This study will examine Kai T. Erikson's Wayward Puritans. The examination of major ideas in the book, subtitled "A Study in the Sociology of Deviance," focuses on the Puritan moral philosophy in relation to American culture today; the relationship between Puritan "crime waves" and deviancy; witchcraft; and the role religion played in the Puritan response to deviancy.
To Erikson, the Puritan ethos was based on a simpler and more direct way of seeing and experiencing one's relationship with God. This world view "suggested revival more than reform" (46), although there were elements of reform involved. The Puritan ethos saw the Church as an institution which was an obstacle to be changed if the individual ever hoped to have a direct experience of God. According to this ethos, the Puritan
longed for an intimate experience of grace . . . and . . . he felt frustrated in this design by the strict formalities of the Church. . . . The Puritan wanted to restore the Church to the simplicity it had known in the days of the Apostles, . . . [to] the primitive core of Christianity (47).
However, as stripped down to its most simple center as the Puritan ethos might have been, some authority was needed to replace the Church. That authority was the Bible itself, upon which the Puritan ethos was based. The Puritans "regarded the Bible as a complete guide to Christian living, a digest of all the statutes and regulations necessary for human government" (47).
The problem with the Puritan ethos in Erikson's view was that it was riddled with paradoxes. The Puritans justified these paradoxes for two reasons. First, they believed they were the chosen ones, a position of spiritual superiority which was evidenced by the experience of grace---a direct experience of God---which each individual Puritan underwent. Second, they did not base their ethos on logic, but rather on "a rhetorical means for communicating [the truth] to others" (48). They f...