🔍Four Migrations, Four Worlds: How Distinct Anglo Theological Traditions Shape Our Nation
How four British migrations shaped America's religious and political landscape
Introduction
"Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path... Other seed fell on rocky ground... Other seed fell among thorns... Other seed fell into good soil." - Mark 4:3-8
Jesus's parable of the sower reveals how the same seed produces dramatically different results depending on the soil where it lands. This agricultural metaphor illuminates spiritual truth and historical pattern—how religious traditions produce different results when planted in different social "soils." It also helps us understand what Charles Taylor calls the "nova effect"—the explosion of religious and secular options from originally unified traditions.
The English settlement of North America vividly demonstrates this pattern. Rather than representing unified cultural transplantation, British colonization involved at least four distinct cultural migrations from different regions of Britain, each bringing distinctive religious traditions, social customs, political values, and cultural patterns. These different traditions established regional cultures that would shape American development in profoundly different ways despite their common British origins.
This historical pattern is particularly significant for our time because these distinct theological traditions would eventually evolve into the seemingly opposed religious and political movements we see today. Both Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism emerged from these distinct theological soils. However, they've mutated in seemingly opposite directions—their opposition masking more profound structural similarities.
The Diverse Theological Seedbed
Before examining each migration separately, we must recognize their distinct theological traditions:
Puritan Migration: Calvinist with distinctive Ramist interpretive approach
Cavalier Migration: Latitudinarian Anglican with hierarchical church structure
Quaker Migration: Radical Reformation with a distinctive pneumatology
Borderlands Migration: Federal Calvinist with clan-based religious structures
Each of these theological traditions carried its interpretive frameworks, institutional expressions, and cultural practices—which were then shaped by the technological mediations of their time, primarily print culture, which enabled particular kinds of religious imagination to flourish in colonial contexts.
What we witness in contemporary debates between Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism is not a battle between wholly alien traditions but mutations of distinct theological traditions that have evolved in divergent directions while maintaining structural similarities.
The Puritan Migration: East Anglia to Massachusetts
Religious Patterns and Cultural Distinctives
The "Puritan migration" that established New England brought approximately 21,000 settlers between 1629 and 1641, primarily from East Anglia in southeastern England. This region had developed distinctive religious and cultural patterns shaped by proximity to continental Europe, Reformed Protestant influence, and commercial wealth derived from textile manufacturing and trade.
The Puritan settlers brought a distinctly Calvinist theological framework characterized by covenant theology, communal religious accountability, and emphasis on literacy to enable biblical interpretation. Their Ramist approach to scripture—emerging from Pierre Ramus's logical methodology—emphasized systematic categorization and division, creating binary classifications that would profoundly influence New England intellectual traditions.
Their emphasis on literacy and education led to the early establishment of schools and colleges, with Massachusetts requiring public education decades before similar requirements appeared elsewhere. Their communal religious vision established the town as a primary social unit, with community consensus prioritized over individual autonomy in ways that continue to influence New England's political culture.
Technological Mediation and Print Culture
The Puritan migration coincided with the expansion of print culture, and Puritans leveraged this technology extensively. They established the first printing press in British North America at Harvard in 1638, recognizing print's essential role in propagating their religious vision. The emphasis on literacy, catechism, and sermon literature created a distinctive textual community mediating religious authority increasingly through print rather than solely through the clerical hierarchy.
This technological mediation helped shape distinctive New England religious patterns:
Extensive sermon publication culture
Religious governance through written covenants
Formation of interpretive communities through shared texts
Growing emphasis on education as a religious necessity
We cannot understand the distinctive development of New England Puritanism apart from its relationship with print technology, which facilitated particular kinds of religious imagination and institutional formation.
Evolution Toward Providential Identitarianism
What's particularly significant is how these Puritan patterns eventually evolved toward elements we now recognize in Providential Identitarianism. This transformation was not a simple secularization but what Charles Taylor calls a "fragilization" and mutation of religious imagination.
Key evolutionary developments include:
Transformation of Communitarianism: The Puritan emphasis on communal covenant evolved toward institutional reform movements
Educational Metamorphosis: Religious education emphasis transformed into secular academic authority structures
Moral Perfectionism: Puritan sanctification theology evolved into progressive perfectionism
Institutional Authority: Communal religious governance became expert-driven institutional authority
This evolution accelerated dramatically in the late 19th century with the importation of the German research university model, which provided new technological frameworks for religious imagination. As Thomas Kuhn observed about scientific paradigms, these new institutional technologies didn't simply replace religious frameworks but translated them into new forms.
