Questions about 17th & 18th Century Puritans

[philly_bob]

1. Is American Mayflower Puritanism the same Puritanism that, in England, led to Oliver Cromwell and the Regicide?

2. Why are there not -- to my knowledge -- any churches called "Puritan?"

3. According to one source, 75% of Colonial Americans were Puritans. What mainstream modern religion did they go into?

Honest questions, occasioned by reading some Right-Winger's blathering about American exceptionalism.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Without looking it up

I think you might find they came here to England from Holland.

[jwirr]

11. I think it was the other way around. They fled to Holland and then

to America. They originated in England - many of us doing genealogy can trace the families to their origins in England.

[patrice]

2. GOOD questions! . . . marking to return later.

:hi:

[atreides1]

3. Here you go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan

[patrice]

4. I think they are theologically related to the Calvinists, so they are now whatever Calvinists turned

into.

[Ozymanithrax]

5. Yes, Cromwell and the Puritans were one in the same...

Their sect of Christianity was founded during the reign of Elizabeth I. Cromwell was a Puritan. Some of them were happy with the reformation of the Church of England. Those who were not, emigrated to the Netherlands to escape religious prosecution or took the label of Nonconformist (meaning they did not conform to the rules of the Church of England). Eventually they settled in New England.

Doctrinally, they were Calvinists. Baptists and similar churches are the modern decedents.

[Critters2]

20. The United Church of Christ is the modern descendant.

The Puritans were NOT Baptist, and, in fact, persecuted Baptists, who fled to Rhode Island.

We in the UCC are not proud of this fact, but it is our heritage.

[Jazz Ambassador]

6. Pilgrims and Puritans are different

1. First of all -- and this is a common mistake -- Puritans and Pilgrims are different. The Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower and were significantly more religiously tolerant than the Puritans. They were also doctrinally different from the Puritans (if memory serves, the Pilgrims actually broke with the Church of England, whereas the Puritans saw themselves as dissenters within the Church). For a time, the Puritans and the Pilgrims even had separate colonies in the New World (Massachusetts Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony were separate political entities). The Puritans (but not the Pilgrims) were Cromwell's Roundheads.

2 & 3: Puritanism became Congregationalism (for the most part). But that 75% number seems way off, since Puritanism was a phenomenon largely confined to New England.

[philly_bob]

10. You're right. Pilgrims were on the Mayflower, not Puritans.

I added the term "Mayflower" to give it a time context without thinking about it. Thanks, Jazz.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. Yes, the Pilgrims were actually Separatists

The Puritans were willing to stay in the Church of England and "reform it from within," although they gave up on this when the monarchy was restored and everyone started having fun again.

The Separatists wanted to start their own denomination.

The Pilgrims founded Plymouth Plantations, and the Puritans founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which eventually united to become the state of Massachusetts.

[LeftishBrit]

25. Thanks for info

I was aware that the Puritans weren't the same as the Mayflower passengers, but was a bit confused about the relation between them - thank you for clarifying!

[damntexdem]

7. They became Congregationalists, although some became Presbytarians.

The Congregationalists later split, budding off Unitarianism:

http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/unitariancontroversy.html

[Deep13]

8. Quick answers

"1. Is American Mayflower Puritanism the same Puritanism that, in England, led to Oliver Cromwell and the Regicide?"

Not really. First, the MA colonies were already established when that happened. Second, the English puritans were reformers of the Church of England (like the Mass. Bay settlers of 1630). The Plymouth pilgrims were seperatists, which was a splinter group of the larger reform movement. Further, only about 2/3 of the pilgrims were pilgrims. About a third were recruited by the Mayflower's owners to fill the space left by seperatists who backed out. The numbers of seperatists and Mass. Bay Puritans became further diluted as additional colonists from the general population of Britain arrived over the next few decades. The Seperatists had actually been living in Holland for a number of years before going to America which makes them even further removed from the English Civil War.


"2. Why are there not -- to my knowledge -- any churches called "Puritan?""

They're gone. Modern fundamentalist Christians tend to be descended from the American revivalist movement of the 19th century and not the Puritants of the 17th. Their churches live on in the form of Congregationalist, Presbyterian and "low" Episcopal, but the Puritanical work-til-you-drop philosophy is largely dead. Much of what people now call puritanical is actually a result of the repressive Victorian age.

"3. According to one source, 75% of Colonial Americans were Puritans. What mainstream modern religion did they go into?"

Well, they were Protestants which may have been synonymous with puritan for awhile. The colonial period in America began around 1600 with Jamestown and ended in 1776, so it depends when we are talking and what part of the country. The Puritan point of view tended to give way to a more mainstream Anglicanism as the 17th century wore on. I've noted above the modern equivalents of those early, English speaking, Protestant churches.

"Honest questions, occasioned by reading some Right-Winger's blathering about American exceptionalism."

The seperation of church and state was motivated in part by England's experience with theocracy under tyrrants like the Catholic extremist Mary Tudor and Protestant enforcers like Elizabeth Tudor and Cromwell.

[Critters2]

16. Actually, the United Church of Christ is the descendant denomination of both Puritans and Separatist

Pilgrims.

ucc.org

[Deep13]

22. Well, it's a descendant. nt

[Taverner]

9. Many of the Puritans were not called "Puritans"

That was a semi-derrogatory term given to them by the less fervent Christians.

Many of them were, however "Anabaptists" which was the ancestor of The Baptists, Methodists, Mennonites and Huterites.

[Critters2]

17. Umm, no, actually. In fact, Anabaptists were not welcome in the New England

colonies governed by Puritans...hence the founding of Rhode Island.

