/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>848235

Little did King James know that the very people whom he worked with to make the KJV would eventually kill his own son, and were no better than the Roman Catholic zealots who tried to kill James himself in the infamous Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot.

Maybe the average Puritan was fine, but the politically minded were scoundrels and committed regicide. They provided a template for the kind of revolutionary horror that plagued France and Russia later.

>>848235

After Laudianism began c. 1633, the Puritans and more specifically the Independents in the colonies changed their designation to Congregationalists and held synods in New England. Soon after, the baptists, who were repeatedly taxed to fund the puritan churches, were gradually kicked out of these first colonies and one of them founded the city of Providence in 1636. The first baptist church of Newport was founded approximately 1638 on the nearby island to the east of this, which was then called Rhode Island (nowadays called Aquidneck Island, the native name). This was the first body politic anywhere in the known world at this time, that upheld to freedom of conscience and no one was taxed to pay for any other church. Soon this made it into the U.S. Constitution.

But after this, the other colonies tried to create a confederation called the New England confederation in 1643, whose object was to surround and starve out the Rhode-islanders. The New England Confederation had a stated goal of religious conformity, similar to how the old Church of England had in Britain. However, RI gained a royal charter in 1663 that protected their earlier compact, thus quashing the attempt of the New England Puritans.

The Puritans took a different course in Britain. They kind of disappeared as a political faction after 1662 when the Act of Uniformity held, and the new division was between conformists and "dissenters." After the Act of Uniformity in 1689 under William and Mary, the politicization of these issues largely disappeared, so the association of religious and political views became less associated. Many dissenters who were baptists came over to the United States in the years 1662-1688 because of the differences in policies, which seems to have had a large effect on future relations between the colonies and outside.

>>848236

Utterly idiotic and historically bankrupt take

>>848244

King Charles was killed in "reality". There's nothing "historically bankrupt" about what I said. It happened. This is the only history that exists in this universe.

England got tired of Puritans and demonstrated that by restoring the monarchy, desecrating Cromwell's corpse, restored all of the old sacramental and high church tendencies of the original Church of England, and kicked all Puritan ministers out of the Church of England, in what came to be known as the "Great Ejection". They then penalized any laity with Puritan tendencies for a good 100 years or so. Puritans angered an entire country to cause this reaction. They were radicals. Radical politically, and religiously. And there are plenty of historians who see Cromwell as an early archetype of the "king killer" that Robespierre and Lenin later were.

>>848247

Also on that note, Lenin himself often talked about and admired Cromwell. They're two peas in a pod. Trotsky also famously wrote of him and saw himself in Cromwell:

"Nevertheless British workers can learn incomparably more from Cromwell than from MacDonald, Snowden, Webb and other such compromising brethren. Cromwell was a great revolutionary of his time, who knew how to uphold the interests of the new, bourgeois social system against the old aristocratic one without holding back at anything. This must be learnt from him, and the dead lion of the seventeenth century is in this sense immeasurably greater than many living dogs."

Your Puritan heroes are murderous bastards who are admired by other revolutionary scum.

>>848247

Couple things here. First off, there have always been casualties in wars. This is even true of wars and kings. Henry VII became king by conquest in the battle of Bosworth Field. Likewise, in law, if someone verifiably commits treason they might be subject to the ultimate penalty. This isn't even a matter of factions simply taking out their enemies, it is a real matter of law to be taken seriously.

Similarly to Charles, James II was later made to step down from the throne due to his treasonous policies. If he had chosen to resist unto blood, it would have likely come to that, but he allowed it to be bloodless. Similarly also, George III violated the laws of the land and the charters that had long provided legal status to the colonies, so he became a rebel and was dethroned in the west in the 18th century. The law all along was maintained.

Furthermore, who sets up and removes kings? Not truly men actually, but God. If God had not wanted to allow it, no traitor would have appeared, needed to be tried and executed in the wars of the three kingdoms (c. 1639-51). Job 12:23.

With regards to this particular monarchy though, of England and its successor state the UK (before George III anyway), it was long understood since the Magna Carta was ratified through the Statutes of Marlborough 1267, that the monarch had to abide by the terms of that charter, as it says, "if any judgement be given from henceforth contrary to the points of the charters […] it shall be undone, and holden for nought."

And this is what happened with the several treachery of Charles I, James II and George III. Charles I and his minister Laud in particular was the worst because he did not allow the nation to have peace.

>They were radicals.

Now this sounds awfully like a subjective judgment, but I am not going to argue for or against it, seeing as I have already shown that the New England Puritans were also a state church and thus not as different from their opponents as they made themselves out to be.

>And there are plenty of historians who see Cromwell as an early archetype of the "king killer" that Robespierre and Lenin later were.

There are plenty of wrong-headed people in this world as well, you can't go around making such silly analogies, honestly. You present an oversimplification. He didn't even take power until 1653. Charles I was condemned to die as a traitor when the govenment was held by the council of state four years prior to its dissolution by Cromwell. I'm not sure why you are so sympathetic to the man who wouldn't let his country have peace and didn't abide by the charter. (Try looking up his actions sometime instead of throwing a conniption like this).

>Also on that note, Lenin himself often talked about and admired Cromwell.

Ok, but where does Cromwell talk about and admire Lenin? I am sure that communists have compared themselves to many people, it doesn't make their analogies accurate.

We shouldn't reactionarily be the opposite of whatever the extremists say. That would be playing into the hegelian dialectic.

>>848253

>Furthermore, who sets up and removes kings? Not truly men actually, but God. If God had not wanted to allow it, no traitor would have appeared, needed to be tried and executed in the wars of the three kingdoms (c. 1639-51). Job 12:23.

It was men who did this. And they unfortunately lost their heads themselves when Charles II restored the throne. Cromwell's rule didn't last that long, relatively speaking, and many of the men who signed Charles I's execution were still alive when Charles II came back. So many other people had to die for that original act of regicide. I don't think God wanted this. It could have been resolved in a better way, and more people on both sides would have lived.

But my point is, one could easily say that God directed the Restoration. Puritans had a short lived victory. They never gained power again, and England made it even harder for religious dissenters to even have a voice whatsoever for a century or so. Nothing favored Puritans in the longrun.

>>848253

>I'm not sure why you are so sympathetic to the man

I'm sympathetic for the same reason that David never laid a hand on Saul, despite being hunted by him. I've come to the conclusion to not take killing kings lightly. And I'm not having a "conniption". I'm just trying to follow scripture. Even Jesus told Pilate that his power was given by heaven - and Pilate was a brutal pagan. If this much was granted to Saul or Pilate, how much more important is the rule of kings who are Christian and have been anointed in the Church? Yet Puritans like Cromwell, and all republican or communist revolutionaries that have plagued our world since him, delude themselves that power is a merely a relationship between citizens and leaders. It's a paradigm where citizens have the full power to call leaders into account. But scripture doesn't tell me anything about this. The biblical paradigm is between God and leaders first and foremost. I think citizens play a role, but it is vastly overstated. The same goes for Church polity as well, for that matter.

The puritans are heroes everyone should read

>>848235

>How do you guys feel about the Puritans?

They were heretics, just like all Protestants.

>>848235

they didn't like the christian elements of the christian religion