Although most people today view Puritanism as a dour way of life, this movement held considerable attraction for the 16th and 17th century English. Although Puritans considered themselves to be good Anglicans--members of the Church of England--they had the zeal common to all reformers. Heavily influenced by John Calvin, they sought to bring reformation to the English Church, to restore the true church of Christ which had grown corrupt over the ages.

To find the model for that true church, the Puritans turned to the Scriptures. The Bible, for the Puritans, was the only divinely inspired word of God. In the pages of Scripture were to be found the standards of behavior, belief, and worship. Puritans found in the Scriptures a message that spoke to the needs of their followers and their times: one that explained the nature of God and man, and the relation between them.

Theology of the Puritans

Puritans began with the assumption that a person can not actually understand the deity. The very nature of infinite being was such as to be beyond the comprehension of finite minds. All we can ever know about him is what he voluntarily revealed in his dealings with human-kind.

Having made this disclaimer, the Puritan theologians went on to describe God's conduct in great detail. They began with the idea of divine sovereignty. That is to say, God is all powerful. The universe was created and is sustained by his will (although the providential design might not always be intelligible to a person's corrupt intellect).

They also spoke frequently of his benevolence. God was viewed as the source of all goodness, and everything he did was by definition good. But there was a fly in the ointment: humanity. Man was part of God's creation and made in God's image, but that original goodness was lost when our first parents violated God's covenant, and "fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body." Physically, this led to the advent of "suffering, illness, and death." Spiritually, it led to all man's faculties being disoriented and his soul corrupted. Instead of being God-centered, we became self-centered. The human will lost its inclination toward good. In other words, Puritans placed special emphasis on the Fall and Original Sin. (Perhaps the only two doctrines in Christianity that can be empirically proven.)

The corollary to all this was that all persons deserve damnation. This was the central belief of the Puritan. He/she found that this was confirmed by the observation of his or her fellows and by his/her awareness of the darker impulses of his/her own nature. The principle expression of this was the doctrine of Predestination. In essence, this doctrine said that if God is all knowing, and knows everything that will happen, if then follows that he already knows who will be saved. The Puritan found this comforting, because it meant that whatever happens, must make sense in the mind of God even if we can't understand it.

Puritans believed that God in his benevolence chose to save some in spite of their unworthiness. This choice was arbitrary, but it was also unnecessary. God did not have to, but in his goodness absolved some men and women from their guilt. These were the predestined or elect. All others were known as the reprobate. Whereas most moderns assert the essential worth of human beings, Puritans were scripturally, and experientially convinced that human beings were fundamentally depraved, and deserving of damnation. That God went beyond the dictates of strict justice to elect some to be saved was a source of hope, a basis of thanks, and also a source of assurance. It meant that those who were elect could approach future with confidence.

The Doctrine of Predestination can be best expressed by the acrostic "TULIP":

T-Total Depravity (one is not 100% evil, but hopelessly tainted with sin in the same way a garment that's not color fast can get mixed in with a load of whites, and stain the whole lot.)

U-Unconditioned Election (God is not subject to any circumstances, and is free to choose who he wills to be saved.)

L-Limited Atonement (the sacrifice of Christ is limited to the elect.)

I-Irresistable Grace (There is nothing you can do about it. See: Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven).

P-Perserverance of the Saints (You are never able to fall from Grace. Once you are saved, you are always saved).

Puritans developed an elaborate theology to explain how God acted to save the elect. They began with the idea of a Covenant of Works. In the Fall, humans broke the covenant they had made with God, and fell out of communion with their maker. God then provided a Covenant of Redemption. Within the Godhead, the Father compacted with Son to provide for salvation of some, but not all. This made possible a Covenant of Grace whereby one receives grace in return for faith.

Because it contains a number of Covenants, Puritan theology has been characterized by Perry Miller as Federal or Covenant Theology. These covenants affected Puritan ecclesiology and social thought, and became the basis for other covenants such as church covenants, social covenants, and national covenants (constitutions).

But the $64,000 question that nagged at the Puritan was how do you know if you are elect? How do you know that you are party to these covenants, that you have faith? Puritans were extremely concerned to discern the signs of salvation, and considerable literature was devoted to this problem. Some settled on two essential elements: a conviction of sin and an experience of forgiveness. Slowly, the strict understanding of election as fixed moderated--not in so much in theory as in practice. Many tried to deal with their uncertainty by attending to various means of grace: sermon, scripture reading, self-examination.

The Appeal of Puritanism

For the upper classes, support of the established church seemed to be part of their support for the social order from which they benefitted. During the reign of Elizabeth, the Church of England basked in the reflected glow of a popular ruler. Puritans made headway, however, among the poor and middle class as the Church of England was very unpopular with the masses. That was because the Church had identified with the upper classes rather than common man. (For a more modern example of this phenomenon see: Liston Pope's classic book, Millhands and Preachers.)

