{"id":2117,"date":"2015-04-26T18:18:36","date_gmt":"2015-04-26T22:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/inklingations\/?p=2117"},"modified":"2015-04-26T18:21:11","modified_gmt":"2015-04-26T22:21:11","slug":"the-new-puritan-shame-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/inklingations\/2015\/04\/26\/the-new-puritan-shame-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Puritan Shame Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/a>
Engraving depicting Hester Prynne. (Public Domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
In the April 1886 issue of\u00a0The Atlantic Monthly<\/em>\u00a0Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel,\u00a0reviewed his father\u2019s\u00a0The Scarlett Letter<\/em>.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Towards the conclusion of his\u00a0stunning, 9,000+ word essay, the younger Hawthorne reflected\u00a0on the\u00a0moral\u00a0irony of\u00a0 Hester Prynne\u2019s world:<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0This [the\u00a0scarlet A] is her punishment, the heaviest that man can afflict upon her. But, like all legal punishment, it aims much more at the protection of society than at the reformation of the culprit. Hester is to stand as a warning to others tempted as she was: if she recovers her own salvation in the process, so much the better for her; but, for better or worse, society has ceased to have any concern with her.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cWe trample you down,\u201d society says in effect to those who break its laws, \u201cnot by any means in order to save your soul,\u2014for the welfare of that problematical adjunct to your civic personality is a matter of complete indifference to us,\u2014but because, by some act, you have forfeited your claim to our protection, because you are a clog to our prosperity, and because the spectacle of your agony may discourage others of similar unlawful inclinations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
But it is obvious, all the while, that the only crime which society recognizes is the crime of being found out, since a society composed of successful hypocrites would much more smoothly fulfill all social requirements than a society of such heterogeneous constituents as (human nature being what it is) necessarily enter into it now.<\/span><\/p>\n
Likely as we are as 21st century Americans to congratulate ourselves for not behaving the way our Puritan ancestors did, things aren\u2019t as different as you might think. Millennials may be an urbane, diverse and \u201ctolerant\u201d generation, but they are also caught in a vicious cultural mire of shaming, vindictiveness, and postmodern\u00a0puritanical preening that rivals their 17th century ancestors.<\/span><\/p>\n
Owing largely to the recent publication of Jon\u00a0Ronson\u2019s well-reviewed book\u00a0So You\u2019ve Been Publicly Shamed<\/em>, some light is being shed on the cavernous world of social media\u00a0\u201cshaming,\u201d\u00a0a merciless phenomenon\u00a0that is more\u00a0common\u00a0and more serious than many\u2014perhaps most\u2014believe. Of course, few people\u00a0would be\u00a0surprised to learn\u00a0there\u00a0are dark corners of the internet or that\u00a0 digital anonymity can bring out the worst in people. But the problem of public shaming goes beyond meanness. In its worst manifestations,\u00a0shaming is a\u00a0weapon wielded by volunteer morality gatekeepers\u00a0to, as Julian Hawthorne put it,\u00a0\u201ctrample you down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Ronson\u2019s work has resulted in the publication of several frightening stories, such as\u00a0what happened to Justine Sacco<\/span><\/a>. Yet few commentators on this social phenomenon\u2013including Ronson\u2013seem willing to explore shaming\u2019s causes or offer a serious moral worldview of public confrontation. Listening to shaming stories is important, of course, but we are not likely to overcome this vicious trend if we cannot speak in clear and objective language about it.<\/span><\/p>\n
Julian Hawthorne\u2019s insights into his father\u2019s novel might be helpful in remedying our deficient understanding of contemporary public shaming. Hawthorne is on to something when he identifies the public shaming of Hester Prynne as non-redemptive\u00a0and merely the\u00a0removal of a\u00a0\u201cclog\u201d\u00a0from the engine of the culture. The\u00a0hypocrisy of the moral\u00a0authorities\u00a0of Puritan Boston was not only that they were guilty of sin as well, but that they turned sinners away from the society and the hope of redemption under the pretense of holiness.<\/span><\/p>\n
In the case of online shaming, this is even more apparent. What happens in social media is far from the reconciliatory purpose of confrontation as taught by Jesus in Matthew 16.\u00a0As Ronson notes in his chilling accounts, the purpose of social media shaming seems to be to deluge an offending person(s) with enough derision and scorn that they are forced to disappear from the public eye in a kind of enforced penitence.\u00a0Social media shaming is not at all meant for reconciliation or personal healing; quite the opposite, in fact\u2014the more offense and outrage can be generated, the better.\u00a0\u00a0Exacerbating all this is a communication medium that rewards participants not for temperance, patience and forbearance, but for immediacy and cleverness. If outrage is the currency of social media, shaming is a\u00a0blue-chip stock.<\/span><\/p>\n
