How People in the Eastern Seaboard Increase the Liberty? Liberty is an essential element in America, and it was influenced by people in the Seventeen Century. Most people who lived in New England were Puritans who had their own qualities and features. Puritans increased their liberty from aspects which includes their own religious belief and political model. They merged the democratic ideas in the government system and increased the liberty through local congregational worship. Puritans also showed their pursuit of liberty in their religion doctrine which emphasized the relationship between individuals and God. Moreover, Puritans’ contribution in these aspects created profound influence on the meaning of United States. Puritans set a special …show more content…
For example, Puritans in New England sought to recover the original, pure and simple church of Jesus Christ and his apostles. In a “Reformed Church” individual souls could nurture a more direct relationship with God…the Puritans instead urged every believer to seek God by reading the Bible. Apparently, Puritans sought to a kind of individual connection to God by promote believers read Bible by themselves, and this emphasizes the importance of individuals in Puritans’ mind. Puritans encouraged people to discover and contemplate their own relationships to God. For example, In the speech of John Winthrop, he claimed that it is yourselves who have called us to this office, and, being called by you, we have our authority from God, in way of an ordinance. This piece of words of John Winthrop reflected that the New Englanders believed that they received the authority from God to do their own decision, and that highlighted the position of liberty in New Englanders’ opinion. Moreover, Puritans established a new religion system which can be considered as another point to enhance the liberty. The traditional bishops’ authorities were not the core of Puritans’ religion and, instead, they wanted to eliminate or reduce the authority of the bishops by increasing the authority of local congregation. Puritans liberated themselves from the rigid church system, and promoted Congregational Church which was ran by the Puritans their own and invested the democracy idea which can be reflected by their meeting and voting behavior. Puritans combined the democracy and religion successfully so that liberated people’s idea and improved the individuals’ right in the participation of
The Puritans sought to create a society that was more pure and righteous than the corrupt society they believed existed in England. The Massachusetts colonies were founded by Puritan separatists who left England in search of religious freedom. They believed that the Church of England was too hierarchical and corrupt, and they wanted to establish a society that was more focused on individual piety and a direct relationship with God. The Puritans emphasized education and literacy, and they believed that all members of the community should be able to read and interpret the Bible for themselves.
Besides English settlers there were numerous other representatives of the European countries settling in the new land. And as the Puritans came to practice their own believes so did other nationalities, as explained in the study material. In my own interpretation America represents change and the believe system as well as the way religion was previously practiced was now changing. This change was greatly influenced by the intellectual movement called Enlightenment, which started in Europe and this influence had bearing on the Great Awakening. Besides Puritans now there were Catholics in Maryland, Quakers in Pennsylvania and the Episcopal Church in the southern states.
In the year of 1630, a group of people known as the Puritans arrived to America and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston. The Puritans were similar to the Pilgrims in which they were Protestants from England who thought that their reforms of their church were “too Catholic” and needed to be changed further. The Puritans being unhappy with their reforms was the primary reason for leaving England and settling in America, while the Pilgrims stayed behind and were determined to change their reforms. When they came to America, they decided to keep some of their strict rules. For example, church was mandatory and if someone missed a day,
According to Five myths about Puritans - The Washington Post, “But the Puritans didn’t leave England to found a society where all religions would be tolerated. After all, they were granted the pejorative moniker “Puritan” in England because of their efforts to purge Catholic influences from the Anglican Church. They sought religious freedom only for themselves.” This emphasizes how Puritans didn’t care for other people’s religion, they just wanted to be able to practice their own. Despite what they went through to get the freedom to practice their religion, they only wanted it for that specific religion.
Following a period of religious decline in the early 1700s, the strong emotions that accompanied a revival left Puritans with a longing to “share [their] joy and tell [their] experience to others.” The “individual freedom and fraternal union went hand in hand.” The act of communicating with fellow Puritans compelled the realization of common beliefs between one another. These new conversations allowed personal religion interpretations to form without the worry of being considered a dishonorable Puritan. Additionally, the nature of individual conversions that accompanied the First Great Awakening signified the focus of Puritanism shifting away from “purifying” the Anglican Church and towards establishing a personal relationship with God.
