Book review: The New Puritans

How a religious movement has captured our modern society

I’m thirsty for understanding and hungry for comprehension. In my long march through literature I’ve read three or four books about the woke and while these resources have been useful, The New Puritans is my favorite to date.

Andrew Doyle writes with an eye towards the theological and The New Puritans blessed me with insight to understand the plethora of ways that the 21st century’s most polarizing trend is a religion. This is a spiritual belief system for people who would laugh at the anachronistic Christian burden of original sin or the transformation of water into wine, but themselves have no trouble accepting that every white person is corrupted with a soul of oppressive instincts, or that racism can be summoned into existence by mere incantation.

In reading The New Puritans I found it frustrating that throughout the book Doyle repeatedly assured me that he doesn’t believe in racism, thinks we should “stamp it out” wherever it occurs and that he has the best intentions for society in mind. I believe him, and I believed him the first time he said it! So rather than repeat myself I’m going to make a single statement and trust that you will be able to interpret my arguments in good faith throughout this article.

I am not a racist. I condemn racism and think that it’s a blight on this world. I do not want to be judged by the color of my skin, nor do I wish for anyone else to be labeled, characterized, slotted or discriminated against because of the melanin ratio of their epidermis.

And now, having made my position on the topic clear, let’s see if we can decipher the religious intonations of the cultural warriors who we’re all so fond of shaking our heads at.

Our era is characterised by the white heat of political tribalism and, as it has escalated, I have watched with a growing sense of incomprehension the curdling of rational minds.

What is religion?

A religion is a framework for interpreting the world and a set of suggestions about how we should act in various situations. Christianity urges us to turn the other cheek, to love thy neighbor as we love our own family and to forgive those who have sinned against us. Even if you’re not religious I expect that you’re familiar with the most basic notions of Christianity. But here’s a slightly different interpretation that you might not have considered before.

Christian doctrine asserts that humans are inherently flawed. We’re born greedy, slothful, rapacious, unnecessarily violent and jealous, and only by surrendering ourselves to God’s rules and maintaining a constant vigilance to live by Christian standards can a human become the best possible version of themselves. You could even classify Christianity as an early version of the self-help movement. You have issues and you’re a mess, so let’s get you out of that puke-stained toga and into something more divine.

The new puritans have a different interpretation. They believe that words dictate reality, and that if humans are racist or bigoted it is only because culture has convinced them to become so. If you were to extrapolate out the puritans’ beliefs to their logical conclusions, a man who grows up in a cave, free of all human contact, would be devoid of racial bias and once he shaved off his beard, ceased his insane ramblings about the thunder god and joined the HR department of his local university he would never discriminate against minority job applicants.

Theirs is a belief in the perfectibility of humankind. The objective is not to critique society as it is, but to engineer an entirely fresh pseudo-reality through the imposition of limitations on language, thought and perception. They seek to publicly shame those who stray from the righteous path.

The new puritans believe that culture corrupts individuals, and are convinced that the west is systemically racist. If that’s how you see the world it makes sense why they’re fixated on dismantling our society one institution at a time. Nothing is too extreme if you’re saving the world from evil!

We might ask: is the west systemically racist? I do not believe it is, Andrew Doyle certainly doesn’t think so either and in his book he provides numerous examples of just how non-racist our culture is. You should read The New Puritans if you’d like to get into all the details. I will simply point out that a lack of evidence of systemic racism does not prevent the puritans from advancing their point of view.

The separation of church and state

Another hallmark of every religion is that its adherents believe things that aren’t true. There are several reasons for this.

1. Simplicity - Reality is infinitely complex and even now, with our Hubble telescope and Hadron Collider, there are vast oceans of ignorance in our scientific understanding. No religion, cult or belief system can explain reality with perfect objectivity and honesty. Religions are useful because they provide simple explanations that make the world seem predictable and safe.

2. In-group cohesion - Like wearing your team’s jersey to a home game or getting a gang tattoo in prison, believing something that’s objectively untrue is a method of signifying in-group membership. Objectively inaccurate beliefs are a feature not a bug since they allow humans to form tightly-knit groups that stand up to outside scrutiny. For evidence of this you need only speak to a passionate sportsball fan, their team is always the best even if the stats tell a different story.