As Hawthorne writes, the impulse behind the\u00a0shaming of Hester Prynne was not a desire for moral rectitude but removal of a cultural wart. If the sinner is removed from the public square, the people can resume trusting in the merits of their membership in society. This contra-benevolent desire to keep the community free of anything that disturbs a narrative of cultural holiness is remarkably descriptive of\u00a0much of our culture-warring today. Consider the astonishing absolutism with which some proponents of same-sex marriage engage those who disagree with them. In many cases, the motivations are made explicit: Opinions which contradict a majoritarian view on sexuality must be exiled out of\u00a0the public square. What is this, if not a Puritanical impulse to keep society\u00a0\u201cpure\u201d\u00a0and maintain the citizenry\u2019s religious faith in it?<\/span><\/p>\n
The Scarlet\u00a0Letter\u2019<\/em>s context was, of course, a Christian-Puritan one.\u00a0That is not the case in our American culture today. Instead of an assumed, civic Christianity, the country is embracing an assumed, civic secularism. Traditional religious beliefs are welcomed as long as they are not exposed to the population at large. Keeping certain beliefs isolated from the mainstream of culture\u2013thereby maintaing a sort of \u00a0doctrinally \u201cpure\u201d public square\u2013is often peddled under misleading language about \u201cseparation of church and state.\u201d What is really happening is the substitution of one culturally-ruling philosophy for another.<\/span><\/p>\n
In other words, we still have Puritanism today, only of a secular kind.<\/span><\/p>\n
Our progressive sensibilities have not, alas, resulted in a genuinely compassionate culture. \u00a0We no longer have the kind cruel civic Christianity that\u00a0The Scarlet Letter<\/em> depicted, yet we still have\u00a0the\u00a0shaming scaffolds (they\u2019re called social media now) and we still have ineffable moral codes that must not be trespassed.\u00a0These codes may not be Levitical but they are indeed legalistic: laws about privilege, sexual autonomy,\u00a0\u201ctrigger warnings,\u201d and much, much more. Violation of these laws can and do result not only in public shame but legal prosecution.<\/span><\/p>\n
It surely must befuddle those on the inside track of our transforming culture\u2014just as we seem to be learning what true progress\u00a0is, we rebuild the shaming scaffolds of our Puritan forefathers. Can we not have a culture that embraces the moral equivalence of all forms of\u00a0sexual expression, the existential (read: non-transcendent) nature of love, and the casting off of ancient beliefs about God and the universe, while\u00a0simultaneously\u00a0widening the margins of civic life to include all kinds of beliefs, even those that discomfort us? Cannot we live out the promises of the Sexual Revolution while saving a place in our midst for those who opt out?<\/span><\/p>\n
No, we cannot. The\u00a0reason\u00a0is simple: A broken American conscience cannot be trusted. Compassion is a class that\u00a0secularism doesn\u2019t offer.\u00a0Exchanging the Puritanism of Arthur Dimmesdale for the Puritanism of\u00a0Alfred Kinsey is not progress.\u00a0Cultural elites may say we are becoming a better\u00a0people\u00a0because we break with human history on the meaning of marriage or the dignity of human life, but a glance outside suggests otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n
A longer version of this essay first appeared at samueldjames.net<\/span><\/a><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the April 1886 issue of\u00a0The Atlantic Monthly\u00a0Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel,\u00a0reviewed his father\u2019s\u00a0The Scarlett Letter.\u00a0Towards the conclusion of his\u00a0stunning, 9,000+ word essay, the younger Hawthorne reflected\u00a0on the\u00a0moral\u00a0irony of\u00a0 Hester Prynne\u2019s world:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2058,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,329,6],"tags":[281,428,166,427],"class_list":["post-2117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-current-events","category-essays","tag-culture","tag-jon-ronson","tag-religious-liberty","tag-shaming"],"yoast_head":"\nThe New Puritan Shame Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the April 1886 issue of\u00a0The Atlantic Monthly\u00a0Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel,\u00a0reviewed his father\u2019s\u00a0The Scarlett Letter.\u00a0Towards the conclusion of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/inklingations\/2015\/04\/26\/the-new-puritan-shame-culture\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The New Puritan Shame Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the April 1886 issue of\u00a0The Atlantic Monthly\u00a0Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel,\u00a0reviewed his father\u2019s\u00a0The Scarlett Letter.\u00a0Towards the conclusion of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/inklingations\/2015\/04\/26\/the-new-puritan-shame-culture\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Samuel D. 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