The evolution of the New England intellectual tradition shows how Binary Apocalypticism mutated from a theological framework to secular political dualism and how Authoritarian Spirituality transformed from clerical authority to academic expertise. These mutations maintained structural similarities to their religious origins while adopting new content and institutional forms.
The Cavalier Migration: South of England to Virginia
Latitudinarian Anglicanism, Not Calvinism
The "Cavalier migration" that established Virginia and the Chesapeake brought approximately 45,000 settlers between 1642 and 1675, primarily from southern and western England. This migration accelerated following the English Civil War, as royalist supporters sought refuge from Puritan political dominance in England.
Unlike the Calvinist Puritans, these migrants brought a distinctly Latitudinarian Anglican religious tradition characterized by:
Hierarchical church governance mirroring social hierarchy
Emphasis on liturgical conformity rather than doctrinal precision
Established church framework with significant clerical authority
Less emphasis on individual religious experience
Greater tolerance for religious diversity within the established order
The Cavalier settlers brought distinctive cultural patterns that profoundly shaped Southern regional culture. Their hierarchical social vision established clear status distinctions, with great planters at the top, small farmers in the middle, and enslaved and indentured workers at the bottom. Their emphasis on honor, hospitality, and leisure as markers of gentility established a distinctive upper-class culture that contrasted sharply with New England's more austere Puritan ethic.
Technological Mediation: Architecture and Performance
While Puritan culture was profoundly shaped by print technology, Cavalier culture engaged different technological mediations—particularly architecture and performance as religious technologies. The parish church building, not the printed sermon, stood as the central religious technology of Anglican Virginia.
This technological mediation helped shape distinctive Tidewater religious patterns:
Architecture expressing social hierarchy and divine order
Liturgical performance reinforcing social distinctions
Religious governance through the vestry system
Formation of religious identity through ritual performance
We cannot understand Virginia Anglicanism's distinctive development apart from its relationship with architectural and performance technologies, which facilitated particular kinds of religious imagination and institutional formation divergent from New England's print-dominated religious culture.
Evolution Toward Dominative Elements
These Anglican patterns would eventually contribute certain elements we now recognize in Dominative Christianism. However, this was not a simple linear development but a complex mutation.
Key evolutionary developments include:
Transformation of Social Hierarchy: The Anglican emphasis on hierarchical church structure evolved toward the defense of "natural" social order
Honor Culture Metamorphosis: Cavalier emphasis on personal honor transformed into particular forms of religious authority
Institutional Deference: Respect for established religious authority evolved into specific forms of charismatic leadership
Moral Rectitude: Anglican moral frameworks became more individualized while maintaining social control functions
This evolution was accelerated by technological changes, particularly the emergence of radio and television in the 20th century. These provided new platforms for religious performance that resonated with and transformed the performative elements of the Anglican tradition.
The Tidewater tradition's evolution shows how Authoritarian Spirituality mutated from episcopal governance to charismatic leadership and how Disordered Nationalism transformed from an established church to a nationalistic, religious identity. These mutations maintained structural similarities to their spiritual origins while adopting new content and institutional forms.
The Quaker Migration: North Midlands to Delaware Valley
Radical Reformation Pneumatology
The "Quaker migration" that established Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley brought approximately 23,000 settlers between 1675 and 1725, primarily from England's North Midlands and North Wales. Unlike either Calvinist Puritans or Latitudinarian Anglicans, these migrants brought a distinctly Radical Reformation religious tradition with distinctive pneumatology (doctrine of the Holy Spirit).
Key Quaker theological distinctions included:
Divine Inner Light accessible to all persons
Spirit-led interpretation unconstrained by clerical authority
Radical equality of persons before God
Rejection of hierarchy and outward sacraments
Emphasis on direct spiritual experience
These Quaker settlers brought distinctive cultural patterns that would profoundly shape Mid-Atlantic regional culture. Their emphasis on religious equality—including women's spiritual authority, plain speech that eliminated status-marking honorifics, and opposition to hierarchical church structures—established social patterns markedly different from those of Puritan New England and Cavalier Virginia.
Technological Mediation: Meeting and Testimony
The Quaker tradition engaged its distinctive technological mediations, particularly the meeting structure and testimony, as religious technologies. With their intentional lack of hierarchy, the meetinghouse design and the practice of communal discernment represented technological innovations that facilitated distinctive religious imagination.
