Homebrewed Christianity - Walking with Soren Kierkegaard, Part 1

Soren Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813 - November 11, 1855)
Danish journal writer, theologist and philosopher.

Homebrewed Christianity -

Walking with Kierkegaard, Part 1

In preparation for Tripp's class on the Life and Theology of Soren Kierkegaard I am publishing several posts to help readers become acquainted with the lauded Danish writer. Soren carries several titles in life, including that of the common man's philosopher which is gleaned through his writings and journals over his foreshortened lifespan of 42 years.

I've included Stephen Backhouse's dialogue with Tripp Fuller from several years back and cannot recommend it enough in its helpfulness and heartening fellowship. So much so that Stephen Backhouse has become one of my most endearing theologians of late. He's concise, clear, glib, and thoroughly versed in the bible world of Soren's Danish/European culture of the 1800s in transposing Soren's thoughts to us today in the postmodern era of the 21st century. 

An era in which we live with the church's evangelical confusion with difference and plurality; the biblical inadequacies of Christiandom in its white nationalism bannered by God and Country logos; and the lostness of today's modernistic church attempting a transition from what it is to what it might become if focused on the love of God shared in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, our Savior.

Christians, caught within the melee of associating Christ with an ungodly, unloving, Christian culture full of loud words and abhorrent social policies combined with ungodly political and ideological iconography shouting God, Guns, Flags, and Xenophobia, Christianity is as conflicted as it has always been and exactly on the wrong side of love and liberty once again. Soren's view of the church in his day may help in our reflection and counter-reactions to the worldly church of our day. Thus today's insightful video.

Lastly, let me say that I enjoyed getting to know Backhouse has he and Tripp speak to a resurrected Christian worldview less attached with religious unkindness, unthoughtfulness, and idolatry. And for all this I believe Soren Kierkegaard would assuredly say "Amen and Amen. Thus saith the Lord!"

R.E. Slater

October 5, 2021

Amazon Link

Kierkegaard: A Single Life by Stephen Backhouse

http://amzn.to/2eCSUxQ

Discover a new understanding of Kierkegaard’s thought and his life, a story filled with romance, betrayal, humor, and riots.

Kierkegaard, like Einstein and Freud, is one of those geniuses whose ideas permeate the culture and shape our world even when relatively few people have read their works. That lack of familiarity with the real Kierkegaard is about to change.

This lucid new biography by scholar Stephen Backhouse presents the genius as well as the acutely sensitive man behind the brilliant books. Scholarly and accessible, Kierkegaard: A Single Life introduces his many guises—the thinker, the lover, the recluse, the writer, the controversialist—in prose so compelling it reads like a novel.

One chapter examines Kierkegaard’s influence on our greatest cultural icons—Kafka, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Camus, and Martin Luther King Jr., to name only a few. A useful appendix presents an overview of each of Kierkegaard’s works, for the scholar and lay reader alike.

Why Go Kierkegaard

with Tripp Fuller & Stephen Backhouse

Oct 25, 2016

About Stephen Backhouse 

Stephen Backhouse is the Director of Tent Theology, a venture bringing theology to local churches and networks. He was a Dean at Westminster Theological Centre, and before that Lecturer in Social and Political Theology at St Mellitus College, London. He has published a number of books and articles on religion, history, national identity and Kierkegaard. Originally from Canada, he now lives in the United Kingdom, with extended time in the United States.

Books by Stephen Backhouse

https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Backhouse/e/B00420B4GS?ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vu00_tkin_p1_i0

     

Ecological Civilization - Red China is Turning Green

Urban background solar panels, Shanghai, China. | Photo: iStock

BEIJING, CHINA

Red China is turning green

https://asiatimes.com/2019/02/RED-CHINA-IS-TURNING-GREEN/ 

In the rush to modernize, China neglected its environment, but now its growing middle class is demanding environmental responsibility.

by Jan Krikke

February 25, 2019

“Even an entire society, a nation or all simultaneously existing societies taken together are not owners of the earth, they are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias [good heads of households].” – Karl Marx, Das Capital, Vol 3

China is a country of big numbers. Every year it has between 80,000 and 180,000 “public disturbances.” The government stopped releasing most protest statistics several years ago, when the annual number of “mass incidents” surpassed 100,000. Among these incidents are many environmental protests against heavy-metal pollution, dangerous chemicals, toxic waste, and pipelines, while corrupt bureaucrats playing footsie with environmental regulations. The Chinese government routinely condemns the protests, but it is often forced to react to the “will of the people.”

