orgave themselves the contradictions in their ethos because they believed that ethos was rooted in their privileged relationship with God. Therefore, when they created their own dogma to replace the dogma of the Church, they simply argued that it was not dogma based on man's thinking but revealed truth based on the gift of grace from God to them. In the Puritan ethos, all behavior was judged according to the Puritan interpretation of the Word of God as written in the Bible.
Certainly the fundamentalists active in America today are intent on continuing the effects of the Puritan ethos, and they have been successful in social, political, and religious ways. Not even a fundamentalist would want to be called a "Puritan," however, because the word has such negative, life-denying connotations today. Nevertheless, the fundamentalists promote their own moral and religious superiority, based on what they see as their privileged grace-based position and their strict self-serving
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