This technological mediation helped shape distinctive Delaware Valley religious patterns:
Architecture expressing equality and communal discernment
Silence as spiritual technology
Formation of religious identity through testimony
Religious governance through consensus
We cannot understand Pennsylvania Quakerism's distinctive development apart from its relationship with these meeting and testimony technologies, which facilitated particular kinds of religious imagination and institutional formation divergent from New England's print-dominated and Virginia's architectural-hierarchical religious cultures.
Complex Mutations and Modern Influences
The Quaker tradition has contributed in complex ways to elements of both contemporary Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism, demonstrating the complex mutations religious traditions undergo.
Key evolutionary developments include:
Individual Conscience: The Quaker emphasis on personal spiritual guidance evolved in divergent directions—toward both individualistic religious expression and progressive moral witness
Egalitarian Practice: Quaker equality practices influenced both democratic religious forms and identity-based equality frameworks
Consensus Practices: Meeting consensus methods evolved toward both communal discernment and particular forms of ideological conformity
Plain Speech: Testimony of plain speech transformed in multiple directions, including both authentic expression and performative language policing
These evolutions accelerated with changing communicative technologies, particularly social media platforms, which have transformed testimony and consensus-building practices in new directions.
The Mid-Atlantic tradition's evolution shows particularly how Primitive Biblicism can mutate from spirit-led interpretation to both individual interpretive authority and experience-based hermeneutics. It also demonstrates how Tribal Epistemology can evolve from Quaker meeting discernment to both identity-based and community-based knowledge claims.
The Borderlands Migration: Northern Britain to Backcountry
Federal Calvinism and Clan Structures
The "Borderlands migration" that settled the American backcountry brought approximately 250,000 settlers between 1717 and 1775, primarily from the border regions of northern Britain—northern England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Scottish lowlands. These migrants brought a distinctly Federal Calvinist tradition significantly different from New England Puritanism.
Key Borderlands theological distinctions included:
Federal (covenant) theology structured around familial relationships
Strong emphasis on divine sovereignty and predestination
Resistance to centralized ecclesiastical authority
Clan relationships deeply interweave religious identity
Skepticism toward institutional hierarchy
These Borderlands settlers—often called Scots-Irish though including multiple ethnic groups from Britain's northern borders—brought distinctive cultural patterns that would profoundly shape Appalachian and backcountry regional culture. Their emphasis on clan loyalty, physical courage, and vigilant self-protection reflected centuries of borderland experience where central authority provided little security against raiding and violence.
Technological Mediation: Oral Tradition and Ritual
The Borderlands tradition engaged distinctive technological mediations—particularly oral tradition and ritual practice as religious technologies. Unlike the print-dominated culture of New England, religious identity was transmitted primarily through spoken word, story, and ritual practice.
This technological mediation helped shape distinctive backcountry religious patterns:
Oral transmission of religious knowledge
Communal ritual reinforcing clan identity
Religious leadership through charismatic authority
Formation of religious identity through family lineage
We cannot understand the distinctive development of backcountry Presbyterianism apart from its relationship with these oral and ritual technologies, which facilitated particular kinds of religious imagination and institutional formation divergent from the print, architectural, and meeting-based religious cultures of other regions.
Evolution Toward Dominative Elements
The Borderlands tradition has contributed significant elements to what we now recognize in Dominative Christianism, though again through complex mutation rather than simple linear development.
Key evolutionary developments include:
Transformation of Clan Loyalty: The Borderland's emphasis on familial loyalty evolved toward particular forms of religious tribalism
Warrior Culture Metamorphosis: The martial tradition transformed into specific forms of spiritual warfare metaphors
Resistance to Central Authority: Skepticism toward distant governance evolved into particular forms of anti-institutional religiosity
Moral Boundary Maintenance: Clan honor frameworks became moral boundary enforcement
Technological changes accelerated these evolutions, particularly the revival circuit, radio evangelism, and later televangelism and digital media, which provided new platforms for charismatic authority and boundary enforcement.
The evolution of the Backcountry tradition shows how Binary Apocalypticism mutated from a theological framework to a cultural warfare framework and how Tribal Epistemology transformed from clan knowledge to particular forms of religious information ecosystems. These mutations maintained structural similarities to their religious origins while adopting new content and institutional forms.
