Acquiunk wrote:That is an over broad generalization. In 18th century New England an adult white male who could not read and sign his name was considered mentally deficient. These Congregationalist considered Anglicans "papists" so I think we can safely say the were the fundamentalists of their day. The anti education attitude of evangelicals is more of a 19th century phenomena that came out of the revival movent that swept the nation in mid century. My impression is that it is more western and southern, and in part a reaction to expatriate New Englanders who could be incredibly arrogant and condescending to less well educated immigrants from other states.
It is not a generalization at all, it was an observation that such a tradition exists. I would consider the "fundamentalists" of the 17th and 18th centuries to have been the Moravians and other German charismatic sects, which, ironically, seem to have considered education a laudable pursuit. The tradition, to my knowledge, first surfaces in the "godly republic" of Geneva as established by John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli. Zwingli once publicly replied to a question to the effect that the only books a righteous man need read were the Geneva bible and Calvin's
Institutes of the Christian Church. For many of the Puritans from whom the Congregationalists descend, the only book which they would add to the list would have been Bunyan's
The Pilgrim's Progress. Arthur Schlesinger, Sr.'s work in the 1920's and -30's pretty well explodes the myths of New England Protestantism, one of which was near universal church attendance, and the other a high regard for education. Much of the town populations, and the population on the edge of the wilderness, were neither churched nor formally educated.
That being said, i was not generalizing about Protestants, but simply noting a long-standing tradition among the more extremist elements. Anecdotally, i have been told exactly this by some rather well-educated people who have been "born again."
