11 th grade CP English

Puritans are a group of people that emerged within the Church of England They shared common criticisms of the Anglican Church and English society and government One group, the Congregationalists, settled Plymouth in the 1620s and then Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the 1630s Another group, the Presbyterians, settled many communities in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania during the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century.

The term "Puritan" first began as a taunt or insult applied by traditional Anglicans to those who criticized or wished to "purify" the Church of England. The term "Puritan" refers to two distinct groups: "separating" Puritans (Plymouth colonists) believed that the Church of England was corrupt and that true Christians must separate themselves from it; non-separating Puritans, (those who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony) believed in reform but not separation.

sought to cleanse the culture of what they regarded as corrupt, sinful practices. They believed that the civil government should strictly enforce public morality drunkenness, gambling, ostentatious dress, swearing, and Sabbath- breaking were not allowed. They also wished to purge churches of every vestige of Roman Catholic ritual and practice both Congregationalist and Presbyterian worship services were simple, even austere, and dominated by long, learned sermons in which their clergy expounded passages from the Bible. Membership in both churches was limited to the “visibly godly,” meaning those men and women who lead sober and upright lives. New England Congregationalists adopted even stricter standards for admission to their churches—the requirement that each person applying for membership testify publicly to his or her experience of “conversion.”

Most Massachusetts colonists were nonseparating Puritans who wished to reform the established church. Puritans believed in Predestination All humans are born sinners and God decides who to “save”

Sweeping changes in Europe Beginnings of modern capitalism—both the growth of trade and the commercialization of agriculture—were yielding profits creating inflation and unemployment The rich were getting richer, and the poor much poorer growing numbers of unemployed people became vagrants, beggars, and petty criminals..

The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century had ruptured the unity of late medieval Christen beliefs Bloody religious wars ensued that led to lasting tensions between Catholics and Protestants. Finally, Europeans had “discovered” and begun colonizing what was to them an entirely new and strange world in the Americas. All of these momentous changes were profoundly unsettling to ordinary men and women, heightening their need for social order, intellectual and moral certainty, and spiritual consolation

Both ordinary New Englanders—and their “betters,” including college-educated clergymen—also lived in what one historian has aptly called “worlds of wonder.” These “wonders” include the belief in witches, the power of Satan to assume visible form, and a variety of other preternatural phenomena The foretelling power of dreams, strange prodigies, “monstrous” births, and miraculous deliverances.