Puritanism and Political Authoritarianism: Authoritarian Mastery of Politics

Abstract

Puritanism essentially constitutes or engenders a theological-religious and institutional-social system of political authoritarianism. Its political authoritarianism is primarily manifested and founded in its specific attempt at the mastery of the world of politics. Puritanism attempted or realized total mastery of politics seeks to turn Puritans into potential or real totalitarian “masters of the world” a la Cromwell cum the “Lord Protector of the Realm” following the Puritan Revolution in England, both of the domestic and global political system, and all others their servants, subjects, or instruments. Puritanism considers politics, just as nature, economy, and civil society, part of this world and thus amenable to, as Tocqueville implies, its sectarian mastery or religiously factional, in Madison’s meaning,¹ domination.