Contemporary Puritans
8th January 2024
The seeds of this movement were planted long ago, but its blooming flower bears only a superficial resemblance to the seed. Progressivism was once the seed. The term is still in use on the Left; but the flower of progressivism today is identity politics. It needs to be identified as such. Affirmative action, too, was once the seed. The term is still in use on the Left; but the flower of affirmative action is more appropriately named spiritual eugenics, as I have written elsewhere. In this twenty-first century version of eugenics, the impure identity groups—whites, Asians, Jews—must be purged; and the innocent victims must be elevated, whatever their scholarly record, perhaps even to the rank of university president. It is long past time for the spiritual eugenics that is now at the heart of higher education to be identified and repudiated. If left unchecked, it will someday yield real purges, involving bloodshed.
Let us be clear-headed about what our colleges and universities have always been. Almost every institution of higher education in America founded prior to the twentieth century was religious from the outset. Their seed was Christianity. Harvard, Yale, Princeton—all of them were self-consciously Christian. And from that seed grew the flowers, from which other seeds sprang: the social gospel movement of the late nineteenth century; Progressivism in the early twentieth century, which as I indicated above provided the germ from which identity politics grew. All of these movements would have been inconceivable had our colleges and universities not provided the soil for their growth. Not by accident has Harvard been ground zero for the growth of all the quasi-religious “social movements” that have transformed America. From the seed of its Calvinism has come the flower of identity politics. And it is not good.