14
“All that your patient would probably classify as “Puritanism”—and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life.”
– Screwtape*
Issue 14
August 15, 2015
If you want to really hit someone, call them Puritanical. (Not ‘Puritan’, ‘Puritanical’). Somehow the adjective is more forceful than the noun.) That label, as Screwtape says, is one heavy weapon. You may say that someone is stingy, ill-tempered, vain, dull, thoughtless, selfish, backward, ignorant—all bad, but to really cut the ground from under someone, and to make yourself look pretty good in the process, accuse them of being Puritanical. To their face or behind their back to acquaintances whom you would like to impress with your tolerance and open mindedness.
In the passage before the quotation above, Screwtape has been talking to Wormwood* about some of his patient’s new friends, friends who will help move Wormwood’s patient away from dangerous influences, friends who are “rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world [who belittle] anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow man.” Such people do not talk about the traditional virtues which are the anchors of a good life. Rather they dismiss serious concern about behaving virtuously as ‘Puritanism’.
Sanctimonious, hypocritical, holier than thou—those are the Puritans for you. But think for a moment. What do you really know about the Puritans? Everybody’s first notion is that they burned witches, but you might want to check that out. What else? For most of us, our idea of Puritans comes from Nathaniel Hawthorne; the play, The Crucible; and several centuries of bad press, but there is so much more and better. If you have a moment, take a careful look at the real Puritans. You might back off a little. Interestingly, though, while Puritans are thought to be the very showpiece of hypocrisy, they rarely are shown as dishonest. Curious!
Anyway, what’s so bad about “temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life”?
*If you have not met Screwtape and Wormwood, read The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis.
