Very fun and informative! I’m very surprised to learn that in the 1600s and 1700s it was believed that most souls went “nowhere”! I thought it was all about living a pure life in order to achieve a spot in heaven!
Why was religion important, then, if you were basically doomed at birth?
All sorts of questions arise from this info, which is great, actually! 🤫👍
It's definitely a Puritan ideal—death was omnipresent back then, and it took a while for the church to catch up and romanticize it, so to speak (looking at you, Victorians). Though it was definitely always being moralized through religion—the Puritan idea of predestination involved living a perfect life in order to not upset God and make him change his mind about your intended afterlife. It still bordered on the "you don't know where you're going and you may go nowhere" mindset, though.
Very fun and informative! I’m very surprised to learn that in the 1600s and 1700s it was believed that most souls went “nowhere”! I thought it was all about living a pure life in order to achieve a spot in heaven!
Why was religion important, then, if you were basically doomed at birth?
All sorts of questions arise from this info, which is great, actually! 🤫👍
It's definitely a Puritan ideal—death was omnipresent back then, and it took a while for the church to catch up and romanticize it, so to speak (looking at you, Victorians). Though it was definitely always being moralized through religion—the Puritan idea of predestination involved living a perfect life in order to not upset God and make him change his mind about your intended afterlife. It still bordered on the "you don't know where you're going and you may go nowhere" mindset, though.