Puritans (1600-1754)
Covenant Theology. Covenants were important in the religious communities of
the Puritans in early New England. These were solemn and binding agreements
which were patterned after the covenants they believed God had made with man.
In the Covenant of Works, Adam and Eve agreed to obey God's will and obtain
salvation by their own good works. They broke this covenant and lost God's
favor. Through the Covenant of Redemption, Jesus agreed to take upon himself
the guilt of the sins of men and save them from their fate. In the Covenant of
Grace, God's spirit entered those predestined for salvation. God also made
covenants with groups of people, such as Abraham and his descendants, to look
on them with special favor if they strove to obey his will. The Puritans believed
that they were one of these groups and employed covenants throughout their
society in entering marriage, creating churches, forming towns, and establishing
governments. All of these specific covenants added up to the society's covenant
with God, who was quick to punish any infraction.
Congregational Organization. Churches were at the center of Puritan society.
Believers settled close together in towns so that they could attend church at least
twice a week and gather for prayers and theological discussions in private
homes. Living in close proximity also allowed them to scrutinize each other's
behavior and help everyone to lead the moral lives that would please God.
Privacy was a luxury that striving Christians could ill afford. The first order of
business in the town was to form a congregation. A few men were selected as
pillars because of their probable conversion and virtuous conduct. They agreed
to a church covenant and examined other applicants for membership in that
covenant. Soon after they arrived the Puritans adopted the practice of admitting
to church membership only those who could convince the pillars and the rest of
the congregation that they had been saved. They followed a congregational form
of government in which the congregation had absolute autonomy in admitting
members, governing itself, selecting its leaders, and calling its minister, whose
ordination was only valid in that congregation. The minister was the key in any
church. He had to be a highly educated person so that he could provide the most
accurate explanation of the Bible and how it related to all aspects of life. Humans
could only be saved by hearing and understanding the word of God. But the
minister also counseled his flock, leading them toward the saving faith that
brought conversion and to the good works that characterized both a saved
individual and a moral society. Because God spoke to humans only through the
Bible, which the minister understood so well, people turned to him for advice on
all sorts of matters, even economic and political. Faced with these awesome
responsibilities, neighboring ministers met in informal support groups to discuss
common problems of doctrine and governance. The decisions of these clerical
consociations were not binding on individual congregation, but their suggestions
usually were taken. In 1646 ministers and laymen from each church in
Massachusetts met in a colonywide synod and issued the Cambridge Platform,
which adopted the general tenets of the Westminster Confession of Faith and
recommended that synods or consociations continue to meet and advise local
churches. It was such a synod in 1662 that officially sanctioned a Half-Way
Covenant whereby congregations could choose to baptize the children of nonchurch members and allow them to be "half-way" members of the church.
Worship. Puritan churches were simple, plain, square buildings. There were no
steeples, stained-glass windows, or ornaments of any kind. Worshipers sat on
hard, wooden benches facing the minister, who often stood on a raised platform.
Later these benches were sectioned off into squares of family pews with
partitions around them. This was designed to cut down on the cold drafts and
retain the heat from warm bricks that the family wrapped in cloths and placed on
the floor. Pews were assigned by the family's rank in society. Worship services
went on all week, but the major services were on Sunday and were lengthy and
formal affairs. In each the main feature was the sermon, which usually lasted
about two hours and was bracketed by long prayers. The worshipers stood
during the prayers and throughout much of the service. Sometimes the
congregation would take a lunch break after the morning service and return for
another in the afternoon. The singing or chanting of psalms was allowed but with
no musical accompaniment. A "liner" would sing the line, and the congregation
would repeat it in whatever tunes individuals chose to follow. Only those who had
been saved and were members could take the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
There were no formal religious holidays, not even Christmas or Easter. The Bible
provided no dates for the birth, death, or resurrection of Christ, and the Puritans
believed that the Catholic Church had simply made them up to coincide with the
celebrations of pagans whom the church was attempting to draw into the fold. To
Puritans this was simply a whitewashing of heathen partying with a Christian
hue. There were special days of Thanksgiving when things went well and fast
days when they did not. These were called by a minister for local matters or by
the ministerial meetings for colonywide concerns.
