In 1630, a religious group with beliefs based on extremely conservative principles landed in New England. They were known as Puritans, and with their leader, John Winthrop, they founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritans had come to America so they could worship in the way they chose. As a result, their laws and lifestyles were based on Puritanism, making their culture unique among colonies of the time.
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1 Puritan Government
The Puritan system of government was a blend of theocracy and modern democracy. All members of the Puritan colony were required to attend church and to pay taxes to the church, but not all colonists were church members. The colony also had codified laws that provided some basic rights, including the right to vote for elected officials, although this right was only granted to members of the church. Although the Puritans were deeply religious, members of the clergy were not allowed to hold public office; however, the church worked closely with local government to ensure that all laws were adhered to.
2 Puritan Laws
The Puritans placed a high importance on morality and living lives that were free from sin. As a result, the laws of the Massachusetts Bay Colony focused heavily on regulating the sexual practices of the colonists and ensuring that they kept the Sabbath and lived according to the Puritan moral code. Puritan law issued severe penalties for sexual misconduct (activities that were perceived as unnatural or that took place outside marriage) that included whipping, branding and, in extreme cases, execution.
3 Families
The family was extremely important to Puritan culture. Single people were frowned upon, although single women had more legal freedom than married women did. Single women could own businesses and property, but when they married, they became legally indistinct from their husbands, a system known as coverture. Children were seen as inherently sinful, and Puritan culture made it a priority to break a child's will through beatings and other punishment. Life expectancy was short; remarriage was common and infant mortality was extremely high.
4 Non-Puritans
The Puritans traveled to the New World for religious freedom for themselves, but they did not tolerate the beliefs of others. In addition to not being allowed to vote, non-Puritans were victimized in other ways. In 1658, the Puritans passed a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony under pain of death and executed several Quakers, most notably Mary Dyer, who was seen as a martyr for her faith. Anne Hutchinson, a religious liberal, midwife, and vocal critic of Puritan ministers, was banished from the colony for holding religious meetings in her home and claiming that people did not need the clergy in order to communicate with God.
references
- 1 City University of New York: Introduction: The Puritans
- 2 Georgetown Preparatory School: Puritan New England
- 3 Campbell University: The Colonial Family in America
- 4 Pursuit: The Journal of Undergraduate Research at the University of Tennessee: Shifting Concerns: Punishment and Moral Decline in Puritan Essex County from 1636 to 1682
- 5 Swarthmore College: Quakers Fight for Religious Freedom in Puritan Massachusetts, 1656-1661
- 6 The New School: An Act made at a General Court, Held at Boston, the 20th of October, 1658
About the Author
Agatha Clark is from Portland, Ore., and has been writing about culture since 2001. She specializes in intercultural communication and is completing a Bachelor Arts at the University of Oregon with double majors in linguistics and Spanish. Clark is fascinated by expressions of human psychology and culture. Before refocusing her educational path toward language, she originally went to school to become an artist.
This 1884 engraving by Thomas Gold depicts a Puritan couple walking to church in the snow. The bravery and initiative of the Puritans served as a source of inspiration for colonists during the Revolutionary War. Later, the framers of the Constitution would look to the Puritan era in history for guidance when crafting the First Amendment rights for freedom of religion.
The bravery and initiative of the Puritans served as a source of inspiration for colonists during the Revolutionary War. Later, the framers of the Constitution would look to the Puritan era in history for guidance when crafting the First Amendment rights for freedom of religion.
Puritans thought civil authorities should enforce religion
The term Puritan is commonly applied to a reform movement that strove to purify the practices and structure of the Church of England in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. As dissidents, they sought religious freedom and economic opportunities in distant lands. They were religious people with a strong piety and a desire to establish a holy commonwealth of people who would carry out God’s will on earth. In such a commonwealth, they felt, it was the duty of the civil authorities to enforce the laws of religion, thus holding a view almost the opposite of that expressed in the First Amendment.
Puritans tried to purify the established Church of England
The strength of the Roman Catholic Church made religion and government inseparable in portions of Europe during the Middle Ages, but Martin Luther challenged this hegemony in Germany when he nailed his ninety-five theses to a church door in 1517, and the Church eventually split along Catholic and Protestant lines. The English Reformation took shape in 1529 after the pope refused King Henry VIII’s request for a divorce. The king’s anger at the pope led him to split with the Roman Catholic Church and establish the Church of England, or the Anglican Church.
By the mid-sixteenth century, some reformers thought that Protestant denominations had not gone far enough in “purifying” the church and taking it back to its New Testament roots. Puritans were among those intent on purifying the established Church of England.
Puritans had a theocratic society
Many colonists came to America from England to escape religious persecution during the reign of King James I (r. 1603–1625) and of Charles I (r. 1625–1649), James’s son and successor, both of whom were hostile to the Puritans. As the immigrants’ numbers increased, they spread out across what is now Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The Puritans formally established the Massachusetts Bay Company, which operated under royal charter. The continued immigration of colonists to New England served to multiply the number of religious denominations, which led to increased conflict.
The fact that the Puritans had left England to escape religious persecution did not mean that they believed in religious tolerance. Their society was a theocracy that governed every aspect of their lives. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech or of the press were as foreign to the Puritans as to the Church of England. When other colonists arrived with differing beliefs, they were driven out by the Puritans. For instance, the minister Roger Williams, the founder of what became Rhode Island, fled Massachusetts after his proposal to separate church and state met with Puritan hostility.
The framers of the Constitution thought that one way of avoiding the religious intolerance of the Puritan era was to encourage a multiplicity of denominations; the First Amendment specifically prohibits the kind of national religious establishment that had once dominated colonies such as Massachusetts.
This article was originally published in 2009. Daniel Baracskay teaches in the public administration program at Valdosta State University.