History 345/ Religion 345 – RELIGION IN AMERICA

Notes on “Puritanism”  

Few religious groups have been more poked, prodded, analyzed, and argued about than the ENGLISH PURITANS.  That’s no surprise.  In their heyday, the Puritans (a) provided a terrifying revolution in England (1642), killed the King (Charles I), and for nearly two decades or so imposed a religions dictatorship on England (1642-1660).  And, in the meantime, the Puritans settled in immense numbers in New England, giving New England, colonial America, and eventually the United States, a distinct “puritan” flavor.

In the process, the Puritan Movement spawned a whole host of religious groups including Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and several sorts of Baptists.

Plus, the Puritans were astonishingly wordy – their preachers read sermons (carefully written out in advance) that went on for hours;  the congregation kept careful notes; all of them, it seemed, keep careful diaries and wrote mountains of letters. 

But who were they?

To begin with, the ENGLISH PURITANS were a Christian religious movement that flourished from the mid-1500s, through the 1600s, and into the 1700s, when, as a movement, it fractured into several different groups.  It’s height was in the 1600s, in England and in the English colonies.

But what did they believe in?  What did they want?  What were they like?

1.      WHAT DID THEY BELIEVE IN?

The Puritans were Calvinist Christians.  That is, like Catholics, like Anglicans, they believed in God; in God’s Incarnation in Jesus, the Christ; in Christ’s atoning death; and in Christ’s resurrection.

But the Puritans were CALVINIST Christians.

John Calvin, with Martin Luther, was one of the heroic figures of the CLASSICAL REFORMATION of the 1500s.  Like Luther, Calvin was angrily critical of the Roman Catholic Church.  Calvin, though, criticized Luther for not going far enough.

Calvin’s great work was the INSITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION (1536).  Much simplified, Calvin insisted that the following FIVE NOTIONS (their acronym is “TULIP”) were keys to Christianity:

T: Total Depravity	Humans are TOTALLY DEPRAVED, totally incapable of approaching God.  Personal dislocation; disorientation; dissatisfaction; encounter with evil; shocking realization that I-am-not-God; Otherness of God
U: Unconditional Election	SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD; Encounter with God experienced as "intrusion;" "election;" NOT matter of my choice or decision; sensation of "having been touched/elected/chosen" by God; Humility, given awareness of depravity; Good News – that even worst of sinners can be chosen. PREDESTINATION – salvation fundamentally God’s work; God saves, not me; Who, How, When God saves remains mysterious; But: we are not without comfort; Signs of Election
L: Limited Atonement	Clearly, for some, Christ’s sacrifice seems (and maybe is) without meaning; But for me, Christ’s sacrifice is the final sacrifice needed because it is God who is the Sacrificial Victim; this Divine self-sacrifice radically changes reality; Because of the mystery of Predestination, this act is salvific only for the elect.  The Church, thus, is a church NOT for everyone (“catholic”) but only for the “elect” (thus, church is a “gathered” church).
I: Irresistible Grace	Salvation is God’s action; God is Sovereign and Other; God’s grace is overwhelming; Not a matter of human decision, choice, negotiation; my experience is that of the intrusion inward (or extrusion outward) of grace not of my making; intense experience of "being grasped"
P: Perseverance of the Saints	Confidence; since Salvation is God’s work & God is not capricious, Redemption can never be lost, no matter what I do!  I can be confident in God’s care; experience of enormous rush of confident joy; Calvinism as Good News!

Calvin struck a nerve.  Scores, then, thousands, than tens of thousands of Christians founding his arguments something immensely powerful.  Not everyone, of course.  Traditional Catholics insisted that Calvin, while he was a good and earnest man, was too extreme.  While Calvinists and Catholics agreed on many things – BOTH WERE CHRISTIANS, OF COURSE, they disagreed on some very fundamental issues.  For instance:

