puritans Essay -- essays research papers

Their opponents ridiculed them as " puritans," simply these radical domesticiseers, the English followers of John Calvin, came to borrow that name as an emblem of honor. At the beginning of the s crimsonteenth century, Eng territory set about a gathering storm in religious life - the Puritan movement. Before the storm abated, the Puritans had founded the first permanent European settlements in a region that came to be known as unexampled England. The Puritans believed that God had commanded the reform of both church and society. They condemned drunkenness, gambling, theatergoing, and Sabbath-breaking and denounced popular practices rooted in pagan custom, alike the celebration of Christmas. They deplored the "corruptions" of Roman Catholicism that still pervaded the church of England - churches and ceremonies they thought similarly elaborate, clergymen who were poorly educated. The refusal of English monarchs to attack these "besetting evils" turned t he Puritans into outspoken critics of the government. This King jam I would not endure he decided to rid England of these malcontents. With nearly of the Puritans, known as the separatists, he seemed to have succeeded. The Separatists, a tiny nonage within the Puritan movement, were pious people from humble backgrounds who concluded that the Church of England was too corrupt to be reform from within. In 1608 one Separatist congregation at Scrooby decided to flee to Holland. That move afforded them religious meltdom, but they found only low-paying jobs and were distressed by desertions from within their ranks to other religions. somewhat decided to move again, this season to North America. In December of 1620, lxxxviii Separatist "Pilgrims" disembarked from the Mayflower at a place they called Plymouth on the slide of present-day southeastern Massachusetts. But misfortune followed the Separatists to the impertinent World. The hardships of the crossing and unretentive provisions left many vulnerable to a "starving time" during the winter. The Plymouth colony would have failed entirelyif the Pilgrims had not received assistance from topical anaesthetic Indian tribes. The Pilgrims had received permission from England to settle farther south in the New World, but they had sailed off course and lacked any legal sanction for their land claims or their government in Plymouth. English authorities, however, distracted by ... ...regationalism fostered a growing diversity of opinion and practice, because each local church was free to go its own way. By the end of the seventeenth century, many churches had adopt more liberal standards for admission to membership or to the sacraments of baptism and communion. Divisions among New Englands Congregationalists became even more pronounced after the 1730s because of the first Great Awakening, a major religious revival. Some welcomed it, but others disliked the emotionalism and disorder that accompanie d the new religious enthusiasm. Competing denominations gained from the Congregationalists disputes disgruntled conservatives deserted to the Anglicans and Quakers, and the most radical advocates of revivalism formed "Separate" churches or joined the Baptists. By the middle of the eighteenth century, New England had become a more mobile, commercialized, stratified, and diverse society. But for most of the regions inhabitants, preceding patterns of life persisted. The majority remained an insular, rural folk, their lives defined by the seasonal rhythms of agriculture, the bonds of family, church, and local community, and a fundamentally religious outlook.