We have a separation of church and state because we would prefer that Christians do not teach our children that the world was created a few thousand years ago by an invisible guy who lives in the clouds, women are the byproduct of a man’s superfluous rib and dinosaurs are taboo.

The hectoring and dogmatic tone, the obscene generalisations, the unfalsifiable claims in lieu of evidence, the lack of self-awareness, the narcissistic conviction that they can read other people’s minds, the impulse to interpret critics in the most uncharitable possible way, the outright bigotry and intolerance of dissent: all of this is characteristic of the new puritans.

Unfortunately the new puritans and their religion of social justice have sidestepped the boundary between church and state and gone straight for the jugular of institutional control. The puritans do not require evidence and if you push them hard they’ll passionately reply that evidence is a racist construct of the white patriarchy and “lived experience” is divine truth.

Lived experience being the notion that whatever a person feels to be real is real, and a person’s subjective interpretation cannot be contradicted by objective truths. “My lived experience is that my boss was being racist when he said he doesn’t like black coffee; therefore he was being racist.”

Lived experience is a bloody useful tool as it allows the puritans to suggest that whatever a person feels cannot be disputed. This is a technique for codifying emotions as reality. Intent, the cornerstone of our legal system and the difference between manslaughter and murder, has no seat at the banquet of lived experience.

If you challenge the puritans about the validity of lived experience they will retort that you’re a wicked soul beyond all redemption. Freed from the constraints of logic, reason, and objectivity the puritans can twist the narrative to suit their purpose. It is deeply unfortunate that we’ve granted so much control to a people who are clearly more religious than rational.

It is a common characteristic of ideologues to assume that any challenge to their belief-system must be symptomatic of an evil nature.

Why do we have puritans in the 21st century?

This is far from an exhaustive list, but based on the book I’ll provide three explanations to as why religious fanaticism has been repopularized in our ostensibly enlightened age.

1. Social media

Social media is fantastic at amplifying events completely out of proportion. For example, how many African Americans do you think are shot and killed by police in America proportionate to white Americans? Don’t forget all the stories you’ve heard about police brutality, senseless killings and overt racism in the force.

According to the Washington Post, since 2015 American police officers have killed 3,756 white Americans and 1,983 African Americans. The police have killed nearly twice as many white as black Americans.

Ah! But African Americans are only about 14% of the American population so once you adjust for population size you’ll find that African Americans are killed by the police at twice the rate. You see, systemic racism!

OK, but here’s another statistic that’s not especially pleasant. According to the FBI, in 2019 (the latest year I could find the FBI data for) African Americans were charged with 51.2% of all homicides in America. Violent crime is unusually concentrated in African American communities, which could go a long ways towards explaining the higher rate of police shootings.

I don’t like sharing this data and I’d just assume not touch this politically charged third rail, but then I would just be one more person glossing over reality. I’m sharing these statistics because this data exists and although we may find it ugly, ignoring reality will not make it go away. What this data represents is tens of thousands of dismantled families, heartbroken mothers and untold potential cut short.

Black men are killing each other at an astronomical rate but we’re not allowed to talk about why this might be happening or what steps we could take to stem the violence because that would be racist. So the heartbreak gets ignored but gosh, the puritans put black squares on their Instagram pages as if that’s going to change the world. Symbolism & virtue signaling has replaced addressing complex, unpleasant realities.

Social media is really good at elevating a narrative to a near universal truth so that we start to think reality is one way and not another. This is an environment in which the puritans thrive.

Reality is a protean commodity for the new puritans; what is convenient to believe becomes the accepted narrative, and if the facts do not tally with this constructed version of events they are swiftly dismissed.

2. A 17th rate education system

Our education system doesn’t teach people how to think. I’m not just referring to the Baltimore public schools either, I mean the highest levels of our “education” system. I’ve seen numerous examples of what’s being taught at universities and a hell of a lot of it appears to be third-rate swill. Universities have become ideological indoctrination centers instead of commodes for inculcating high-level thought.

The impulse to censor, or remove entirely, such explicitly anti-racist texts in the name of ‘anti-racism’ is a reminder of how the new puritanism can only be sustained where critical thinking is absent.