	CALVINISTS	CATHOLICS
Total Depravity	Humans are totally depraved.  Nothing humans do can help them approach God.	Humans are fallen, NOT totally depraved.  Created in God’s image, what humans do does matter.  No, salvation cannot be “earned.”  However, humans must cooperate in their salvation.
Unconditional Election	Salvation is an unmerited gift.  Some are PREDESTINED for salvation, others for damnation – and nothing anyone does can affect any of this.	Salvation is a gift – offered to all.  And what we do does affect our final salvation.
Limited Atonement	Christ’s death, thus, saves only those “predestined” for salvation.	Christ’s death was for all – thus “Universal Atonement.”
Irresistible Grace	Humans cannot possibly resist God’s action.  Hence, if God wills our salvation, nothing we do matters.	God has given us FREE WILL.  He permits us to resist His grace.
Perseverance of the Saints	Once saved always saved!	Our life is a drama in which we work out our salvation “in fear and trembling.”  God wills that all be saved;  but each of us must cooperate.

In scores of other ways, Catholic Christians and Calvinist Christians differed – over the order of worship; over church governance; over the role of the arts in the church. 

Calvinists differed from Catholic Christians.  But they also differed from other Protestants, most notably from English ANGLICANS.

Remember that in 1535, King Henry VIII angrily broke with Rome, and announced that HE was the “Head of the Church of England.”  Thus, the ANGLICAN CHURCH was born.  Though he broke with the Pope, Henry wanted to preserve most of Catholic teaching and worship.  The ANGLICAN CHURCH, in many ways, remained deeply Catholic.

But – by the 1550s, some ANGLICANS, influenced by Calvin, argued that the Anglican Church needed to be PURIFIED. 

PURITANS WERE THUS ANGLICAN WHO DEMANDED THE “PURIFICATION” OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH.

The Puritans had a huge “purification” agenda.  Here are just a few of the ways CALVINISTS differed from ANGLICANS:

ANGLICANS                                                        PURITANS  

Pilgrim church  open to all                                   Gathered church of the elect

Worship as drama                                              Worship as lecture

Lots of ritual & symbols                                       No ritual or symbols

Lots of music                                                      Very little music

Decorated church                                                Plain church

Eucharist as central                                             Sermon as central

Vestments                                                          No vestments

King, Bishops have authority                                Elected reps. of parishes ("presbyters") have

                                                                                authority

Church compassionate                                       Church militant

    (understand sinfulness  of human nature)                    (stamp out sin wherever   it is found)

Enjoy fruits of the earth                                      Worldly asceticism

  (“open” attitude toward                                       (strict rejection

   dancing, dress, sport)                                           of “worldly  pleasure”)

Formal, non-emotional worship                           Emotional, passionate worship

Close ties to “powers that be”                             Bitterly critical of powers that be

Upper classes, peasantry                                  Urban, middling classes

 And:  this angry RELIGIOUS argument quickly turned into a POLITICAL argument.  The head of the Anglican Church, after all, was the Monarch.  To criticize the Anglican Church was to criticize the Monarch.

By the later 1500s, the Puritans were in the forefront of a ferocious argument about Britain’s politics – who should rule?  And how?  

2.      WHAT DID THEY WANT?

The Puritan movement – those ANGLICAN WHO, INSPIRED BY CALVIN, WANTED TO “PURIFY” THE ANGLICAN CHURCH – were a religious group.  But, they quickly developed a Political Agenda.  Here are a few of the things they insisted on:

FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE	I decide on my relationship to God – the State cannot decide for me!  How, when, & who I worship cannot be dictated to me by the King! To be sure, the Puritans were NOT defenders of everyone’s conscience!  Sure they were right, they denounced all their opponents, and once in power, they rarely gave anyone else freedom of conscience.  Still, their defense of their own freedom of conscience inspired others to make similar claims.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH	I form my own conscience – and I have a right to speak with others about it.  Speak, and write, and print, and sell, and circulate posters, books, and newsletters.
FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY	And I have the right to gather with others of a similar mind, even if our group is NOT the “official” church.
RIGHT TO PETITION & CRITICIZE	And if the official church harasses me and my group, I have the right to argue back in public, to petition for change, and to criticize the State’s actions.
FREE & FAIR ELECTIONS TO PARLIAMENT	And my representatives should have the right to be elected to Parliament – and there openly debate public policy.
POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY VIA PARLIAMENT	In fact, my representatives in Parliament – and NOT the KING! – should   rule the nation!