This being one of the main influences that still exists to this day, the “Puritan doctrine also helped to nurture self-government in the new land” (Fowler). Essentially, what this did was create a community democracy in which our state’s political system is based from in the United States. Although the Puritan’s initial idea of government was for the people, they also “favored a model of government based on a community’s covenant with god.” (Fowler) One of the main flaws with their self-governance was within their definition of democracy, only religious leaders could attain a position within government because of their political religious
The Puritans were brave individuals who set out to alter the way their religion should be. Expanding to America was the way to escape the ills of the Catholic Church. Puritans felt that expanding was their right, and it was the only way to uphold God's word. The Roman Catholic Church was headed towards a path of destruction, and this was not what God wanted for his people. In Matthew 5:14, we find one of the major basis of the Puritan belief system.
The reason why the Puritans should be honored is that they established freedom by enforcing moral customs that keep cohesiveness in the colonies and eventually America. The Puritans established liberty because they gave all citizens a say in the government by taking on equal government positions rather than a hierarchy. In addition, the religion of the Puritans helped educate citizens about the moral standards that keep a society in a state of peace, which allows no infringing upon another's rights and establishes liberty. The Puritans found a land that was perfect because it allowed people to have equality and liberty which is carried out in today's society. The morality found in religion is also a great groundwork for establishing a democratic government because although politics wavers in belief, there is only one true way of being moral.
The Puritans influenced the development of the New England colonies, including Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Connecticut through the Puritans’ extreme theological values and ideas that create the theocracy, their hard work ethic that increases their economic stability, and their resistance to tolerate other’s different opinions.
Because Puritans faced countless persecutions in England, many fled to Holland. In 1620, fearing that they would lose their identity as English Protestants, a small group set out for the New World in hopes of building a new society based on the Word of God. Convictions of the Puritans helped shaped the American character. Such convictions included moral, ethical, and religious. There were approximately twenty thousand English Puritans in New England by 1640.
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
They wanted to create pure, moral Christian society based on moral living. By hard working, integration of religion in politics, and social development of certain lifestyle practices, Puritans had a large influence on the development of the New England colonies from 1630s through the 1660s. Puritans believed in hard work as the pathway of success since they thought they were favored by God to succeed (Doc I). They tried to shun idleness and believed that being lazy is not profitable (Doc C).
When King Charles I nullified the Puritans further by the dissolution of Parliament, all the tentative notions they had thought up regarding escaping to the Americas were validated. Earlier, the Puritans “were drawn into uneasy complicity in a regime they considered no more than half right” (page 17). In other words, as discussed previously, the Puritans felt as though the beliefs of the government they lived under did not align with their own. Naturally, as God’s servants the Puritans were unable to escape England until they were positive that it was what God himself would want. The Puritans tried to rationalize this theory by deciding whether they could be the salvation of the Anglican Church, “If, as all Protestants maintained, the Roman Church was incurable in the sixteenth century, perhaps the Anglican Church would prove so in the seventeenth.
The Puritans in the 1600s had a very important influence in the development of the New England colonies through the 1660s their ideas, values; political, economic and social development would have a lasting effect on the region. The values of the Puritans were greatly rooted in the idea that man was evil and that God alone would save us. By creating this town upon the hill God will reward them for their efforts for trying to reform the Anglican Church. Politically the Puritans were a semi-theocracy that would only allow those who were part of the church to vote. Economically they brought a lasting effect based on their hard work ethic.
Essentially, Puritans are expected to follow a strict set of religious and moral guidelines from which their actions and morality are derived. According to Hall’s A Reforming People, these moral expectations first introduced by the pilgrims were the driving force behind the power that the Puritan ministry had over society: “Ministers and laypeople looked first to congregations as the place where love, mutuality, and righteousness would flourish, and second to civil society. …Alongside love, mutuality, and righteousness they placed another set of values summed up in the word “equity.” Employed in a broad array of contexts, the concept of equity conveyed the colonists’ hopes for justice and fairness in their social world.”