How Did Puritans Influence The Development Of America?

Today, individuals portray the Puritans with their one-sided perspective. Puritan culture was extremely controlled and individuals could just have faith in God and the Bible was the law. Not at all like Puritan culture, does today’s general public not limit religion. We are free to choose whatever religion we like to practice within our own free will and desire. Despite the fact that Puritans had terrible impacts on today's general public, Puritans assumed a vital part in building the USA.

Malleable Puritan thought laid the foundation for arguably the greatest civilization in history, The United States of America. Authors Perry Miller and Edmund Morgan chronicle Puritan history and describe how the Puritans left the Old World and began to transform the New World, and themselves, based off of experiences in their respective writings. Miller and Morgan use the word “experience” very differently when describing our Puritan forefathers, but they draw upon similar conclusions. Puritan thought was constantly transforming through physical, intellectual, and spiritual experiences.

In the Early 1600’s in England, King James I during his monarchy came across an issue of a divided Church of England with one of the religious groups known as the Puritans. The Puritans believed that the Church of England needed to be purified, and they wanted the Roman Catholic rituals to be terminated. The Puritans desired to simplify religion and they hoped that King James I would support the idea of “purifying” the church, but instead he wanted to remove Puritans from England. Many of the Puritans fled England to avoid religious persecution. The Puritans ideology is interesting because their colony survives and succeeds past all expectations to fail.

The statement “Economic issues played a larger role in the settlement of the English colonies than religious issues.” is wrong in the essence that religious issues affected the settlement of the Northern Colonies more than economic issues. Religion had a larger effect than economy on the English colonization of the northeast coast of North America. Many people fled from England to escape religious persecution. One group of these people were called the Puritans. The Puritans deemed the Church of England to be corrupt and in need of “purification”.

Since its discovery, America has been a haven for the discriminated, the ambitious, and the religiously persecuted. The original New England colonies which embodied all three of these attributes and set the stage for future immigrants were influenced by the Puritans. The Puritans were a religious group who were unsatisfied with the teaching of the Church of England. They continuously pushed for greater reforms and fought to “purify” the church, thus the name Puritans. By the seventeenth century, they had begun searching for places outside Europe to practice their religion without dispute or antagonism.

Puritanism had major effects on the lives of Americans and the development in the colonies during the colonial era and the Age of Reason. To begin, the Puritans contributed greatly to the growth of society. According to Britannica, Puritans struggled with their beliefs and religious practices in Great Britain and believed they should live godly lives for themselves and their communities. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church.

How much do you know about the Puritan? The Puritans came to America from England because they were looking for freedom of religion. The Puritans could not practice their religion in England the way they wanted. They had to be a part of the Church of England, and they did not want to conform. The religious believers given their lives to God’s beliefs.

The Puritan’s goal of coming to the New World was not to create a new life, but to create the ideal model of living for the “corrupt” inhabitants of England. This was coined “The Errand”, the Puritans desire to establish a City Upon a Hill that others could look up to and imitate in order to receive God’s grace. The Puritans failed at building their City Upon a Hill (creating a perfect religious, economic, and political community), however the long-term effects of their efforts have influenced American moral politics throughout its history. The Puritans forever had the attitude of a community that had successfully established a City Upon a Hill. The Puritan lifestyle was heavily influenced not only by religion, but also inside of that, morality.

One of the founding beliefs shared by the early Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was that they should be role model to all like “a city on a hill” (Evans 21). This belief was shared heavily among the Puritans that came to New England and it can be seen through their beliefs and attitudes. Puritanism was one of the first European religions in America and it has withstood many difficulties in its own way. New England Puritanism had strengths such as a strong work ethic and commitment to self-sufficiency, but was also characterized by strict religious beliefs and intolerance of other religions, which led to the persecution of groups like the Quakers. The banishment of Anne Hutchinson, a prominent Puritan who challenged orthodox beliefs,

If the Puritan society followed the first amendment, so much would have been different in our history, most of the people from Massachusetts wouldn't have wanted to change their religion, they would be able to speak freely about what they believe in, and there wouldn't be as many deaths. Most puritans wouldn't have wanted to change their religion because they could choose their own religion. Puritans were fighting, they were fighting for what they believed in, they wanted

Upon researching the Puritans I found many interesting things such as their origins, their colonies, their religion and their way of life. Through extensive research I found that their origin goes back deeper than I thought it did. The process through which Puritanism developed had been initiated in the 1530s when King Henry VIII repudiated papal authority and transformed the Church of Rome into a state Church of England. But the Church of England retained much of the liturgy and ritual of Roman Catholicism and seemed, to many dissenters, to be insufficiently reformed. The Church of England wasn't good enough so some people broke away from that church in hopes to reform it and make a better and purer church.

The Puritans were a strong unified religious community that centered their lives and their community on a specific set of beliefs. They believed that life was a test and those who passed this test would not only be successful, but also be delivered to holy blessedness all their lives and in the next. On the other hand, those who failed this test would face the consequences of a life damned by the devil. Notably in addition to that belief, they were God’s advocates and God’s law were their political laws. One specific facet of the Puritan belief system discussed in this paper is religious exclusiveness.

Throughout the seventeenth century, religious freedom was essentially a key to the new forming colonies. Many pursued the “New World” looking to gain individual rights for their own personal beliefs- which we understand today as religious freedom. The main group seeking this freedom was the Puritans who came to the New World from England. When the Puritans had reached the land where they wished to settle they called it the Massachusetts’s Bay Colony. The colony was said to be a place where one could express their beliefs freely.

The colonists wanted religious freedom. One reason they originally left England was to escape the Catholic Church. Some called themselves Puritans. They wanted the church and the state to be more separate.

The Puritan society, long set in their ways, controls citizens’