Materialistic Puritans
The Puritans were a complicated section of society. Their religious practices prompted them to leave an oppressive country, their beliefs compelled them to immigrate to an almost unknown land, and their process of approving divine election was undermined by the believers’ own philosophies. The elect were identified by the blessings God bestowed on them, and yet striving to gain success for the sake of success was supposedly not scripturally sound. The complexities of this paradox simplify into a question: were the Puritans religious first and fighting against the inevitable corruption of materialism, or were they success-starved capitalists who used religion as their cover? The works of certain Puritan writers suggest that money and materialism found their way into a highly religious way of life rather than the other way around.
The first example lies in “A Model of Christian Charity,” a sermon written by John Winthrop. His first assertion is that God has decided that in “all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection” (95). Winthrop knows that wealth isn’t given to all men, but that the responsibility of wealth must be acknowledged by those who are blessed with success. Winthrop explains that this responsibility is given for three specific reasons. One, God is “counting Himself more honored in dispensing His gifts to man by man, than if He did it by His own immediate hands” (95). Two, so “that He might have the more occasion to manifest the work of His Spirit” so that everyone remembers their place in the Kingdom of God, whether it be low and under the “yoke” of superiors, or it be that of a superior with the position to become tyrannical (95). The final reason is “that every man might have need of other and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection” (95). According to Winthrop, money is given by God not only to show his...