Puritan roots

Adapted from The Times

August 4, 2006

“Americans reveal their Puritan roots whether it's in business, sex or war.”

George Walden

ANYONE WHO THINKS of American foreign policy in the Middle East as cussed, overzealous, hot-headed and hypocritical will be unconsoled to learn that this was the kind of thing people were saying about Puritanism and its adherents some four hundred years ago.

Like so much else in modern America, its actions abroad should be viewed through the prism of the country’s root religion, Puritanism.

To understand its continued centrality, imagine an America with no Mayflower and no New England. The national temperament would be less earnest, less moralistic, gentler. There would be fewer people in jail, and no executions. There might also be fewer Republican presidents and Bible literalists, and because a non-Puritan America would be less mesmerised by sex and introspection, less pornography and fewer psychiatrists’ couches.

An improvement on the America we have got, you may say. But the country might also have been less energetic, less enterprising, less rigorously democratic, less uncompromisingly freedom- loving. A poorer, milder America would be less able to do good as well as harm in the world. More reluctant to become engaged in Vietnam, it might also have been less tenacious in its pursuit of the Cold War generally. It would certainly not have been in Iraq, but that would be small comfort to its French or British critics, because a softer, non-Puritan America might well have resulted in a Europe submerged by Hitler, Stalin, or both.

But America is what it is, a country that is still 60 per cent Protestant. This could be a handy guide to its behaviour, except that Puritan doctrine was notoriously contradictory. All you can be sure of is its tendency to fly to extremes. “Its theory had been discipline,” R. H. Tawney wrote, “its practical result was liberty,” .

In New England, illicit sex was repressed, but in business the sky was the limit, in many senses. For Puritans commerce was a holy pursuit, a way of busying themselves in the world in the hope of showing themselves as members of the elect who would be saved, rather than as damned from birth (“losers” in modern parlance). The characteristics of pious business folk have changed little over time.

Abstemious in their own lives, they take brief working holidays in Mexico or Montego Bay, where their conversation is laced with laments about the drinking, drug taking and sexual improvidence of the young and the poor. To minimise contact with “losers” they live in gated communities, send their children to private schools and bequeath them just enough to provide a headstart for becoming upstanding self-made men, in the image of their fathers.

In foreign policy, too, the New England retrovirus remains active. Like the Puritan whose economic self-seeking and psychic self- immersion were always in danger of divorcing him from the more altruistic aspects of the creed, America has long oscillated unnervingly between isolation and engagement with the world. For a people who believed that most of it was inhabited by the Antichrist there were reasons to stay aloof. Many countries still appear to America as backward nations whose souls it makes intermittent attempts to save, but that often turn out to be beyond redemption.

America’s Puritan origins do much to explain why it is the maddening and exhilarating, ancient and modern, progressive and conservative, sophisticated and simplistic, creative and destructive country it is. It explains why it finds itself in the throes of religious revival when secularism is advancing across Europe.

Puritan roots-prep

Part 1 ( line 1 down to line 21)

I) Vocabulary: fill in the grid

FRENCH	SYNONYM	ENGLISH	FRENCH	SYNONYM	ENGLISH
Quiconque/toute personne qui			Étranger ( d’un autre pays)
	stubborn		À l’étranger
Irréfléchi	rash			serious
	sofa			fascinated
amélioration	betterment		De manière intransigeante
	Soft (temperament)				As well as
	unwilling	reluctant		≠ good
		behaviour		useful	handy
	Well-known	notorious

II) Grammar

Ø MODAUX

Comment exprime-t-on le conseil? A) should b) would c) might d) could

Traduire: tu devrais travailler plus:…………………………………………………………………………….

Tu aurais dû travailler plus :……………………………………………………………………………………………..

Find the relevant passages in the text :……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Comment exprime-t-on la possibilité incertaine ? a) can b) must c) may

Traduire : il se peut qu’il vienne :…………………………………………………………………..

Il se pourrait qu’il vienne :……………………………………………………………..

Il se pourrait qu’il soit venu :……………………………………………………………………………………

Find the relevant passages in the text :………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Ø WHETHER

Traduire les 2 phrases suivantes :

a)I wonder whether ( = if )she will come :…………………………………………………………………………..

b)I’ll do it whether you like it or not:………………………………………………………………………………

“….whether it’s in business, sex or war.”: cette phrase ressemble-t-elle à a) ou b)?:………………………….

Traduire toute la phrase:………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Ø COMPARATIFS DE QUANTITE

Compléter le tableau

	NOMS COMPTABLES	NOMS NON-COMPTABLES ou RIEN
PLUS GRANDES QUANTITES( plus de)	More people/more cars	More money / more
QUANTITES EGALES ( autant de)	As many people	As much money
QUANTITES INFERIEURES ( moins de)

III) Geographical elements

Look at the map and colour the states which compose New England. Write the names of the different states

New England is composed of: 1):…………………………………….. 2):………………………………….. 3):………………………………………….. 4):……………………………………………. 5):…………………………………………… 6):……………………………………………..