Family and Society. The family was the cornerstone of the society where the
closest scrutiny and continuous religious instruction occurred. Thus people with
no family were placed in one. The townsfolk carefully monitored activities within
the households to insure that the family maintained the harmony that
characterized God's original creation. If trouble arose, the church elders would
intervene, removing children, apprentices, and servants. Government officials
were empowered to grant a divorce so that a contentious husband and wife
might enter more-pleasing matrimonial covenants, although it rarely happened. A
hierarchy existed within a family so that all would know their places, thus
avoiding competition and arguments. The husband was at the head and
represented the family unit in all public and church affairs; the wife deferred to
him and supervised the private household affairs. The husband also was
responsible for raising the children in a strict fashion that would suppress their
naturally sinful instincts. If any stepped out of their prescribed roles, it was
believed that they would be vulnerable to the temptations of Satan. Similar
hierarchies in the larger society were expected to promote the same harmony.
The most important was the religious hierarchy, with the minister at the top and
the church elders below him, followed by the church members; at the bottom
were the non-church members. By law everyone had to pay taxes to support the
minister, attend church regularly, and conform to Puritan practices and precepts.
Church and State. All government was in the hands of the saints because they
alone could understand and follow God's will. Church membership was required
of all adult men who wished to vote and hold political office. Female saints were
excluded because they had men to represent their families. Local governance
was most important in the lives of the townsfolk and was almost indistinguishable
from the town church. Decisions were made in town meetings which adopted the
consensus of the community, which they hoped was close to God's will. The
state was formally separated from the church even though they shared the same
mission. The colony government was to pass laws to insure that all would walk in
the path of righteousness and to punish those who strayed. If the government
failed to maintain proper standards, God would punish the whole society. For
instance, wage and price controls were established so that one individual could
not profit at the expense of others. All of these regulations were based on biblical
directives. There was not even a written code of laws until 1641 because it was
assumed that the Bible contained all the laws that were necessary. Government
officials also directed the establishment of schools. Education was crucial for all
Puritans because God revealed himself in the Scriptures, nature, and history, all
of which they needed to learn. At the least everyone had to be able to read the
Bible. In 1647 the colony government passed the "Old Deluder Satan" law,
instructing towns to establish schools for this purpose. Harvard College was
founded in 1636 to educate aspiring ministers.
Variations. Not everyone conformed to the New England orthodoxy. Some could
not justify infant baptism, believing that this sacrament should be a seal of the
conversion of adults. These Baptists, as they later came to be called, also
demanded a complete separation of church and state, and some even suggested
that humans had the freedom of will to choose whether or not they would sin.
Others advocated the presbyterian position that church membership should be
open to all who agreed to live according to God's commandments rather than
only to those who were already saved and that congregations should relinquish
some of their authority to higher councils of ministers and elders. In the interests
of harmony, such deviants were counseled in love so that they might see the
error of their disagreements, and if that failed they were banished from the
colony. Roger Williams left Massachusetts Bay in 1636 and founded Rhode
Island, where he established the first Baptist church. His colony welcomed
people of all religious beliefs and allowed them to follow their consciences
without fear of government interference. Such an environment attracted other
exiles, such as Anne Hutchinson, who was banished from Massachusetts Bay in
1637 for adhering to a more mystical interpretation of Calvinism. The Society of
Friends (Quakers), a more radical offshoot of puritanism, also settled on Rhode
Island as a base from which they could fan out to proselytize through New
England. The Puritan establishment considered the Friends to be the greatest
threat, for they challenged not only its theology but also its society and
government.
Decline. The challenges to Puritan control of New England increased after 1660
and exacerbated the internal threats to the cohesion of the society that
accompanied a growth in population and economic prosperity. More people
settled on isolated farms, away from churches and guardians of morality;
merchants and wage workers put their individual needs above the community
good; and non-Puritans arrived in greater force, seeking economic opportunity
rather than religious cohesion. Fewer people believed they had been saved, and
so smaller numbers were joining the church, thus denying their children the
chance to be baptized. In desperation, some churches adopted the Half-Way
Covenant, in which children of any baptized person could be baptized regardless
of whether their parents were church members or not; others adopted the
presbyterian position that anyone who led a moral life could become a church
member and seek conversion within its fold. Meanwhile, Puritan officials were
fighting to retain control of their colonies in the face of English threats to place
them all under royal control. James II finally did so, revoking their charters and, in
1686, gathering Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New
Jersey, and New York into the Dominion of New England, ruled by a royal
governor who was an Anglican. The Glorious Revolution ended this, but William
and Mary did not restore their old charters. Instead Massachusetts Bay received
a royal charter, which included Plymouth as well. Connecticut retained her selfgovernment, but it too had to conform to the laws of England. The Puritans had
become New Englanders, and their churches became known as Congregational.
Nybakken, Elizabeth. "Puritans (1600-1754)." American Eras. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Richard
Layman. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. Student Resource Center - Bronze. Gale. North Penn High
School. 19 Oct. 2009
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