3. Simple explanations are best

Seigniorage and the Cantillon effect are the real systemic oppressions gutting the middle and working class, but these words are hard to spell, require critical thought to understand and they don’t roll off the tongue at a cocktail party. So instead…

It’s racism!

It’s those damn Nazis!

Simple, clean, so loose in definition that the words can mean whatever the hell you want them to. Someone disagrees with you? They’re a Nazi, end of discussion!

The very same people who would openly pronounce ‘microaggressions’ and controversial opinions to be forms of ‘violence’ saw no contradiction in redefining vandalism and physical assaults as non-violence.

How will we respond?

For those of us who are unwilling to buy into the narrative that white people are scum, our country is a hotbed of racism and a bunch of children who went to private school and have never heard the word ‘no’ should rule society, it may be useful to consider how we will respond in the event that the activists try to tarnish our image with their high caliber slurs.

If someone calls you a Nazi or a racist it’s not enough to deny the charge and explain all the reasons why you are not that thing. Logicality holds no water in the court of emotion, lived experience and religious fury. Furthermore, by attempting to rationally defend yourself you’re already on the back foot, playing a game in which you don’t control the rules and all the refs are partial to the other team.

So how to keep one’s composure in a cancelarious situation? Here’s one reply I’m considering…

A twenty-five-year-old who has spent 84 seconds reading my point of view but has unwavering conviction in their own righteousness comes at me with: “you smorglorgion family-sized ration of steamed shit, you said things I don’t agree with. You’re a racist! Hey Twitter, this guy is a racist!”

Me, “Haha no thank you, I’m not religious.”

“Schmat! I’m serious, you’re a racist!”

“Yes yes, I’m sure. But I’m really not religious, thank you.”

In the event of a crash landing into controversy I plan to treat these cultural tyrants the same way that I would treat a Christian preacher who accosts me on the street and tells me that I’ll burn in hellfire for sixteen eternities unless I repent and accept Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior.

“Yes yes that sounds very hot, but I’ve got to get to the grocery store if you don’t mind. Thank you.”

Infantilization of society

Like a chunk of corn stuck in a back molar I’ve been picking at the puritans for years. Beyond the religious angle I’ve been curious about why a group of privileged people have gone so far overboard into radical ideology, and what makes them so damn nasty on top of it all.

My theory is that the people who believe words are violence and microaggressions are genocide were coddled as children. Their mothers and fathers told them that they were unique, beautiful beings who would one day step into a world where their materialistic dreams and spiritual demands would be delivered rapidly and with no surcharge for express shipping. Deprived of challenge, sheltered from adversity and taught to believe in a reality that doesn’t exist, these aspiring warriors of justice internalized an ethos of blame and victimhood rather than personal responsibility and hard work.

University with its safe spaces, trigger warnings, kowtowing to radical ideologies and flaccid classes about oppressed lasses did nothing to dissuade them of their worldview. Somnambulant and shielded from personal growth they took out mortgages in Neverland and joined the local country club too.

If you thought that by the time young people made it to university they would be less coddled, you would be wrong. Some institutions are now beginning to adopt what is known as ‘inclusive assessment’, a policy originally intended to support students with learning difficulties. According to guidelines from Hull University, the expectation that students ought to be able to write fluently is ‘homogenous, North European, white, male, and elite’.

The soft-palmed children graduated, took their first haughty steps into the world and demanded the beneficent bounty that they’d been raised to expect. And behold, the world said no… A college degree is a place mat without the little maze on the back, salaries are half of what you can make as a plumber and law school grads are slinging drinks and disrobing for winks at $10.99 a month per wanker on OnlyFans.

Illusions shattered and ego deflationary, a few choose introspection and reflection but the majority get mad. The coddlers are angry at the world, at a society that doesn’t match their fantasy, at a life that makes demands that they believe it has no right to make. The Disney channel narrative they were sold is substanceless and now they’re bitter at the truth and eager to make someone pay. They take to Twitter and boldly proclaim: you racist! You Nazi! As they seek solace in destruction, reassurance in ideology and self-esteem via signaling virtue. Their battle cry is,

Begone yeh blight,
Cancelled you cancer,
Give it back to me now,
That soft-cornered reality I’d been trained to expect.

