T
hese are broad-brush generalizations, but if any of them are allowed to stand, then we can acknowledge that the world is still divided between Cavaliers and Roundheads. This becomes clearer the less literal you are being. Puritanism in its negative sense is now less common among the Protestant faithful than among Progressives, who carry on the Puritan tradition unconsciously. Unshackled by belief—and Christian belief, as Chesterton’s Father Brown pointed out, is reasonable (“You attacked reason. . . . It’s bad theology”)—modern “puritans” merely indulge in the emotional characteristics of their seventeenth-century forebears: self-righteousness, moralism, and a delight in pointing out the sins of those with whom they happen to disagree. They have the vices of the Puritans, but not their virtues.
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