In addition, because the Church of England had failed to purify itself, numerous persons of piety were left with nowhere to go except the ranks of Puritan reformers. Parish clergy of the time were generally of poor quality. One cleric in Warwickshire was described in records as "an old priest and unsound in religion, he can neither preach nor read well, his chiefest trade is to cure hawks that are hurt or diseased." A number were wanted for crimes. Once these individuals were invested (tenured) in a living (as parishes were sometimes called) the congregation was unable to remove them. Most parish clergy weren't bad, but the bad ones shaped public perception.

Many livings were meager, and unlikely to attract worthwhile candidates. Many priests were in debt and held several livings to make enough to survive. But the Princes of the Church lived in a style resembling royalty. Archbishop Whitgift, for instance, had 1000 servants, many of whom were adorned in gold.

Support for the Church of England was also undermined by the switches in allegiance from Roman Catholic to Henry's Church of England to Edward's Church of England to Mary Tudor's Catholicism to Elizabeth's Church of England. In contrast, the Puritans seemed to know what they believed, and were willing to suffer persecution and even be martyred for those beliefs. Their willingness to take a firm stand had a certain appeal.

Yet another factor was licentiousness in the Court of the King. James I (of the King James Version of the Bible fame) was openly gay, and surrounded himself with men with whom he was affectionate. For many commoners, the moral uprightness of the Puritans contrasted favorably to what was taking place at Court.

The militant anti-catholicism of the Puritans appealed to a nation that was growing more nationalistic.

But perhaps the greatest factor driving people into the Puritan ranks was the contrast that existed between Anglican "dumb-dog" pastors and Puritans when it came to the art of preaching the Word. The sermon was an extraordinarily important institution in Elizabethan times. In lieu of newspapers, the pulpit served as the principle communicator of news. It was a major means of adult education, as well as a tool of moral and socioeconomic guidance. In an age with little public entertainment, the sermon served to bring excitement to the illiterate masses. More than 1,000 persons would gather each week to hear preaching at St. Paul's Cross.

Elizabeth was suspicious of the potential for sedition in such gatherings. James I, and Charles I went so far as to limit and ban such preaching.

Puritan preaching cultivated a plain style. It applied lessons of Scripture to the lives of individuals in a logical direct form of presentation, and in a language appropriate to the audience. This was a time when England was undergoing a major transformation from a feudal to a modern society, a time of tremendous instability and flux. The confiscation of monasteries and church lands by Henry had led to tripling of the landed class and the growth of a middle class. Growing numbers of university graduates were finding few if any jobs, and social dislocation left thousands rootless and mobile. To people filled with anxiety, Puritan preaching offered hope and assurance. Puritanism provided psychological certitude whereas Anglicanism seemed to be a faith without character, a compromise church based on the principle that most ecclesiastical matters were to be viewed with indifference.

The Great Migration

Elizabeth's successors dealt differently with Puritans. James I was, generally speaking, not a nice man, although his sponsorship of the King James Bible has led some to refer to him as Saint James. James treated the Puritan cause with disregard, but Charles I went a step further and actively tried to suppress them. Their policies produced two events of major significance--the Great Migration of the 1630's and the Puritan Revolution of 1640's. The first led to creation of a new England on the shores of America. The second event led to a new England in the Old World. This first new England, of course, is the one with which we are concerned.

The origins of the Great Migration can be traced to 1607 and settlement of Jamestown.Although it is an often ignored aspect of American history--in that for many years most history was written in Boston and it's immediate environs--the first American settlement was not the Pilgrims at Plymoth Rock. Still another aspect of the Jamestown settlement that is often ignored is the religious dimension of the migration to Virginia. Indeed, many of the original colonists at Jamestown were Puritans who hoped to create another England, albeit one that was purer.

Although the first settlers were a mixed company of fortune seekers and Puritans, the hope was that they would find a new promised land in which the streams would be filled with fish, the woods with game, and the ground with gold. In this new promised land, the Puritans wanted to establish a purified society far from the corrupting influence of England, one that would be in accord with divine will. In this New England that they would create out of the wilderness, there would be a Church of England, but it would be the purified Church for which Puritans had long dreamed. The treasurer of the Virginia Company--Sir Edwin Sandys--was trained in Geneva, and was one of the Puritan leaders in Parliament. And all the clergy who came to the colony were Puritans.

The initial settlement had 35 gentlemen and a few artisans and craftsmen. The plan for organization was communitarian, that is to say, there was to be no private property. It was also Biblical, based on the early Christian Church as described in the Book of Acts. The colony also had a strict code of legislation--Dale's Laws--that regulated life and insured that everyone kept a strict Christian life-style. Among other things, they required attendance at worship twice a day, strict observance of the Lord's Day, and punishment for profanity and immodest dress. The Puritans sought to provide for the common welfare by insuring that the consumption of all goods was regulated and channeled to the glory of God.

The immediate context of Dale's Laws was survival. Those in the colony who were fortune hunters were not well prepared for the rough conditions on a new frontier. A number were looking for the proverbial promised land flowing with milk and honey, and did not come expecting hardship, much less having to struggle just to survive. The code was patterned after the military code of the Netherlands, a Calvinist stronghold, and displayed a preoccupation with developing a disciplined society ready to do battle in the cosmic struggle being waged at the end of time. (Puritans believed that the last days were at hand, that is the final struggle between Christ and the Anti-Christ.