In one celebrated case, the authorities in the industrial city of Dalian ordered the immediate shutdown of a controversial chemical plant after thousands of people took to the streets to protest. In the Sichuan city of Shifang, thousands of residents rioted for three days against the proposed construction of a molybdenum-copper-alloy plant. After police arrested several protesters, residents besieged city hall demanding their release. The next day, the city announced that it would scrap plans to build the plant. Similar incidents have been reported throughout China.

Most protests are organized spontaneously on social media. They lack an obvious leader, making it hard for the government to arrest “ringleaders.”

Even documentaries on environmental issues can shame the government into taking action. Last year Chinese cinematographer Wang Jiuliang produced Plastic China, a documentary on China’s import of waste from mostly Western countries. The movie went viral on the Internet after having been shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Chinese authorities blocked Internet access to the movie, but a few days later, the country banned all import of foreign waste.

Plastic China | Trailer | Available Now

Jun 7, 2017

Journeyman Pictures

A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste.

Sundance-Selected Documentary Plastic China available on:

• iTunes: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/movie...
• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-China-...
• Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/plasticchina
• Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/movies/...

For downloads and more information visit:

http://www.journeyman.tv/film/7020 

Wang Jiuliang: Besieged by waste

Aug 8, 2011

China Daily Global

Between 2008 and 2010, he visited more than 460 landfills around Beijing and took about 10,000 photos. In 2011, his first documentary film about waste, Beijing Besieged by Waste, showed audiences the state of waste pollution in Beijing. Wang Jiuliang is a 34-year-old photographer who spent all of his money to document the landfills around Beijing and draw people's attention to problems caused by waste. In an interview with China Daily, Wang talked about his experience shooting the documentary and his opinion about waste pollution and consumption behavior.

In the rush to modernize, China neglected its environment. Now that it has lifted 700 million people out of poverty and raised living standards dramatically, people start demanding clean air, clean water and clean food. The middle class in China’s large urban centers have started to embrace organic farming after a series of food scandals that included bacteria-infected vegetables, melamine-injected milk, counterfeit baby formula, and pollution-poisoned fish.

Throughout China, farmers are reverting to traditional farming methods without modern fertilizers. Farmers in Huinan county, Jilin province, raised 5,000 ducks in rice fields, feeding them on grass and prawns. It eliminated the needs for manual weeding and chemical pesticides. In southern China, farmers discovered that a native breed of spiders leaves webs among the vegetables and feed on hard-to-detect whiteflies, eliminating the need for harmful insecticides. Grass that co-exists with crops functions as a regulating factor of the microclimate by keeping the soil humid. Farmers on the outskirts of Shanghai found that trees, bushes, grass, insects, birds and cattle can co-exist. They are turning their farms into natural habitat.

Ecological civilization

President Xi Jinping has also jumped on the green bandwagon. In a major change in government policy, he announced that the country would pursue an “ecological civilization” to ensure “harmony between human and nature.” Sounding like a true Taoist, Xi added:

“We, as human beings, must respect nature, follow its ways, and protect it. The government will encourage simple, moderate, green, and low-carbon ways of life, and oppose extravagance and excessive consumption.”

He added that the government would “step up efforts to establish a legal and policy framework that facilitates green, low-carbon, and circular development, promote afforestation, strengthen wetland conservation and restoration and take tough steps to stop and punish all activities that damage the environment.”

Xi’s speech could have been written by John B Cobb Jr, an American theologian, philosopher and environmentalist who is highly influential in China. Cobb is the pre-eminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology that emphasizes ecological interdependence – the idea that every part of the ecosystem is reliant on all the other parts. His ideas have resonated with Chinese thinkers. Cobb is co-founder the Center for Process Studies in Claremont, California, which now has 30 academic institutions throughout the world, 23 of which are in China. Cobb has taken a leadership role in bringing process thought to the East, most specifically to help China develop a more ecological civilization. This goal is now written into China’s constitution.