IV) Understanding the text ( you may write the answers on your exercise-book)

	Literal understanding		Deeper understanding
1	What is often said about American policy in the Middle East  ?	a	What is the author referring to?
2	What is it compared to?
3	What is the conclusion of the author?	b	Explain:” the country’s root religion, Puritanism”
4	What’s the meaning of the word “centrality”?	c	Why those references to the Mayflower and new England?
5	What does the author ask the reader to do? What does it mean?
6	What would be the consequences on the American temperament?
7	What would America be like?	d	Why this remark about “fewer psychiatrists’couches”?
8	What does the author expect the reader to think?
9	What would be the other consequences on the American temperament of a non-Puritan America?
10	What would America have done regarding wars? ( attention COND passé: WOULD HAVE +PP)
11	What does the author answer to his French or British critics?	e	What is the meaning of the author concerning a non-Puritan America?
12	What is the proportion of Protestants in the USA?	f	What are the other religions? In what proportions?
13	What is the main characteristic of the Puritan doctrine?
14	What are its two contradictory results?

V) Exercises

A) Translate the text

B) Write in about 150 words what you have understood of this text

C) Grammar

1) Modals

Utiliser should, should have, might, might have en utilisant le verbe entre parenthèses

If you had revised your history lesson, you ( get)…………………………………………………………better results.

I f you hurry, you ( get)………………………………………………………………there in time.

You (tell)…………………………………………………her, she wouldn’t have misunderstood the situation.

With your luck, you (land)……………………………………………………………the contract.

You ( hurry)………………………………………… if you want to get there in time.

2) Quantities

Utliser more,fewer,as much, as many, less

There are ......................customers today than yesterday : so we didn’t make ....................profit.

The head manager is very happy : the firm sold ...................products this year than last year ; but unfortunately, there isn’t ..........................cashflow as last year.

There was ......................rain today than yesterday.

3) Whether

Peut-on remplacer whether par if ou non?

YES NO

I wonder whether I will have time to do it o o

He will do it whether you agree or not o o

I’ve never known whether he was telling the truth or not o o

Whether it rains or it’s sunny, I’ll go out o o

Have ever asked yourself whether you were wrong? o o

Part 2 ( line 22 down to the end)

I) Vocabulary: fill in the grid

FRENCH	SYNONYM	ENGLISH	FRENCH	SYNONYM	ENGLISH
	Nothing is impossible	The sky is the limit	saint
	To do things	To busy oneself		The chosen	The elect
Plutôt que		Rather than		people	folk
Sobre/raisonnable	reasonable		Émaillé de/parsemé de
Imprévoyance/irresponsabilité	irresponsibility			Fenced in	gated
	To donate	To bequeath		To supply	To provide
Une longueur d’avance		A headstart	Intègre/droit	respectable
Égoïste/centré sur soi		Self-seeking	De manière déconcertante/déroutante
		A people(≠people)		distant
arriéré	Retarded		Au-delà		beyond
affolant			Au beau milieu de		In the throes of
Renouveau/regain	resurgence		laïcité

II) Grammar

Ø MYSELF: compléter le tableau

1ère p.s

2ème p.s

3ème p.sM

3ème p.sF

3èmep.s N

1ère p.p

2ème p.p

3ème p.p

Ø ADJECTIFS SUBSTANTIVES

“the young and the poor” se traduit par: a) le jeune et le pauvre b) les jeunes et les pauvres

Pourquoi n’y a-t-il pas de S ?:………………………………………………………………………………………

Comment traduire « un jeune » ou « un pauvre » :……………………………………………………………………….

Ø WHOSE

Traduire : « A.Christie, whose novels you’ve read » :……………………………………………………………………………………..

Que remarquez-vous sur l’ordre des mots?:…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Traduire la phrase du texte line 37 :……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Ø MOST

Trois manières de dire « la plupart », selon ce qui suit :

Most students- Most of the students-most of them (Frien avant most!)

III) Understanding the text ( you may write the answers on your exercise-book)

	Literal understanding		Deeper understanding
1	In what field did the Americans’freedom have no limit?	a	What is “illicit” sex for the Puritans?
2	Why?
3	What did material success mean for them?	b	Where does this theory come from?
4	What are the characteristics of pious people?
5	Who do they criticisize and why?
6	Why are losers rejected in the American society?
7	How do they avoid meeting losers?
8	Why do they try not to leave their children too much money?
9	What is the origin of the Americans’isolationism?	c	Give an example of American isolationism.
10	What pushes them not to be isolationists?	d	Give examples of their involvement in conflicts abroad.
11	What do they think of most other countries?( two qualificatives)	e	Give examples in the two cases.
12	What do you think of the adjectives used to describe America?	f	What can explain this ambivalence?
13	In what is America different from Europe?

IV) Exercises

D) Translate the text

E) Write in about 150 words what you have understood of this text

F) Grammar

Traduire en anglais

1. Les jeunes oublient souvent que leurs parents ont aussi été jeunes eux-mêmes .

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

2. Je ne suis pas comme les Puritains dont je rejette les idéaux.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

3. La plupart des élèves de ma classe ont peur de rater le bac.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

4. Les Américains sont un peuple qui n’aime pas les perdants et les pauvres.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

5. Ce pays dont tu ne connais pas les habitants est au beau milieu d’une révolution.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….