Religious fervor was not enough to sustain the new colonists, however, and Jamestown was nearly abandoned. The first settlers gave up and left only to meet their relief ship in the river.

With the development of Tobacco as a crop, however, the success of the colony assured. Tobacco became a form of currency, and it demanded lots of land, leading to friction with Indians. It also demand lots of labor. Initially, the colony depended on indentured servants, who would work for a number of years (usually 7) in exchange for their passage to the new world. This supply proved fickle, and there was a constant turn-over. To solve these problems, African slaves were imported in 1619. Since tradition forbade Christians from owning fellow believers in slavery, most owners refused to baptize slaves. In 1667, a law was passed by the Virginia legislature that declared that baptism did not affect a person's freedom. In part, this was to satisfy consciences, but it also served a more pragmatic reason. Alexander Whitaker wrote that evangelization was the key to "profitable returns," and used his position to teach the enslaved Africans that God willed them to be slaves, and that they should accept their predestined lot. (For a further information on the life of slaves in America, click here.

The growing wealth of the colony led it to be taken over by the crown. In 1624, James moved to eradicate the Puritan character of the Virginia settlement by making it a crown colony. Anglicans were given a firm reign, and the canons of the Church of England were enforced, resulting in a gradual change in the character of the colony.

The next major effort at settlement resulted from the organization of Dorchester Company of Adventurers in 1623 to exploit fisheries off North America. Permanent bases of supply for food and man-power for company fishing vessels were established in North America. It was also hoped these bases would lead to the conversion of Indians, although the principle motive was economic. This effort failed, however.

The Puritans in New England

One of the principles in this company, however, was a Puritan named John White. He saw these outposts as a haven from the growing Anglican persecution at home. The company's collapse led him to share his vision with other Puritans. They organized the New England Company for the purpose of creating a new England--a pure religious commonwealth in the new world--and obtained a land grant. They sent 40 colonists to join the handful of Puritans already in Virginia. The new settlers went a bit off course and arrived in Massachusetts where they called their new settlement Salem, which means peaceful, a somewhat ironic choice given the community's latter history.

Questions arose, however, over the New England Company's grant. Some of company's lands had been included in grants to others. As a result of investor uncertainty, the Company faltered, leading to the formation of the Massachusetts Bay Company (1629). At the same time, tension between the Puritans and the Crown had reached a fevered pitch. Charles I dissolved Parliament leaving Puritans with no means to redress their grievances. Massachusetts Bay came to be seen as a haven. Many Puritans decided England was too corrupt, too resistant to change, and so many embarked for the new world.

Why did these Puritans leave their ancestral homes, separate themselves from relatives and friends, forsake occupations, and take up new homes in the wilderness? Invariably, these Puritans justified their decision by talking about their apprehension of England's future, and their place in God's providential design. Most Englishmen in the 17th century accepted without question that their country was an "elect nation" chosen by God to play a great role in human destiny. They believed the Reformation had ushered in a time when the forces of Christ and the Anti-Christ would do battle, with the final outcome being the triumph of the true church.

"England was the first nation to which the Lord gave the light of the gospel after the darkness of Popery" William Bradford of Plymouth declared. It was England's task to redeem Christendom, and Puritans believed in their God-aided sufficiency to usher in the millennium--the 1000 year reign of the saints foretold in Revelation. The failure of James I and Charles I to advance reform, and to champion Protestantism abroad was a sign that England was flirting with being on the wrong side of the coming cosmic struggle. Elizabeth had stoutly resisted the influence of the anti-christian Spain, and she had assisted the Netherlands to throw off Spanish rule. This had been a great victory against the Anti-Christ many Puritans believed.

But as Holland became a major naval power, and commercial threat to the English, James and Charles sought to support Spain against their new rival. They also refused to get involved with the 30 years war fought along Catholic and Protestant lines. This was in Puritan eyes, nothing less than Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil. England would be judged by role she played. Charles I allowed Spanish gold bullion to go through England to reach its troops in Northern Europe. This fed Puritan suspicions that their government's true sympathies lay on the wrong side of the struggle between Christ and the Anti-Christ.

They came to view the settlement of New England as an errand into the wilderness; an opportunity to create a model Puritan community that would convert England by its example and the prayers of its inhabitants. John Winthrop's sermon (1630) as he and other Puritans journeyed to America conveyed this strong sense of mission: "wee shall be as a City upon a Hill. The eies of all people are uppon us." The Puritans were abandoning an England they believed was doomed to suffer God's wrath. And they were assisting in God's divine plan.

It was this sense of mission that motivated 21,000 Puritans to leave hearth and home during the 1630's. And this same sense of mission has continued to motivate Americans to the present. Although the religious foundations of this mission have long sense been forgotten, we still feel compelled to make the world safe for democracy, and presidential candidates like Ronald Reagan still use this metaphor to win elections.