Why America is nuts: Blame the Pilgrims [View all]

How America got so weird: The Pilgrims made us do it
Those guys who landed at Plymouth Rock were a doomsday cult, says Jane Borden — and we've emulated them ever since

By Paul Rosenberg
Contributing Writer
Published May 26, 2025 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) Jane Borden's "Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America" develops a simple thesis: The English Pilgrims who famously landed at Plymouth Rock were essentially a doomsday cult — even if they lacked a charismatic leader — and together with the Puritans who followed them passed on seven key elements of belief that have shaped America ever since. Even as some aspects of their beliefs have faded, these key elements survive in multiple different forms and settings, from pop culture to multilevel marketing schemes and a wide range of spiritual practices and beliefs that migh otherwise seem to have little in common.

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You begin your book with a brief description of the Pilgrims as a doomsday cult, and go on to say, "We’ve been iterating on its prototype since. We can’t stop re-creating our first trauma," although it remains "largely unacknowledged." What led you to see the Pilgrims as America's foundational cult?

Well, around 2018 I became very preoccupied by the division in our nation, the cultural and political division. I'd been reporting on cults at the time, and I knew that cults feed off division and that division is fueled by cults in turn. I started to see cultic thinking in America everywhere in pop culture, entertainment and politics, and I just started pulling on the thread. How long have we had this knee-jerk anti-intellectualism? Why are we so obsessed with the illusion of perfection? I just kept pulling that thread and it took me all the way back to the 1620s and 1630s.

You write that you find seven of the Puritan credos "to be most pervasive and problematic" and you devote a chapter to each. The first one is about "our innate desire for a strongman to fix our problems and punish those who aggrieve us." You discuss the findings of the 1977 book, "The American Monomyth" by Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence. What did they mean by a "monomyth"?

.....It's always violence, and it's precise violence. There are no innocent casualties. Only the bad guys die, and therefore it's cleansing violence. It's righteous. This narrative is most common in superhero genres, Western genres, we see it in vigilante films, disaster films and doomsday films, but it's even more pervasive than that.

I believe ultimately it comes from the Book of Revelation. It's a story of divine rescue, which is what apocalyptic narratives often are, and the Book of Revelation is in particular. The Puritans were obsessed with that story; they couldn't get enough. They retold it in a dozen different ways, and it's still very much with us.

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Third is "knee-jerk anti-authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism." In this chapter, you describe cults and conspiracy theories as "kissing cousins," noting that America has its own favorite flavor of conspiracy theory, with three key ingredients.

The classic American conspiracy theory always has an evil leader or group of leaders behind it, who are unfathomably powerful, typically world leaders. That comes from the story of the Antichrist. The second characteristic is that these evildoers are brainiacs, they're incredibly intelligent. They use that intelligence — which is part of what corrupted them — to prey on more simpleminded folk who are virtuous. That anti-intellectual tradition is still with us, of course, and traces back to the Puritans' culture of the simple. They lionized simplicity of manner and thought. The third element is that there's something we can do about it, gosh darn it. That's the rebellious American streak. I could give you a very long-winded response to that, but I think the shortest way to say is that the word "protest" is in the word "Protestant." ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/05/26/how-america-got-so-weird-the-pilgrims-made-us-do-it/