Religion was very important to the Puritans in the 1600s. John Winthrop a member of the Puritans gentry, wrote to his wife the ‘I am verily persuaded God will bring some heavy affliction upon this land.” A year later he went and lead a group of a group of puritans to New England. By the 1630s another twenty thousand Puritans would come to America. When John became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he told immigrants that will have to guide people toward this holy ideal or they were not welcomed.
The New England colonies settled because they wanted to have religious freedom which was the most important factor to the colonists. The people that made up these colonies just wanted a place to have freedom to worship. However, The New England colonies developed different from the colonies in the Chesapeake. Jamestown and New England had different economies, government and demographic make-up of the population. It was important for the New England colonies to have religious freedom.
Winthrop believes that the church in England is corrupt and requires purification to become more pleasant to God. Winthrop finally moved to the US and settled in Massachusetts. Winthrop’s migration is helpful in the determination of his views on the relationship between the government and religion in an ideal society. He was involved in the formation of a
John Winthrop is known for founding and leading of the Massachusetts Bay colony in new England. Before going abroad to the “new world”, “John Winthrop had practiced law in and nearby areas around London prior to his affiliation with the trading organization called the Massachusetts Bay Company. ”He struggled with the decision to abandon his home. Winthrop was very aware of the hardships that had claimed the lives of half the pilgrims 10 years earlier, who had settled in Plymouth. As a strict Puritan in the first governor of Massachusetts Bay colony, John Winthrop believed that they could establish a pure church in new England for the Puritans.
The physical geography of the New England, Middle, and South regions are extremely different. The New England region is difficult to farm on because you have to break up rocks to farm on the thin soil. Breaking up the rocks required challenging work and they also had harsh winters. As a result of this, the New England people began fishing on their rich grounds and entered the lumber industry because of their thick forests. The Middle Colonies has amazing soil for growing wheat, which is what they received most of their income from.
John Winthrop and his followers established a society that would be an example to many more societies to come. They came to New England to create a place that was occupied by people approved by God and whom abided by God’s laws. Winthrop knew that this colony would have to be completely different from England, since at the time, England was in chaos, therefore, he learned from all of the mistakes England made, religiously and politically, and planned a colony that would thrive under the ruling of God and his worshipers. Everyone knew that this was a massive undertaking that may not promise them the success they were looking for, but the Puritans had to get out of England because they knew that God would eventually punish them for the evils
In the sermon “a Model Christian Charity”, by John Winthrop, He delivers a religious based outline of the moral expectations he had for his puritan community. In an attempt to create a perfect Christian society, and to also sway people to behave in a hope to unite the colony and be successful. I believe that he had good intentions in presenting this sermon, but his “rules” were extremely biased, and always seemed to benefit the puritan society. Looking to create a bible commonwealth, Winthrop presented evidence from the bible to convince the settlers aboard the Arbella that god has this expectation of how to behave in society. He does this in hopes of thriving in the new world and creating a “New England”.
The ideas constructed by the Puritans were not simply a principal starting point for American culture because they were the first in the country, but because they offered distinct ways of thinking that are still deep-seated in our culture today. Although many of the ideas of Puritans have evolved or vanished over time, it is important to give credit to the Puritan writers and thinkers such as John Winthrop and John Cotton who offered ideas that were new at the time and that stayed with the American consciousness—culturally, socially, and politically. “John Winthrop's legacy can be seen primarily in the fields of government, commerce, and religion. It was religion that would most impact John's life; his religion would ultimately impact the
Whilst Chesapeake’s economy was based off of tobacco and sugar plantations. The geography of the land also had to do with the economy because in the Chesapeake Bay, the land was fertile and there was plenty of land to be used for plantations while in New England the land was rocky leading the settlers to look for other means of wealth. Even though both regions had wealth, New England was more inclined towards serving God than richness (Doc E). Written in 1676, document E’s purpose is to publicly show that New England is not about getting rich and that they have close ties to religion even in
Winthrop mentions god and the lord continuously throughout the excerpt, constantly reminding them of their main purpose for coming into the new world. He states "our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God" he also states "The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us" both of these quotes he is referring to god and he continues to do so multiple times in this excerpt. Winthrop talking about god all revolves around the puritan migration and why they immigrated to the new world to begin with. The puritan migration lasted 2 decades from 1620 to 1640 and consisted of English Puritans migrating to parts of the new world in Massachusetts and the West Indies. The main push and pull factors for migrating was due to the religious prosecution the puritans were facing by New England, leading to the migration in search of a new life and religious freedom as well as to spread the faith of God throughout the new world.
This difference was contributed to religious tolerance, economics, and population. Religion was distinctly different between the New England and Chesapeake regions. Although both were overall Catholic, the degree of tolerance for
Another similarity between the English provinces in the Chesapeake region and in New England is the connections they had with Native Americans. Beginning encounters were civilized along with some trade and education exchange as well. After the time, however, British colonies wanted control of as much land as possible and battles/fights developed against the
Puritans (church members) were Calvinist who wanted to purify the Church of England they confine church membership to persons they believed to be “saved”, the bible was the final authority. Puritans settler in different parts all over North America, John Winthrop writing the Mayflower compact gave a significant power to Puritans in the New World looking for “a city upon a hill” leaving a political structure over New England in which the puritan had power over the colonies. Within fifty year since the founding of New England the whites surrounded the ancestral lands of the Indians, Metacomet (King Philip) was the son of Massasoit who signed the treaty with the Pilgrims, Philip concerned by the impact of the lands and Europeans culture and religion
The New England families tend to travel together, they had a strong sense of community and really would watch out for one another like family. Education was important to the New England colony as so was religion and they were required to study the bible. The Southern Colonies were founded as an economic venture to create wealth where as for the New England colony were mainly about religious reformers and separatists. They were looking for a new way to praise God, that’s not to say that religion wasn’t important to the southern colonies because it was they just had a different way of going about it than the New England colonies. The religion in the southern colonies was more diverse.
Both the Chesapeake colonies and the New England colonies were vital to Britain’s atlantic trade. They both had large populations and booming economies. However, they both eventually established their own cultures that were different from each other. The colonies’ differing beliefs, environments, and labor lead to the contrasting cultures. The New England Colonies were a Puritanical society, who preached against excess.