What’s wrong, exactly?

Like the first time I tried snowboarding and fell on my ass so hard I couldn’t sit normally for the rest of the day, I’ve been struck. I’ve spent the better part of this article airing my grievances with the puritans without making explicit some of the reasons why I find their movement so distasteful. Let’s fix that.

Go snowboarding, they said. It will be fun, they said.

Briefly, here are three problems that I have with the religion of social justice.

1. The persecution of the innocent

Who knows how many tens of thousands of lives have been ruined by the new puritans’ cancel culture. You liked a politically incorrect tweet, donated to the wrong organization, or made an off-color joke in 2012? Mmmk, gonna have to get you fired from your job now.

The puritans have elevated themselves to custodians of the career and through their DEI officials and other useful idiots they gatekeep the livelihood of tens of millions of Americans. No day in court or trial by your peers; if the puritans say you’re guilty well then you’re guilty and that’s all there is to it.

2. Gatekeeping the narrative

If we cannot talk openly about a problem we cannot solve it. Imagine going to the doctor and having this conversation.

“Hey doc, I’ve got a problem.”

“OK, tell me about what’s going on.”

“I’m in pain.”

“Got it. I’ll bet you have a ruptured spleen. Let’s get you into surgery ASAP!”

Stupid, right? But this is what’s happening at a societal level. So many topics are taboo that we’re left trying to find a solution without knowing all the facts. Fear of the puritans keeps too many people silent so we end up with lackluster policies crafted with more care for political correctness than just - correctness.

3. The elevation of emotion over reason

Nigerian Americans are one of America’s most successful ethnic groups. Much like the Christians and dinosaurs, the puritans are unable to reconcile their thesis of a systemically racist country with the undeniable success of Nigerian Americans. That’s because the puritans elevate emotion over logic, and whenever pushed into a corner they’ll just call you a racist for putting them there.

The puritans view of the world is that a thing must be true because they feel like it’s true. Emotion over logic may be a fine way to write a novel or compose a symphony, but it’s no way to run a country. The only reason we have nice things like iPhones and an electric grid is that we’ve decided as a society to elevate reason and logic as our highest ideals. The puritans want to dismantle that infrastructure and are too blinded by ideology to imagine the consequences of what they’re advocating.

Conclusions

Humans take to religion the way dolphins take to the sea. The furthest leftward thrust of the social justice movement has all the badges of a religion and it matters little that the Twitter congregation would never in a million microaggressions admit to theirs being a faith-based movement.

The way the puritans see it they’ve stumbled upon an ineluctable truth that explains all the world’s injustice. The way I see it they’re propagating anti-progress as they move society further away from the noble goal so passionately articulated by Dr. King: “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Well bullocks, this is why we can’t have nice things. Society operates smoothly for a while but then some cantankerous types get it into their mind to “solve” everything and next you thing you know we’re re-segregating public spaces in the name of progress. Brilliant, Dr. King would be proud.

For those of us who still believe in liberal values, the reduction of individuals to mere representatives of their particular demographic leaves us feeling somewhat unhorsed. The virtues of individualism, one of the many products of Enlightenment thinking, have been all but rejected by the commissars of Critical Social Justice and their acolytes. They would much rather see people defined predominately by their race, gender, and sexual orientation, as opposed to their own distinct qualities. Racists, misogynists and homophobes tend to adopt a similar approach.

Solutions?

Speak your mind and say what you believe to be true. We must articulate uncomfortable truths and refuse to feed energy into the lie that the west is a systemically racist institution and that the puritans have the answer.

There are parts of this article that will probably be controversial, and I will almost certainly lose some subscribers, but I have chosen my words carefully and am willing to stand by what I’ve written. What we’re dealing with here is a religion, a rather crappy one at that, and to pretend otherwise is to invite the cardinals of cancellation, bishops of bigotry and hierophants of heresy to overstay their welcome in a society that is by all historical standards one of the most tolerant places to live that has ever existed.

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PS - I saved an additional 7 quotes from the book that didn’t fit into this review. You can read them here if you’d like.