Review of Worldly Saints

In his book, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were, Leland Ryken presents a needed corrective to assumptions people have about the Puritanism that influenced English and American history for two hundred years.

It is not a new book, and I was familiar with most of his findings, but it is good to have the arguments in a single volume. And an accessible volume: the clear structure of his writing style makes it easy to complete the 220 pages in a few days.

The negative assumptions about the Puritans are nearly uniform in our culture: “Everyone knows” that these pious religious people were morose, joyless, narrow-minded, and legalistic.

Ryken cites numerous quotes from Puritan leaders to prove that what “everyone knows” needs to be re-examined. In the chapters on vocation, marriage and sex, money, church life, education, and social action, what the Puritans actually believed may surprise you. The last chapter, in particular, made me want to live more seriously for God. Those of you who keep up with me via Twitter have seen my frequent quotes from Puritan leaders from in Ryken’s book.

Considering that the evangelical movement has descended from the Puritans, it’s important we appreciate their strengths as well as acknowledge their weaknesses. You will probably find that the strengths and weaknesses Ryken identifies in the old Puritans are, largely, our own today.

“We live at a moment in history when evangelical Protestants are looking for ‘roots,’ writes Leland Ryken. “One of the foibles that some would foist on them is that the only traditions from the past to which they can return are the Catholic and Anglo-Catholic traditions….Puritanism can give us a place to stand.”

P.S., Earlier I posted a list of six reasons to study the Puritans here and I posted some things Ryken says we can learn from Puritan failings here.