Why Choosing the Supposedly Correct Side is Difficult, Part 3

I believe most people in most of history (and now) do not fall into neat categories. They don't want exactly one narrative to win, that is, only the programs/outcomes/views of one particular side. Human beings are as complex as the times and events they encounter. They can want several things at once--and do.

The wrap-up of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in England illustrates this point. It is a world in which extremists battled while ordinary people tried to survive.  

English Civil War, Part I

The Presbyterians are back! They control Parliament. They want to pass all kinds of laws telling people how to act and think and be.

Meanwhile, in America, Roger Williams has emphatically declared that mixing religion and politics is JUST WRONG (Mr. Separation of Church and State) and gotten kicked out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But not executed (the leaders in Massachusetts rather like him despite their differences).

The English Presbyterians, however, want to shut up people like Roger Williams by passing laws about blasphemy, so "[people] either have to keep to [themselves their] conviction that God in his goodness would not damn people to hell for eternity or face execution" (Winship).

So it sounds like the Presbyterians are the bad guys--

Except, they hesitate to execute King Charles I, which they rightly consider far too extreme an act. The Congregationalists (far more extreme Protestants) do want to execute him, in part because Cromwell's army is pissed as stink about not getting paid by the aforementioned Presbyterian Parliament (and Parliament and the king are lumped together despite Charles I having zero interest in Presbyterianism).

Note: the Presbyterians, originally the religious radicals in England, have moved closer to the center as a more radical group fills the void.

The army is filled with a whole bunch of people who don't much like other people telling them what to think. Much more my cup of tea, EXCEPT--

(1) Charles I really shouldn't have been executed. It was pretty shameful; he was no worse than any other monarch and WAY more confused since his godly right to rule (which was still a given at that time) came right up against the radicalism of a whole bunch of so-called freethinkers.

(2) The Congregationalists were rather horrible. They were like high school cliques--or social justice warriors--who determine that anyone who doesn't stay "true" to their little church/clique/supercool group is evil, satanic, just-so-baaad and deserves to be bullied and mistreated.

To be continued...