From Selflessness to Selfishness: The Failure of Puritan Ideals in America
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One cannot doubt or deny the influence of the early Puritan’s on American ideals. Though the
Puritans on the Mayflower were hardly the first Europeans to arrive in the New World, or even the first
Englishmen, it was the Puritans of the Eastern seaboard who poured the foundation for a nation of high
moral standards and a strong belief in work. As the identity of what an American was began to take
root, the selflessness spoken of in John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” gave way to personal
selfishness, based on a righteous ability to judge another’s worth against one’s own.
John Winthrop penned a vision of an ideal Christian community when he published A Model of
Christian Charity in 1630. In this work, Winthrop declares all “true Christians are of one body in Christ”
as he begins his summation in the first chapter. This same summation concludes with “This sensibleness
and sympathy of each other’s conditions will necessarily infuse into each part as native desire and
endeavor to strengthen, defend, reserve and comfort the other.” There is, explicit in his writing, the
direction by God to be sympathetic to one another’s situation and to help each other, imploring a
Christian to “give beyond their ability,” 1 if another’s situation required it.
Early Puritans defined the word sympathy as “fellow feeling,” and the foundation of said fellow
feeling was to place one’s self in the position of others. Using this ideal, Winthrop is telling his fellows to
look not at their own situation, but the situation or need of your fellow Christian. Thus, the level of gift
or charity is determined not by one’s own ability or capacity to give, but by the recipient’s need. 2 So, it’s
not how much you have that weighs on the level of charity, but according to Winthrop, what the other
needs.
John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” The Winthrop Society.
http://winthropsociety.com/doc_charity.php
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2
Abram VanEngen, “Puritanism and the Power of Sympathy,” Early American Literature, Vol. 45 (2010): 533.
Many may argue the Puritan’s fled Europe in order to escape religious persecution by a Catholic
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monarch, Charles I, and an English backlash against perceived excesses of the Reformation. While this
might have been the case for many, there is another, wholly different perspective available. What
Winthrop and others saw in the New World was an opportunity to build a theocracy, a community
wholly based on the Puritan interpretations of the bible. This was a far cry from Jefferson’s belief that
the government should not and could not establish a state religion. The Protestants in general and the
Puritans specifically, saw America as “a unique space, within which man, freed from material and
intellectual tyranny, might find God.” When the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock, they came prepared
and convinced they could create Winthrop’s “shining city upon a hill;” 3 a beacon for the world to see
and, in seeing, recognize the one true God by their example, adopting the beliefs they shared. Again, key
to those beliefs was the idea of charity, of selfless giving of one’s own property and goods to those in
need.
In Matthew, Jesus is clear: “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye if a
needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matt 19:24) In this and other
passages in the Gospels, Jesus again and again tells the reader of the dangers of wealth. In Luke, Jesus
tells the story of Lazarus, the beggar who dies, starving and hurt, outside the gates of a wealthy man.
After the wealthy man dies, he sees Lazarus in Heaven with Abraham and begs of Abraham to send
Lazarus to succor him. Abraham responded “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your
good things. While Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.”
(Luke 16:25) 4 Abraham told the wealthy man specifically he was being punished for not succoring
3
4
Tim Stanley, “American Revivalism: To Build a City on a Shining Hill,” History Today, Vol. 60, Issue 11 (2010) 24.
New International Version Bible. (2011). https://www.biblegateway.com/
Lazarus on earth. Jesus allows for no grey area. If you withhold your bounty from those less fortunate,
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you will burn. Winthrop’s Model requires this same charity.
Much of Winthrop’s Model is devoted to defining this giving. It’s in his efforts to add more
structure to Jesus’ words, trying to better fold them into the Puritan philosophy, where the loophole of
selfishness is created. He does it in the first two paragraphs:
God Almighty in his most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the
condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high
and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjugation.
Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus place Winthrop’s caste system on God’s mercy or his love. Jesus doesn’t
separate the poor from the rich in a positive manner at all. In fact, Jesus goes out of his way to place the poor
and suffering closer to heaven. Winthrop’s social strata loophole is given further foundation in the very next
paragraph of his work:
First, to hold conformity with the rest of His works, being delighted to show
forth the glory of His wisdom in the variety and difference of the creatures and
the glory of His power, in ordering all of these differences for the preservation
and good of the whole; (emphasis added). 5
In these two statements, fundamental to Puritan beliefs at the time, Winthrop doesn’t quote any scripture,
because, in fact, there is nothing in the Gospels that supports them. Despite this, Winthrop is making a case that
the rich are rich because of God’s will. God has gifted them their bounty and it is upon them to share that
John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” The Winthrop Society.
http://winthropsociety.com/doc_charity.php
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bounty according to their own judgments on the worthiness of the recipients. Winthrop creates a small monster
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here that only gets more out of hand.
Later, Winthrop actually modifies the bible when he discusses the forgiveness of debts. In A Model,
during a question and answer phase in the first chapter, Winthrop writes that all debts are to be forgiven
“Except in cause where thou has a lawful debt,” as commanded in Deuteronomy 15.2 where every seven years
the creditor was to forgive the debt of his brother “if he were as poor as he appears.” 6 The Law in Deuteronomy
makes no such distinction. It states clearly to forgive all debts owed by “a fellow Israelite” (Deut 15:2), 7 The Bible
makes absolutely no distinction as to the lawfulness or security of the debt, or whether or not they can actually
pay. As a Puritan, according to Winthrop, if you hold no collateral of the debtor, which God all of a sudden
doesn’t require you to forgive, you are required to judge the creditor’s worthiness of your charity. Winthrop
creates the right to judge.