Pretty heady stuff.  No wonder that both traditional Anglicans, Kings and Queens, and all their various supporters, found the Puritans to be vexing!

From the late 1500s, Puritans were constantly clashing with church and political authorities.  Eventually, in 1642, the PURITANS WOULD VIOLENTLY REBEL, OVERTHROWN THE GOVERNMENT, AND KILL THE KING!

Meanwhile – Puritans began leaving England for New England.  The so-called “Pilgrims,” to came to New England in 1620, were Puritans; more importantly, the huge wave immigrants in the 1630s were Puritans.  They settled NOT throughout the colonies but only in NEW ENGLAND, and gave New England a distinctive and powerful character.

Remember, thought, that Puritanism was not a single, unified, monolithic movement.  In fact, tracking all the various Puritan versions can get awfully complicated.  Here are just a few terms to know:

DISSENTERS – anyone who disagreed with the Anglican Church.  Thus Puritans were, in general, “dissenters,” part of what became known as the “dissenter” tradition.  But remember – “Puritans” thought of themselves as Anglicans, and so not all Puritans liked being called “dissenters.”  Also, not all “dissenters” were actually Calvinists.  By the 1600s there were all sorts of Christians in England who had broken from the Anglican Church, but weren’t Calvinists either.

SEPARATISTS – those Puritans who gave up trying to reform the Anglican Church, and who went off to form their own congregations.  The most important Separatists were those who fled first to Holland, than to Massachusetts, and who became known as the “Pilgrims.”

CONGREGATIONALISTS – Those Puritans who argued that the best form of CHURCH GOVERNANCE was one in which individual congregations are entirely independent of each other.

PRESBYTERIANS – Those Puritans who argued that the best form of CHURCH GOVERNANCE was one in which groups of churches formed themselves together into “synods” and were ruled by “presbyters.” 

On top of all this – the Puritans began a huge wave of religious EXPERIMENTATION in England.   Scores of groups emerged, some Calvinists, some vehemently anti-Calvinist, most of which (like the “Muggletonians”) died out, but some of which (like the Quakers) survived.

3.      What were they like?

Is there such a creature as “homo calvinicus,” that is, a “Calvinist Person”? 

No – people are different, even Calvinists differed among themselves.

Yes – people who found in Calvinism something powerful tended to share similar attitudes and habits.  Here are a few of the traits that often seem “typical” of Calvinists:   

INTROSPECTION	Discontent; yearning for certainty; no confidence in human institution; looking for signs of election; caution about signs of election; constant self-examination, self-criticism;
INTELLECTUALISM	Scripture; religious need for literacy; Need for Confessional clarity; religious need for skilled scholarship (Hebrew, Greek, Latin, philosophy, logic, theology); Calvin’s personal model; God experienced as Love but also as WISDOM;
WORLDLY VOCATION	"Priesthood of all Believers;" go about one’s "secular" task as if it were a religious calling; seriousness; sobriety; earnestness; discipline; result: incredibly efficient & effective workers;
WORLDLY ASCETICISM	Election; transformation of affections from this world to next; Indifference to things worldly; Love for things spiritual; plain living, simple lifestyle; hostility to any kind of ornament; suspicion of the arts;
JUSTICE/HIGHER LAW	Deep concern for God’s Way, that is "righteousness;" God’s way is the only standard, above all human institutions; Higher Law;
SOCIAL CRITICISM	All human institutions are weak and sinful; all subject to criticism; all must be brought to conformity with God’s righteousness; the Elect are to be God’s hands in "righting" the world; King, Court, Church, Arts, Business practice, Slavery – all are subject of criticism;
CHRISTIAN "REALISM"/"PESSIMISM"	Intense awareness of human frailty; suspicion of all human institutions; skepticism toward all utopias; realization of need for "checks & balances" (J. Adams); .
COVENANT	RELATIONSHIP is central to religion; God-Human relationship generates the "Covenant;" Covenant as model for all relationships; Covenant as freely-entered into agreement among free people; business based on Covenant; politics based on Covenant; roots of Constitutional system;
MISSION	We are on a mission from God; we are to be God’s hands in building God’s Kingdom; everything else centered on this mission;

 

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Modified by:  H.  Kamerling