upon a hill” (1630)

We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.

(John Winthrop, „Model of Christian Charity“)

John Winthrop (1588-1649)

John Winthrop (1588-1649)

- Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company (1629)

- Christian mission (evangelization of the heathens)

- Obligation for America to become a beacon of godliness for

all of humankind

Biblical image of the EXODUS

“We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when

ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when he shall

make us a praise and glory that men shall say of

succeeding plantations, ‘the Lord make it likely that of

New England.’ ”

COVENANT WITH GOD

Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into Covenant with him for his work.

Covenant

God has entered into a quasi-contractual agreement, not just with

individuals, but with a people.

collective destiny

Winthrop and his colleagues were [...] actually early American precapitalists who were about to initiate a process of divinely supported material progress that would lead to violent conquest, unquenchable imperialism, and self-righteous and self-obsessive nationalism.

(Emory Elliott)

$ 300

Which Puritan minister held a sermon at the departure of Winthrop‘s fleet for New England in 1630?

A: John Wool B: John Cotton

C: John Acrylic D: John Polyester

John Cotton (1595-1652)

One of the most influential representatives of the colony

of Massachusetts

Banned Anne Hutchinson in 1637.

Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643)

Hutchinson was persecuted for antinomianism - the belief that

grace, conversion, and study of the scriptures were sufficient for

salvation and that churches and the clergy were basically superfluous.

- She “infected” other members of her family with her beliefs

(according to John Winthrop who led the trial)

John Cotton, God’s Promise to His Plantation (1630)

John Cotton, God’s Promise to His Plantation (1630)

“God makes room for a people in three ways:

First, when He casts out the enemies of a people before them by lawful war with inhabitants.

Second, when He gives a foreign people favor in the eyes of any native people to come to sit down with them either by way

of purchase […] or else when they give it in courtesy, as Pharaoh did the land of Goshen unto the sons of Jacob.

Thirdly, when He makes a country though not altogether void of inhabitants, yet void in the place where they reside. Where there is a vacant place, there is liberty for the sons of Adam or Noah to come and inhabit, though they neither buy it nor ask their leaves”

$ 500

Which community was founded by the English cleric Roger Williams in 1636?

A: Fate B: Destiny

C: Providence D: God‘s Will

Providence, Rhode Island (1636)

Roger Williams (1603-1683)

Father of American Baptism

Fighter for religious freedom

Separation of State and Church

$ 1,000

An important literary genre in early colonial America was the …

A: Thriller B: Captivity Narrative

C: Detective Novel D: Arztroman

The Captivity Narrative

“Yet the Lord still showed mercy to me, and upheld me; and as soon as he wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with the other.”

Mary Rowlandson (1682)

“I cannot but take notice of the wonderful mercy of God to me in those afflictions, in sending me a Bible: one of those Indians […] came to me, and asked me, if I would have a Bible, he had got it in his Basket” (Rowlandson, p. 19)

- Captivity as God’s test for the believers (and as punishment)

- Redemption as God’s mercy

The captivity narrative functions as …… a spiritual autobiography

… a sermon… a jeremiad

REDEMPTION

- saved from evil

- delivered from sin

The Captivity Narrative (Mary Rowlandson, Hannah Dustin, etc.)

$ 2,000

In 1692, the infamous „Witch Trials“ took place at …

A: Salinas B: Salieri

C: Salem D: Salome

The Salem Witch Trials (1692)

“[A]t prodigious witch-meetings, the wretches have proceeded so far as to concert and consult the methods of rooting out the Christian religion from this country, and setting up instead of it perhaps a more gross diabolism than ever the world saw before.”

(Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 227)

The Trial of Martha Carrier (Salem, August 2, 1692)

“This rampant hag, Martha Carrier, was the person of whom the confessions of the witches, and of her own children among the rest, agreed that the devil

had promised her she should be Queen of Hebrews.”

(Cotton Mather, Wonders, 1692/93, p. 231)

Cotton Mather (1663-1728)

- Prominent Puritan minister, author, and pamphleteer (e.g., Magnalia Christi Americana, 1702)

- Grandson of John Cotton

„The New Englanders are a people of God settled in those [territories] which were the devil‘s territories; and it may be easily supposed that the devil was exceedingly disturbed, when he perceived such a people here accomplishing the promise […] made unto our blessed Jesus.“

Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World (1693), p. 225f.

