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Why Is Puritan America In The Seventeenth Century

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Puritan America during the seventeenth century was a theocracy. All moral and legal principles of Puritan America closely followed Protestant Christian beliefs. In Governor John Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity” Winthrop preaches, “We must love brotherly without dissimulation; we must love one another with a pure heart fervently. We must bear one another’s burthens” (Winthrop 225). This belief that people must love one another despite their mistakes or burdens is essential to Puritan beliefs, and Puritans also believe that people must always be honest and trustworthy. The Puritans, like many other communities, viewed women as subordinates to men; a women’s purpose was to maintain the household, and men were called to provide for their children and wives. Women not only had a “less important” purpose in life but were also seen as less capable or intelligent than their male peers. …show more content…

Although her sinful handiwork was unworthy of wear for wedding, it was acceptable enough to be worn by authority figures and townspeople’s everyday wear. The authority figures were not trustworthy, and they still practiced some of ruling techniques that they fled England to get away from. The Puritan society lacked individuality because they had a firm belief that there was only one way to live. The environment of the Puritan society is described as everything being a boring, uniform color of grey. The appearance of the Hester’s scarlet letter that she always wears is described as, Fine red cloth surrounded with elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. it was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy,… (Hawthorne

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Liberty was the key issue for the Puritans. It was liberty, or the lack of, that pushed men to find safe haven, and it was freedom that enticed them to create a new society that never put state and the church hand in hand. By having a taste of liberty, they were introduced to ideas of equality and democracy which became an important part of the community they built and to the future nation that they will create. The foundation of Puritan principles such as piety, democracy and republican freedom, spread its influence over all the colonies, enlightening the “whole American world”.

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In the Puritan family, the family managed all things. The towns were seen as part of a greater family, all were invited to weddings and baptisms. Doors were never locked because the idea was that Puritans should have nothing to hide from each other. Even on the honeymoon it was common for an aunt, uncle, or parent to watch the new couple make love for the first time to insure everything was done right. Church was a large part of the Puritan experience and the Meeting was a time when the people of the town would gather in the church with the minister to discuss religion, voting, or anything else of importance.

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The puritan rhetoric and conception of love does not in any way match with the normal human way of perceiving love. John Winthrop explains it as it is written in the holy Bible, and also expounds it by the use of his knowledge. His explanation out of the Bible are not however as complicated as those of ordinary people, who believe that love is expensive and one has to buy it from a friend. Winthrop convinces the Christians on the simplicity of love, and later brings them to understand that loving one another is the greatest commandment which has a reward at the end. Unlike the rest of the people who are non believers, Winthrop touches on the aspects of love by quoting different verses from the bible.

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It states that the scarlet letter is the only beautiful thing that Hester wears. On the other hand, she dressed Pearl up in the finest and fanciest clothing. Hawthorne says, “The child’s attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning.”(86). These

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The Puritans of colonial times were rapidly increasing and experiencing a time of great success in the implementation of a large scale Puritan community, but their achievement did not happen overnight. With religious zeal the Puritans sought to create an ideal society in the New World where the their way of life was law and they could become a model christian community for the world. In order for the Puritans to achieve their goals they needed a united and, therefore, strictly controlled community, and they found that community in New England. In New England they organized a unified and strictly controlled political, economic, and social structure dominated by religion in order to achieve the Puritan dream.

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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 ~

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With the Puritans having strict religious beliefs about the devil and God, it gave them strong feelings about the ways in which women impacted their community. Along with their religious beliefs, their society had certain beliefs about women and the way they should act which led them to suspect anything out of the “norm” as a sign of the devil. While some of this could be on women and the way we speak, the Puritans already had such strong feelings toward the vulnerable mind of women that it wouldn’t matter. The women were represented by weakness in nearly every aspect a person can be judged on and this thought of them as the weaker vessel is what ultimately led to them being accused and persecuted more than men during the Salem Witch

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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.

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The American Puritan’s ideal example to follow was left by Crèvecœur in his letters depicting an American by their environment. Formerly, before Crèvecœur’s idea of a puritan mentality, came John Winthrop and his sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity.” Winthrop later spoke in greater detail about his idea in the excerpt “City Upon a Hill,” where he speaks highly about the mentality that each puritan should have, “There is no body but consistes of partes and that which knits these partes together gives the body its perfeccion… the most perfect of all bodies, Christ and his church make one body…”. Specifying that in order for a community to come together as one body, they must be greatly involved with Christ and the church. Considering, that

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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

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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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