The continued immigration of colonists to New England served to multiply the number of religious denominations, which led to increased conflict. The Puritans formally established the Massachusetts Bay Company, which operated under royal charter. As the immigrants’ numbers increased, they spread out across what is now Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
1625–1649), James’s son and successor, both of whom were hostile to the Puritans. Many colonists came to America from England to escape religious persecution during the reign of King James I (r. Puritans were among those intent on purifying the established Church of England. The king’s anger at the pope led him to split with the Roman Catholic Church and establish the Church of England, or the Anglican Church.īy the mid-sixteenth century, some reformers thought that Protestant denominations had not gone far enough in “purifying” the church and taking it back to its New Testament roots. The English Reformation took shape in 1529 after the pope refused King Henry VIII’s request for a divorce. The strength of the Roman Catholic Church made religion and government inseparable in portions of Europe during the Middle Ages, but Martin Luther challenged this hegemony in Germany when he nailed his ninety-five theses to a church door in 1517, and the Church eventually split along Catholic and Protestant lines. Puritans tried to purify the established Church of England In such a commonwealth, they felt, it was the duty of the civil authorities to enforce the laws of religion, thus holding a view almost the opposite of that expressed in the First Amendment. They were religious people with a strong piety and a desire to establish a holy commonwealth of people who would carry out God’s will on earth. As dissidents, they sought religious freedom and economic opportunities in distant lands. The term Puritan is commonly applied to a reform movement that strove to purify the practices and structure of the Church of England in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Puritans thought civil authorities should enforce religion Later, the framers of the Constitution would look to the Puritan era in history for guidance when crafting the First Amendment rights for freedom of religion.
The bravery and initiative of the Puritans served as a source of inspiration for colonists during the Revolutionary War. This 1884 engraving by Thomas Gold depicts a Puritan couple walking to church in the snow. The bravery and initiative of the Puritans served as a source of inspiration for colonists during the Revolutionary War.
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