Reasons For The Puritan Massacre
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.
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,
(colonialwarsct.org n.d.) They had the support of the king and queen. They had been authorized to take any land that was not already occupied by Christian settlers. The Puritans believed the Indians were agents of the devil, so they felt no remorse in killing them. In fact, they felt God provided the weaponry and enabled them to kill Indians with ease, and that this pleased God.
Upon the Puritans arrival in the New England colonies their relationship with the indigenous peoples, called the Pequot’s, started off on bad footing. They sought to acquire Indian lands and were prepared to use tactics such as ruining the natives land with livestock, fining them for breaking English law, and making deals with corrupt Indian leaders. The disdain the puritan colonists held the natives in is the source that caused things to become disastrous. When the Anglo-Saxon people turned to war to gain what the sought after and had no problems killing the Pequot’s as they slept you see that they believed the natives were beneath them. What could have been a beneficial relationship of equableness and trade became a bloody conflict.
Religion influenced the government of the Puritans. They believed that they each had their own boundaries or power given by the Lord (Doc H). Puritans wanted the church and government to intertwine and aid one another, creating a stronger bond. In addition, the Puritan’s emphasis on religious conformity and the attainment of land for their model society led them to engage in wars with neighboring Indian tribes. For instance, William Bradford fought with Pequot tribe in the Pequot War, believing that God is the source of their victory and therefore praise him (Doc D).
The Puritan’s voyage to the New World was recorded in “Of Plymouth Plantation” by William Bradford. The Puritans made this voyage to escape the persecution they were facing in Europe and in hopes of starting a new life that would exert their right to religious freedom. The Puritans believed God’s active and persistent “hand” was present in all aspects of their lives. It was the grace of God that was the sole explanation of every daily occurrence or event. God created everything and therefore he played a significant role in the lives of the Puritans.
Puritans thought that the Devil was about as real as God is. It is said that they believed Satan would select the weakest out of them all, which was mostly women, children, the insane and punish them. The ones that followed Satan were considered witches. This was one of the greatest crimes say the Puritans. These kind of things truly shape how the religion is now.
Through strict adherence to religious doctrine, the Puritans demonstrate their honesty, honor, and faithfulness. They want to establish a community that shines as a beacon of God 's greatness to the world, and they consider material and physical wants---in particular, sexual desires as the devil 's work and a threat to the society. The Puritans have no tolerance for
To add, Puritans were fundamentalists; they believed that every word in the Bible was the true word of God. For example, they hung witches because they believed that was what God had wanted. Exodus 22:18, King James’s version of the Bible, the scripture Puritans read and lived by, includes the quote, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The quote was interpreted literally by the Puritans leading them to want to hang all alleged witches. Moreover, Puritans also strongly believed in Satan and believed that the devil could unwillingly enter the body of a weak-willed person leading them to become a witch.
The Puritan colonists were bound by laws of morality with judgments with sentences that were the base of fear. The laws were centered on the basics of not going to church daily to practicing witchcraft, adultery, even not having regular sex to procreate. There were many laws of the time with cause and effect that harmed many people. Through the seventeenth century, laws were connected to morality, reflected in the ways Puritans used religious beliefs in the process of rendering judgment and assigning punishments to keep colonists from leaving their colony and gaining freedoms of their own. Puritan Religion ~
The Boston Massacre was an “incident” that took place on march 5, 1770. On March 5, 1770 the colonists began taunting the British soldiers, this group of colonists called themselves patriots. They were protesting the occupation of their city by british troops that were sent to Boston in 1768 to enforce unpopular taxation measures passed by the British Parliament. The patriots started to riot so, Thomas Preston (the commander) ordered his to straighten their bayonets and join the guard outside the building. The colonists responded by throwing snowballs and other objects at the guards.
I learned that Puritans claimed land that belonged to the natives just as other European settlers. This increasingly became a problem as the Puritans further disrupted the native lifestyle (Corbett 83). Further, the Puritans attempted to convert the natives to Protestantism Christianity just as the settlers in attempted to convert the natives to Catholic Christianity. To sum it up, “the Puritans often treated Native Americans with a brutality equal to that of the Spanish conquistadors and Nathaniel Bacon’s frontiersmen” (Henretta
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.
The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He wrote it during the time of the roaring twenties. During this period, women were considered to be changing; they started smoking and drinking. They seemed to care less about their “obligations” such as raising children, cleaning the house, and supporting their husbands. The novel shows this through Nick Carraway and his family and connections.
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.”
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