Viewed in this light, the Puritan Model of Christian Charity forwarded by Winthrop states that wealth is a
gift of God, and since all things are ordained by God, so is suffering and poverty. Further, since God has ordained
your poverty, and has granted me my wealth, and, according to Winthrop, this “great King will have many
stewards… dispensing His gifts to man by man,” 8 I, by my wealth, am a steward of God’s gifts on earth.
Therefore, since I am God’s steward, I can judge your worthiness, both of my charity and your deservedness of
suffering and poverty. This righteousness, this ability to judge, creates the loophole where selfishness can be
justified.
John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” The Winthrop Society.
http://winthropsociety.com/doc_charity.php
6
7
New International Version Bible. (2011). https://www.biblegateway.com/
John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” The Winthrop Society.
http://winthropsociety.com/doc_charity.php
8
Winthrop manipulates biblical texts subtly. Johnathan Edwards, who wrote Sinners in the Hand of an
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Angry God, created the model preachers followed sparking “The First Great Awakening.” 9. Written more than
100 years after Winthrop’s Model, Edwards tosses all subtlety aside, blatantly going counter to scripture in order
to hammer home his own personal beliefs of a vengeful and angry God. In Sinners, Edwards claims “justice calls
for an infinite punishment of their sins.” (Baym 210). In justification for this, he quotes Luke 15:7, referencing a
tree that bears no fruit: “Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?” 10 What Edwards leaves out is the very
next line in the Gospel, in which the caretaker replies, “leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it
and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.” (Luke 13: 8-9) 11 Edwards has placed
himself in the position of saying the tree must be destroyed when the scripture clearly states the tree needs
nurturing, not punishment. Edwards, clearly more interested in punishment, simply leaves that part out.
Further, Edwards ties this particular part of the Gospel in to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The quote of
Luke is firmly tied into the “grapes of Sodom,” implying crisis of immoral behavior not related to charity, when in
fact, it’s actually the opposite. According to the Bible, the sin of Sodom was “she and her daughters were
arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and the needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49) Edwards, yet
again, moves past the need to nurture and succor the needy. What has been firmly entrenched by this adoption
is not a rigid adherence to the words of the Gospels. Instead, what is now preached is a rigid adherence to the
beliefs of Puritanism above the words of the Gospel. This has become moral and social code developed by man,
not Jesus, in order to justify the actions and beliefs of men, specifically men who felt themselves morally
superior and righteous.
Tim Stanley, “American Revivalism: To Build a City on a Shining Hill,” History Today, Vol. 60, Issue 11 (2010) 24.
Johnathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&context=etas
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10
11
New International Version Bible. (2011). https://www.biblegateway.com/
As much as the Puritans were a part of America’s formation, there were still many other groups in the
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New World and even New England, many of which did not subscribe to the Puritan ideals expressed first by
Winthrop and then modified by Edwards. Although born to a Protestant family, Benjamin Franklin’s beliefs were
as far from Puritan ideals as a Protestant could be. For example, as opposed to the Puritan belief people were
born into sin, Franklin believed “people were naturally innocent,” and that through education, we could be “free
from the tyrannies of church and monarchy.” 12 Franklin was also a wealthy and successful man, both as a writer
and a businessman. In addition to his Almanacs, Franklin, in 1757, published “The Way to Wealth,” and in so
doing joined forever the rigid adherence to a fixed, personal belief structure, as the Puritans did, to the pursuit
of individual wealth.
The mock sermon is a literary form which has been in existence since the early medieval periods with a
“powerful and wide-ranging influence on literary composition.” 13 With “The Way to Wealth,” Franklin uses the
power of the mock sermon to fully develop the idea of the pursuit of personal wealth as a moral imperative. In
it, Franklin uses a fictional character, Richard Saunders, the author of Franklin’s hugely successful and popular
“Poor Richard’s Almanac” to recount the story told by another fictional character, Father Abraham. Not only
does Franklin use the form of a traditional sermon, with Father Abraham speaking his wisdom to his
congregation, the speaker’s name itself, Father Abraham, is an unmistakable biblical reference. In fact, it follows
in the footsteps of the Gospels themselves, where a third party, A Matthew or a Luke, for example, recounts the
sermon of a holy figure, Jesus. “A Way to Wealth” is a gospel; it is the Gospel of Abraham according to Poor
Richard. In this gospel, Franklin spends much effort attacking idleness, frivolity and debt. Page after page of
sayings from “Poor Richards Almanac” extoll the virtue of work, even going so far as to say “leisure is a time for
doing something useful;” and elevates the return of that effort with “industry gives comfort, and plenty, and
respect.” Franklin also advocates for the keeping of wealth when he says “(earn) what you can, and what you
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13
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Ed., ed. Nina Baym(New York, Norton, 2008), 235.
Ben Parsons, “The Sermon on Saint Nobody,” Journal of American Folklore, Volume 122 (2010) 92.
(earn) hold; ‘Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold.” 14 Now, with this one work, rather than piety,
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charity, and selflessness, the new American Ideal is attainment and protection of wealth.
No matter the intentions of Winthrop when he penned “A Model of Christian Charity” as he and his
fellow Puritan’s crossed the Atlantic for the New World, in his effort to create a guide for the creation of a
utopian theocracy, he warped the words of the Gospels, creating an opportunity for self-righteousness among
the colonists. Jonathan Edwards took that stratified model of God’s gifts and used it to create an inflexible
model of determining the worthiness of others judged against a standard of inflexible moral high ground.
Finally, Benjamin Franklin, turned that inflexible ideal of holiness and superiority into a drive for personal
wealth. Now, Americans were fully freed from the constraints of selfless charity and morally obligated to create
and preserve personal wealth.
14
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Ed., ed. Nina Baym (New York, Norton, 2008) 238,241.