$ 4,000

The period of renewed interest in religion in the 1720s to 50s was called …

A: The Great Awakening

B: The Great Expectation

C: The Great Depression

D: The Great Gatsby

The Great

Awakening

Period of renewed interest in religion (1720s-1750s)

Jonathan Edwards(1703-1758)

American theologian and philosopher

Main impulse for the Great Awakening

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)

„God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth [...]. The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow.“ (Edwards, p. 342)

$ 8,000

Whose name stands for the secularization of America in the 18th century?

A: Benjamin Franklin B: Benjamin Button

C: Benjamin Netanjahu D: Benjamin Blümchen

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

“Franklin represents the American errand as the creation of a secular state that is purified of the corruption of European politics and a social structure based on inherited title. It is the secular America that will be a model of democratic government.“ (Deborah L. Madsen, American Exceptionalism, 37)

Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin are often seen as representing two contrasting visions of American society.

$ 16,000

The classical novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which criticizes the Puritan past, is called …

A: The Crimson Pirate B: The Red Raindeer

C: The Scarlet Letter D: Purple Rain

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

- descendent of Puritan immigrants

- His great grandfather was a judge in the Salem witchcraft trials

- Dark Romanticism, The Scarlet Letter (1850)

The Scarlet Letter (1850)

$ 32,000

In a famous phrase, Ralph Waldo Emerson described the spiritual „unity“ which contains “every man‘s particular being” as the …

A: Over-Mind B: Over-Brain

C: Over-Soul D: Over-Ture

Over-SoulRalph Waldo Emerson

(in: Essays: First Series, 1841)

- “that great nature in which we rest”

- “that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man‘s particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

- independent “man of letters”

- former Unitarian minister

- became alienated from Church after his wife‘s death in 1832

- Published „Nature“ in 1836 -> Transcendentalism (the belief that phenomena of nature carry a higher, spiritual truth)

The divine is seen not as an exterior or „higher“ power, but as a tangible force within human experience.

God-reliance -> -> Self-reliance

Triad:

Self Over-Soul Nature

“I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” (“Nature” 1836)

$ 64,000

Which cult became very popular in the United States in the late 19th century?

A: Muscular Christianity

B: Body-Building Catholicism

C: Society of Fit Jesus

D: Gym Protestantism

Muscular Christianity (term coined in 1857)

Major cultural movement in the late Victorian era.

- underlined the need for an energetic Christian activism, combined with an ideal of vigorous masculinity.

›Muscular Christian Shepherd Boys‹ (1912)

Jesus pushed a plane and swung an adze; he was a successful carpenter. [...] His muscles were so strong that when he drove the money-changers out, nobody dared to oppose him! Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows (1925)

$ 125,000

The wave of „bible epics“ in the 1950s started with the movies Samson and Delilah and …

B: Errare Humanum Est

C: Veni Vidi Vici D: Per Aspera ad Astra

A: Quo Vadis?

1951

1950

$ 250,000

In 1954, U.S. Congress passed a bill which added two words to the Pledge of Allegiance:

A: „we believe“ B: „under God“

C: „our paradise“ D: „in heaven“

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by the Baptist minister Francis Bellamy. The words „under God“ were added in 1954.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands; one nation /under God/, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

(1924-1954, with addition since 1954)

$ 500,000

Which evangelist and spiritual advisor to many U.S. Presidents is famous for his broadcasted sermons?

A: Billy Bob Thornton

B: Billy Idol

C: Billy Graham D: Billy Bookcase

William F. “Billy” Graham(* 1918)

„I am selling the greatest product in the world; why shouldn‘t it be promoted as well as soap?“ (in: Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, 1955, p. 114)

$ 1,000,000

A: Islam B: Buddhism

C: Judaism D: Nonreligious/Secular

Which is, according to recent statistics, the second most influential creed in the U.S. behind Christianity?

http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#religions