Rediscovering what it means to be American

By Mary Knapke

While Puritans often are remembered primarily as a morally austere group that settled Massachusetts, Dr. Ramón Luzárraga reminded a crowd of Catholic young adults last Thursday that there is much more to the Puritan legacy.

CT/MARY KNAPKE

Ramon Luzarraga speaks during a recent Theology on Tap session.

"We are rediscovering what it means to us to be Americans," Luzárraga said, adding that as part of that process, "we need to recover the Puritan influence on our culture."

Luzárraga, an instructor in the religious studies department at the University of Dayton, spoke about Puritan influence on American culture at Theology on Tap, a lecture series geared toward young adults. Luzárraga holds degrees from Fordham University, the Divinity School of Yale University and Marquette University and specializes in political theology — the study of how theology transforms culture.

"I specialize in things that can’t be discussed in polite company: religion and politics," he said, adding that he was raised in an environment where such topics were often debated in explosive discussions at the dinner table.

Contemporary notions of who the Puritans were do not acknowledge the role they played in creating a national identity in this country. While their ideals and values derived primarily from their English nationality, those values that made them different from other English men and women is "what makes them interesting" and is what makes Americans who we are today, Luzárraga said.

Those distinctly Puritan values include the notion that America holds a unique mission in the world. Puritans believed they had a covenant with God to create a perfect Christian commonwealth in the New World.

In his 1630 sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," Puritan leader John Winthrop called the colonies a "city upon a hill" — a community of people who had a holy duty to purify Christianity and serve as an example of a model Protestant society. This notion has been echoed in contemporary history in speeches by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Luzárraga said this spirit "continues to propel America" in the idea that we as a nation should excel in all fields and even extends to our foreign policy.

Luzárraga said one "unabashed plus" of the Puritan legacy is "how they left behind the tradition of volunteerism in this country." With no monarchy or aristocracy in the colonies, "there was nobody there to tell them what to do," he said. Each aid association, church, college and colony was established by groups of people working together to build a new civilization.

"Puritans believed — and Americans still believe this — that a dedicated group of people can organize and change something . . . can organize and transform the world. And you know what? They’re right," Luzárraga said.

Another distinct Puritan value was what Luzárraga called a "pietistic perfectionism," or a preoccupation with pursuing moral integrity. It is perhaps the quality most often identified with America’s Puritan heritage and one which Americans continue to exhibit.

"Even if it’s inconsistently practiced, there is always something out there that sets off Americans on some kind of crusade," Luzárraga said, pointing out that "every single reform movement that was launched in the United States — the abolitionist movement, civil rights, the early women’s movement, prison reform — was driven by religion. Something touched a group of citizens and got them mad with righteous anger."

While a sense of duty to improve the world has been a positive force in the United States in the correction of social inequalities, Luzárraga said such pietistic perfectionism "can also make a moral life bleak, can make a moral life just (about) following rules, can make a moral life just dry. I don’t teach rules to my students," he said. "I teach virtues and learning to fall in love with the good . . . and the end of virtue is to know and love God."

Scott Schulze, a parishioner at St. Patrick in Troy, said he learned a lot from Luzárraga’s presentation.

"If you look at the United States and the rest of the world, you can notice what those aspects are that make us different and how the Puritan background has affected our culture. That was very interesting," he said.

Theology on Tap continues at the Oregon Express in Dayton’s Oregon District at 7 p.m. each Thursday until Oct. 18. After the close of the fall series, the young adult Christian Life group meets every Thursday at 7:30 at Terra Cotta Cafe in downtown Dayton.