though the consciences of such men are awakened

Today I finished reading The Pilgrim’s Progress. I’ve taken steps in the past few years to suspend all judgment on Evangelical materials because of the fear that my cynicism will usher in a forgetfulness for the details important for eventually forming my biases. On the back of the book, in bold, it reads: “A book that has crossed the barriers of time, race and culture…” - how unimaginative is that? Now, I applaud John Bunyan for sticking out 12 years of jail for preaching in an unauthorized zone, but I was really hoping for something more stinging. As a Catholic, especially, I wanted a bigger slap in the face than two evil men named Pope and Pagan. For the Puritans, most literate community in the Western world, the allegory was so simplistic that the message wasn’t even painful, as most Evangelical messages tend to be. And maybe it isn’t laborious, because…it is still so relevant. It still has such a currency in our modern world, our contemporary literature. And I am utterly aghast. I say we living in the same world. How much has changed since the days when John Bunyan was imprisoned and Anne Hutchinson excommunicated? Not much. Especially now where the relations movement exercising sanctity is stronger than ever, The Pilgrim’s Progress seems as contemporary a text as Left Behind, and about as hard an allegory to understand.

A brief history. Antinomian Crisis is a controversy rooted in the 4th century with Augustine and the Donotists. The latter advocated the separation of the pure members from the impure members of the church. Augustine draws from this the notion of two churches, the Invisible and the Visible. The first is known only to God; the second is the local congregation, which could not be pure because it is full of hypocrites and "misguided ones." The distinction is maintained by Calvin centuries later as the basis of congregationalism. Calvin argues that the Visible Church could contain the mostly pure but that hypocrites will always be hidden among the Saints. In England, the Calvinist lead is followed, but the intensity of the NE experiment causes the use of the public relation to be quite different from the English use. The public relation becomes a public examination introduced in order to produce purity via "rational charity"--but the theory is bound to fail because of the practice of the relation: women are not required to appear; persons with a long history of "apparent grace" were exempted; others were exempted due to extreme sickness; and finally, the relation becomes a device by which the community can maintain social conformity.

After the Antinomian crisis, the NE position on conversion is altered somewhat, so that the soul is not passive but has certain "obligations" in sanctification. The social functionality of the confession process and eventual acceptance into a church provide a means of social mobility within the class structure of Puritan community. Therefore, confession was not only the means of expression of spirituality and a declaration of faith, but also a binding and controlling mechanism in Puritan society for mitigating acceptable behavior among citizens. Membership to the church was denied to those that not only failed to express humility towards God and project a constant awareness of sin, but also to those whose social or political convictions did not conform to the established dogma. The highly disciplined and organized citizenry which resulted from this practice, may have been of great value in establishing survivable communities as early settlements in the New World, where there was no available infrastructure and agricultural arrangements that had been successfully established in European countries. On the other hand, given the expected level of acquiescence and subordination to the church authorities, individual liberties could have been suppressed and class divisions may have been exacerbated.

Why, oh why, do I write all of these things? I write them in part as a reflection on this terribly informative but enjoyable class, perhaps the last in America to teach the puritan canon as representative of early “American” literature. But I also write this as a reminder of the potent relevancy of history. Not literature, nor politics, not church and state rhetoric, nor eager protests. The end-times are ever-present: One person with one idea, one community in exodus from “The City of Destruction” hoping to form the perfect society.