Taylor's Nova Effect: Multiple Trajectories from Common Sources
Charles Taylor's concept of the Nova Effect helps us understand how these distinct theological traditions exploded into multiple mutations over time. Rather than a simple story of secularization, we see a complex pattern of transformation where religious impulses persist while adopting new forms.
Key historical inflection points accelerated these mutations:
First Great Awakening (1730s-1740s): Religious revival that reconfigured authority structures
American Revolution (1770s-1780s): Transformation of religious language into political frameworks
Second Great Awakening (1790s-1840s): Democratization of religious authority
Civil War (1860s): Fracturing of religious institutional structures
Rise of Research Universities (1870s-1890s): Introduction of new knowledge technologies
Electronic Media Revolution (1920s-1950s): New platforms for religious performance
Digital Revolution (1990s-Present): Transformation of religious community formation
These technological and cultural shifts provided new frameworks for religious imagination, causing the original traditions to mutate in multiple directions. What's particularly important is that these mutations didn't simply erase religious elements but transformed them—maintaining structural patterns while changing content.
Contemporary Mutations: Structural Similarities Beyond Apparent Opposition
Understanding America's multiple theological roots illuminates a critical insight: today's opposed religious and political movements share more profound structural similarities despite their apparent opposition. In contemporary debates between Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism, we witness not a battle between wholly alien traditions but mutations of distinct theological traditions that have evolved in divergent directions.
Let's examine how the seven theological mutations manifest in both movements:
1. Primitive Biblicism
Dominative Christianism: Claims direct, unmediated access to biblical meaning, often through literal interpretation detached from interpretive tradition.
Providential Identitarianism: Claims direct, unmediated access to moral truth through an identity-based standpoint, often bypassing traditional interpretive communities.
Both manifest the same structural pattern—claiming unmediated access to truth—while differing in content (biblical text versus experiential standpoint).
2. Practical Atheism
Dominative Christianism: Functionally replaces Christ's example with pragmatic political effectiveness and power.
Providential Identitarianism: Functionally replaces the theological center with identity-based frameworks and activism.
Both maintain a similar structural pattern—replacing theological centers with pragmatic concerns—though they differ in which concerns take precedence.
3. Binary Apocalypticism
Dominative Christianism: Creates rigid good/evil, friend/enemy distinctions based on moral and theological boundaries.
Providential Identitarianism: Creates rigid oppressor/oppressed, privileged/marginalized distinctions based on identity categories.
Both create binary frameworks that resist complexity, though categorizing differently.
4. Disordered Nationalism
Dominative Christianism: Explicitly elevates American national identity in theological frameworks, often through covenant language.
Providential Identitarianism: Implicitly maintains American exceptionalism while critiquing its manifestations, often through progress narratives.
Both maintain forms of national election narrative, though expressing this differently.
5. Prosperity Materialism
Dominative Christianism: Equates divine blessing with material prosperity and economic success.
Providential Identitarianism: Translates blessing into cultural capital, academic credentials, and institutional position.
Both maintain Calvinist-derived external markers of election, though materializing these differently.
6. Authoritarian Spirituality
Dominative Christianism: Replaces communal discernment with charismatic leadership and hierarchical authority.
Providential Identitarianism: Replaces communal discernment with expert knowledge and credential-based authority.
Both establish hierarchies of spiritual/moral authority, though legitimizing these differently.
7. Tribal Epistemology
Dominative Christianism: Creates closed information ecosystems based on religious identity and ideological alignment.
Providential Identitarianism: Creates privileged knowledge claims based on identity categories and experiential standpoints.
Both establish identity-based knowledge structures, though grounding these in different identity formations.
These structural similarities exist despite the apparent opposition of content, revealing deeper patterns of transformation rather than complete divergence.
Technological Acceleration: Digital Transformation of Religious Imagination
The digital revolution has dramatically accelerated religious mutations through new technological mediations:
Algorithmic Curation: Digital platforms create increasingly tailored information ecosystems that reinforce Tribal Epistemology
Performative Identity: Social media platforms transform religious expression into performance, accelerating both individualistic interpretation and identity-based authority
Community Fragmentation: Digital technologies simultaneously connect and isolate, creating new forms of religious community and boundary maintenance
Accelerated Mutation: The speed of digital communication accelerates religious transformation, creating mutation cycles that would previously have taken generations
These technological developments don't simply secularize religious traditions but transform them in complex ways—often intensifying rather than diminishing religious impulses while changing their expression.
