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    Re: I doubt it Archived Message

    Posted by Ken Waldron on March 27, 2021, 4:59 am, in reply to "I doubt it"

    Ah right...so it was just you having a self dialogue...

    "The supremacist streak in the former two is well-espoused. Somehow, the Scots get away with a self-image as heroic radicals but that seems to be to be really no more than better marketing...Would you not agree? :-):-):-)"

    No.
    I think two Presbyterian elements were on the whole positively important.
    Firstly the means: ie emphasis on Biblical study and thus opportunity to do this gave a huge push to literacy, education and self improvement. This combined with the second element which was the driving force: the perception to be seen as one of the "elect" i.e. gods chosen: the saved. This latter required that your affairs prospered, thus the notion of the "Protestant work ethic".

    Both gave Scotland a huge advantage from the 17th -18th c onwards which was no mean feat for a small poor country.
    This was by no means mere "better marketing" at all but quite real. Whist England used education as a means of social stratification, in Scotland there were schools in every parish and the ethos was on the pursuit of divine stratification: the goal being to belong or indeed rise to belong to the spiritual elect rather than the social elite, though of course these were often synonymous the Scottish system was not built to the same extent at all on the kind of Plutocatic basis that the English was.

    Of course the route to this also brought in other elements perhaps unavoidably. Biblical literacy brought a Neojudaic element to Calvinism and an identification with the bulk of the bible in the form of the old testament and its dark judgemental deity, whilst the notion of belonging to the elect was of course in the eyes of the beholder: i.e. judgement by your fellows in all things: thus a kind of tyranny of both Jehova and your neighbours which has lead to the present parody of the pious god fearing moralist: the "Holy Joe" of popular legend.

    Perhaps this latter element: the overt moralising and sanctimony is all that remains in the the current Scottish psyche of Calvinism? Certainly the present Church of Scotland are a spent force, and they likewise gave up the notion of God's elect a good while back: apparently we can all go to heaven now...

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