In Chapter nineteen, minister Increase Mather’s The Necessity of Reformation closely fits into the Puritan theological and cultural worldview. New England feared the onset of war with the Native Americans was God punishing the people for becoming disconnected with him, and breaking the covenant. To prevent future punishment, the General Court enforced several laws, restricting […]
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The Savages or Voyages of Samuel De Champlain
Samuel de Champlain was born in Brouage, France. His date of birth is unknown, but estimated to be around 1570. For exploring North America in the name of France, Champlain was coined as the “Father of New France,” as he established the city of Quebec in Canada (then referred to as New France). As a […]
Fusing Religious Ideology With Labor
Alan Taylor draws a connection between the Puritan’s zeal for religion and the Puritan’s adept ability to produce labor and maintain a stable economic colony, in which the poorest of colonist had a “house and land of his own” (172). Taylor notes that the Puritan colonies had neither the extremely poor nor the […]
A Colony Established on Religious Freedom: But how much freedom is too much?
Everyone knows the Puritans established colonies in North America to escape from religious persecution. Not wanting to conform to the Church of England, and being followers of a more Calvinistic approach to religion, the Puritans fled to the new world. But once they arrived and became established, how did they treat differing opinions on religion? […]
A Whole New World
The Puritan way of life was threatened by expansion in that the local community became weaker and weaker as people moved further from the epicenter of the settlement. People gained access to new plots of land and took their families with them and started to grow away from the original place the Puritans. As people […]
William Bradford On Plymouth Plantation: God Before Things?
In Bradford’s narrative account on the Puritans and their settlement of New England, selflessness is prevalent throughout the beginning, however, crumbles towards the end. They journeyed across dangerous water to a relatively unknown land in order to worship God in a way they thought was more holy and less sinful then the people of England. […]
New England: How working hard for your own money sometimes pays off.
New England, and its collective colonies, was very different from its counterparts in Virginia and the West Indies. From what I can gather from Taylor’s chapter about New England, these differences can be traced back to its founders’ and residents’ original motivations for immigrating. Virginia and the West Indies were generally split up into tracts […]
Submission to God’s Will
The puritans believed that the human spirit expressed and acted as God’s will. Because humans have lost the ability to directly communicate with God, according to the Puritans, the human soul is the way in which this communication could be found. Specifically, the puritans believed that communication with God was achieved through the reading of […]
Jeremiad Sermons
The jeremiad style sermon of the late 17th century is the typical fire-and-brimstone style sermon we associate with the Puritans. Its claims of societies failure to live up to God’s (incredibly high) standards are supported by evidence of all the misfortunes that might befall a community (flood, famine, fire, etc.). This style, named after the […]
Thomas Shepard and the Puritan Difficulties in England
Puritan Difficulties in England Life in England was a struggle for Puritans, as the English openly preferred Anglicanism and the “traditional culture characterized by church ales, Sunday diversions, ceremonial services, inclusive churches, and deference to the monarch” (Taylor 162). Disputes primarily arose from the latter, as kings desired a “united and quiet realm of unquestioning loyalty,” […]