Personal Reflection: Louisiana's Cultural Complexity
Growing up in Louisiana placed me at the intersection of multiple cultural migrations—French Acadian, Spanish colonial, Upland South (primarily borderland), and coastal plantation (primarily Cavalier) influences all shaped regional culture in ways that defied simple categorization as "Southern" or "American." This cultural complexity made visible the limitations of origin stories centered exclusively on English settlement, as my home region's development involved multiple European traditions interacting with African and indigenous influences.
My family background reflected this complexity, with ancestors from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Germany arriving through different migration patterns and settling in other American regions before eventually converging in Louisiana. This mixed heritage challenged any simple understanding of religious influence, as my ancestors brought not a singular tradition but multiple, distinct religious frameworks.
What became increasingly evident through personal experience and historical study was that even supposedly unitary traditions represented multiple, distinct cultural systems often in tension with each other. The political and cultural differences between New England, the Tidewater South, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Upland South reflected not just regional adaptation but transplantation of distinct religious cultures from different parts of Britain—which then mutated in multiple directions as they encountered new technological and cultural frameworks.
Implications for Contemporary Debates
Beyond Progressive/Conservative Binaries
Understanding America's multiple theological roots and their complex mutations challenges simplistic progressive/conservative binaries. What appear to be opposed ideological positions often reveal deeper structural similarities, maintaining the same patterns while changing content.
As Stanley Hauerwas observes in his critique of Reinhold Niebuhr, American liberal Christianity didn't reject its religious heritage but translated it—maintaining providential structures while replacing explicit theological content with pragmatic political frameworks. Similarly, contemporary Dominative Christianism maintains religious language while often replacing theological substance with political identity.
Recognizing these deeper patterns allows us to move beyond surface-level political debates toward understanding the theological structures that continue to shape American political imagination across the ideological spectrum.
Multiple Traditions, Multiple Possibilities
This historical perspective also reveals that America has never been characterized by a single religious tradition but by multiple, diverse traditions in constant interaction and mutation. This diversity offers resources for moving beyond current polarizations by recovering alternative theological patterns.
The Quaker emphasis on communal discernment offers resources beyond charismatic leadership and expert authority models. The Puritan commitment to communal covenant provides frameworks beyond individualistic salvation and identity-based fragmentation. The Anglican liturgical tradition offers resources beyond emotional revivalism and rationalistic reductionism.
These diverse theological resources are not simply historical artifacts but living traditions that can be recovered and redeployed to address contemporary challenges—not by returning to some imagined past but by creative reappropriation that addresses present needs.
Conclusion: Understanding Our Common Soil
Jesus's parable of the sower reminds us that the same seed produces different results in different soils. Yet our exploration reveals something more complex—not just different soils but different seeds, which cross-pollinate and mutate over time in response to changing environments.
The simplistic story of America as the product of a single Anglo-American tradition gives way to recognition of multiple, diverse theological traditions that shaped different regions and then mutated in multiple directions. These mutations created the complex religious and political landscape we inhabit today, where apparent oppositions often mask deeper structural similarities.
Recognizing this shared heritage doesn't eliminate our differences but might foster greater understanding across divides. Our current cultural conflicts represent not merely policy disagreements but divergent evolutions of distinct theological traditions that continue to shape American imagination in ways we often fail to recognize. This perspective offers hope that beneath our heated disagreements lies the possibility for more fruitful conversation—not by pretending differences don't exist, but by understanding their origins and purposes more clearly.
Key Terms
Providential Identitarianism: A theological mutation that secularizes reformed protestant frameworks while maintaining their structural logic through identity-based categories.
Social Imaginary: Charles Taylor's concept describing the shared implicit understanding that enables common practices and legitimizes certain arrangements.
Nova Effect: Taylor's term for the explosion of religious and secular options from previously unified traditions, creating multiple mutations rather than simple secularization.
Secularization: Not the elimination of religious impulses but their transformation into new cultural and institutional forms.
Related Content
Dominative Christianism: The Crisis of Dominative Christianism →
Common Life Politics: Country →
Sermon: Mark 4:1-20 (Parable of the Sower) →
Notes
[1] David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
[2] Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (New York: Viking, 2011).
[3] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).
[4] Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001).
[5] Luke Bretherton, Christ and the Common Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019).
[6] Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
[7] Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap (New York: Penguin Press, 2023).