The Puritans were Reformed, NOT Anabaptist, and have no connection with Mennonites, Methodists, or Hutterites, none of whom are Reformed.

The descendants of the Puritans and Pilgrims are the United Church of Christ, the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

[dimbear]

12. Here you go, right here in my home state......

http://puritanchurch.com/

[Critters2]

18. Puhleeze

Just because these wackjobs call themselves Puritans, doesn't mean they have any historical connection to them, which they don't.

[Critters2]

13. 1. Those who came on the Mayflower were not, technically, Puritans. They were Brownists.

The principal difference is that Puritans were, until quite late in their history, Anglicans who believed the Church of England held too tightly to its Roman roots, but could be reformed, or purified, hence the name. The Brownists broke with the Anglican Church well before the Puritans, were more radically Reformed from the outset, and tended to be poorer, more working class while the Puritans were generally members of the merchant class, with a few members of the nobility as well.

The state we now call Massachusetts was originally two colonies--the Plymouth Colony, which included the area around Plymouth and Cape Cod; and the Massachusetts Bay Colony which comprised the rest of Massachusetts, Maine, and parts of New Hampshire. The Plymouth Colony was governed by Brownist Separatists, the Mass Bay colony by Puritans.

So, no, the Pilgrims/Separatists/Brownists were not the Puritans of Oliver Cromwell. The Puritans of New England were members of the same group, religiously and philosophically.

[Critters2]

14. 2. The Puritans and Pilgrims met at Cambridge, MA in 1648, and

signed The Cambridge Platform, agreeing to shared governing and theological principles based on the Westminster Confession. From that time on, both groups went by the name "Congregational".

Congregationalists merged with a group called "The Christian Connection" in 1929, to form the Congregational Christian Churches.


In 1957, that denomination merged with the Evangelical and Reformed Church to form the United Church of Christ.

[Critters2]

15. 3. Most congregations are in the United Church of Christ

ucc.org

Some, National Association of Congregational Christian Churches
http://www.naccc.org/


Some, The Unitarian Universalist Association
http://www.uua.org/



I'm a pastor in the United Church of Christ. Feel free to ask more questions. I took lots of classes in this stuff!

[onager]

19. The Plymouth court records sure are fascinating...

He (Thomas Granger) was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey...

Fornication was by far the most common sexual offence to come before the Plymouth courts...The enactment of 1645 that outlined the punishment for crimes of fornication distinguished between acts committed before and after the time of marriage contract. The fine for fornication after contract was only five pounds per person -- half the fine for fornication before contract.

While the punishments issued by the court were severe, they were not the ideal proposed in 1636. If 11% of marriages involved premarital sex resulting in pregnancy, the actual frequency of premarital sex must be even higher...the point is that sex before marriage was a common occurrence in the colony.

http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/plymouth/Lauria1.html

[philly_bob]

23. OP's summary & comments

It seems to be the consensus so far that Puritanism morphed, through a series of interchurch mergers, into today's (1) Unitarians and (2) United Church of Christ. If anybody objects to that summary, please say so. Note that Wikipedia articles on UCC and Unitarians do not mention Puritans.

Today, both of these denominations tend to be liberal politically. UCC has an effective advertising campaign built around the idea of inclusion ("No matter who you are...") for all races and gender orientations and, according to Wikipedia, UCC has "favored liberal views on social issues, such as civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, and abortion." Even more politically liberal are Unitarians. When that crazy right-winger wanted to shoot left-wingers, he went to the Unitarian Sunday service. I hang around Unitarians and they are also liberal theologically; a Unitarian Wiccan or a Unitarian atheist is entirely possible

It's significant and not widely known that the theological descendants of the "City on the Hill" religious tradition said to be the foundation of America are supporters of progressive political and religious philosophies.

One other interesting unverified factoid I offer for anyone who wants to write a rousing piece of historical fiction. According to David Gelernter, two of the executioners of the English King Charles took refuge in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

I'm really enjoying this discussion.

[LeftishBrit]

24. Answers so far as I know:

(1) Basically yes - though there were a number of factors besides religion that led to the Civil Wars, and not all on the Parliamentary side were Puritans. Cromwell's rule certainly was Puritan - and ironically was one of very few regimes in history that actually waged war on Christmas; celebration of this festival was seen, correctly enough, as essentially Pagan in origin, and was therefore banned. Many Puritans had left England earlier in the 17th century, because of dissatisfaction with the established Church of England, which they saw as still too close to Catholicism. Some went at the very beginning of the century to the Netherlands, and many of these later went to America from there. Others left England directly for America on the Mayflower and mainly on subsequent ships. Again, not all early colonists were Puritans but many were - though I think *not* a majority of those on the Mayflower itself. (ETA: this is a bit woolly -see Lydia Leftcoast's post 21 which claries the issue.)

(2) There is no church called 'Puritan' as such; the religious descendants of the Puritans and similar groups in Britain belonged and belong to several different churches which have in common that they are Protestant but separate from the established Church of England; and are further removed from Catholicism than the C of E. Such non-Anglican Protestants have been generically called 'Dissenters' or more commonly in recent times 'Nonconformists'.

(3) The majority of Puritans in the colonies and early USA, and some of those who remained in England, belonged to a denomination which was called 'Congregationalist'. Some Congregationalist churches still exist, but most Congregationalists merged with other Nonconformist churches in the 20th century. In the UK, the main merged denomination is called the United Reformed Church. As I understand, the approximate equivalent in the USA is the United Church of Christ.