The absence of cultural truth should be redefined to those
differences. A point made by our ancestors.
One point of which would be religious reasoning.
Puritan:
a member of a group of English
Protestants of the late 16th and 17th centuries who regarded the Reformation of
the Church of England under Elizabeth as incomplete and sought to simplify and
regulate forms of worship.
·
A person with censorious moral
beliefs
The
Atlantic Passage of the Puritans
Puritan Reasons for Leaving
England
William Laud (1573-1645), Archbishop of Canterbury
At the time Archbishop William Laud was the head of the
Church of England. The king sent him a
decree giving him the power to visit all the churches and buildings controlled
by the church to state the condition of the properties. When he went he found that the Puritans had
been abandoning the Church of England’s elaborate rituals, and allowing
ecclesiastical property to fall in to disuse and in some cases disrepair.
Contrary to the universal practice of the church, children in these
nonconformist towns were going through life not having participated in
confirmation.
This air of nonconformity prevailed in these separatist
towns because the lecturers who were unauthorized by the church and as such had
freedom from clerical control. With this
newly gotten freedom, these lecturers would encourage their congregations to side
with the nonconformists. Even those who
were ordained by the church were ripe for a change. When William Laud was mad the Arch Bishop of
Canterbury in 1633, he began his war on nonconformity almost immediately.
A Stone Church from Cheshire England
When Laud was given the power to visit all the churches poor
houses, hospitals and schools in the province of Canterbury, he authorized all
the Justices of the Peace to arrest all non-conformists who met in private,
behind closed doors, to carry on conventicles contrary to the law and to hale
them before the Ecclesiastical Commission.
Some of the earliest
efforts of the Archbishop included compelling foreigners that still believed in
their protestant ways to conform to the Church of England. He suggested to the King and the council the
best way to rid the overwhelming sense of nonconformity found in the highly
diverse immigrant communities was to make them conform to the Anglican
ways. At first these rouge churches said
they were exempt from the authority of the Church of England, but Laud stuck
with it and finally the churches came around but not in the numbers Laud and
the Kind had originally hoped for. Laud
wanted more than just partial conformity for the good of the church.
Laud proclaimed, he was not actuated by a desire to abolish
toleration, but by a “Fear the existence of such independent ecclesiastical
units, each maintaining its own discipline, would impair the unity of the
Church of England, and might establish what would be, in substance, a state
without a state”. On his visitations,
the archbishop found in certain quarters, evidence of a fast growing Puritanism
accompanied by a general indifference, and sometimes, by an open hostility to
the Church.
The symbol of the Church of England
This desire to unify all of England under one church, the
Church of England, was what set off the migrations of the Puritans. Whom the church was unable to control had
been brought before the council for censure. These lecturers would go before
the council and were given a choice between removal to the colonies or censure
of their nonconformist teachings.
It was difficult for the church to do all of this on its own
as its power had been diminishing with the reformation and the continued
defiance of the Separatists. The people
whom the archbishop wanted to impact would not
Be affected by idle threats or arguments. As a result of the inclusion of civil law,
there was an increasing desire for the upper-class to leave the country and
seek refuge abroad. This naturally affected churches and towns in a negative
way. Towns were depopulated; churches
abandoned services and fell into a state of disrepair. The congregations that did remain were
consolidated and forced to join other parishes.
John Winthrop (1588-1649)
One of those people that did make the journey to North
America, Thomas Shepard, was banned from preaching by the Archbishop. Shepard felt unable to conform to the
church’s demands, and having felt that his liberty was threatened, and seeing
no reason for preaching in England left for New England. Many left in the previously separatist towns
wrote to Governor Winthrop in New England affirming their fears for the future
with so many ministers and Christians leaving for the colonies. Then a man by
the name of Cotton Mather preached to a great many Puritans saying, “It was now
also a time when some hundreds of those good people which had the nickname of
Puritans put on them, transported themselves, with their whole families and
interests into the deserts of America, that they might here peaceably erect
Congregational Churches.”