Several years ago, while China’s ecological crisis was making global headlines, Cobb sounded a contrarian note. “The hope of ecological civilization lies in China,” he said, pointing at four factors that give China unique advantages to realize its goal.

First, China has a long tradition of emphasizing the harmony of nature and humanity, which has enabled Chinese civilization to survive for thousands of years.

Second, unlike the US, China still has thousands of traditional villages and hundreds of millions of farmers who continue doing small intensive and meticulous farming.

Third, China’s political system is able to mobilize massive social forces to cope with major crises such as the ecological one.

Fourth, the Chinese government has shown its determination to create an ecological civilization by writing this goal into both the party’s constitution in 2012 and China’s national constitution in 2018.

Greening the planet

Cobb could have added that China is now the world’s largest player in clean-energy development. The country makes 60% of the world’s solar panels and surpassed Germany in 2015 as the world’s largest producer of photovoltaic energy. In January it pledged to invest US$367 billion in renewable power generation – solar, wind, hydro and nuclear – by 2020. The investment will add about 10 million jobs to the already existing 3.5 million jobs in the sector. China already produces nearly half of the world’s wind turbines, at a rate of about two every hour.

In 2017, China stopped or delayed work on 151 planned and under-construction coal plants, in response to flat-lining of demand for coal power. The affected coal power plants have a capacity equal to the combined operating capacity of Germany and Japan (95,000 megawatts) and cost around $60 billion. The boom in China’s renewable industry and a slowdown in energy demand has left China with hundreds of coal plants it doesn’t need. Newly increased targets for solar power, five times the current US capacity, will put more pressure on coal-fired plants.

China also plays a key role in the greening of the planet. Data from US National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellites have revealed an increase in global foliage. A research team studying NASA satellite images found that global green-leaf area has increased by 5% since the early 2000s, an area equivalent to all of the Amazon rainforests. At least 25% of that gain came in China, the result of its ambitious tree-planting programs. Overall, one-third of Earth’s vegetated lands are greening, while 5% are growing browner. The study was published on February 11 in the journal Nature Sustainability.

The Chinese government first used the term “ecological civilization” at the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2007. Growing environmental protests and China’s opportunity at global leadership in the renewable technology sector made the aim of ecological civilization a timely step. Xi noted that the focus on gross domestic product is a great obstacle to ecological civilization, adding,

“We shouldn’t judge one to be hero or not merely according to GDP. Instead, we should look at welfare improvement, social development and environmental indicators to evaluate leaders.”

Marx would have agreed. In 1844 he wrote: “Man lives on nature, [which] means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”

JAN KRIKKE

Jan Krikke is a former Japan correspondent for various media, former managing editor of Asia 2000 in Hong Kong, and author of Leibniz, Einstein, and China (2021). More by Jan Krikke

The Puritans and Their Influence in America

The Puritans and Their Influence in America

A 2-day conference was recently held at Calvin College Seminary presenting aspects of Puritanism, the Puritan spiritual life, and its resonance, or not, for today's contemporary discussions. Here is the presentation in chronological order of speaker. - R.E. Slater 

Due to an error on the recording of Margaret Bendroth’s opening presentation, “Why the Puritans Still Matter and Why They Might Not: Thinking About Historical Legacies in the 21st Century,” this presentation has been lost and is not available for viewing. As substitute the following dialogue has been inserted by myself. - R.E. Slater

The Spiritual Practice of Remembering

by Margaret Bendroth

May 6, 2021

On Friday, December 11, we hosted author and historian of religion Margaret Bendroth to discuss the nature and importance of memory in the Christian life and tradition. In her luminous work "The Spiritual Practice of Remembering," Bendroth argues that “remembering is an act with spiritual meaning... the past tense is essential to our language of faith; without it our conversation is limited and thin  - and growing thinner all the time.” The very act of noticing and remembering reconnects us to the Great Story. We hope this conversations helps you to think about the importance of remembering to the life of our faith.

---

Comment: In this lecture Dr. Richard Muller discusses the natural theology of the Puritans. As a process theologian I noticed immediately how Puritan ideation of God and nature departed from process natural theology. As example, at the end of the lecture the Calvinist idea of lapsarianism was discussed. In process thought there can be no discussion of this subject as the Hebraic legend of Creation and the Fall is not actual. This means that the problem of evil began contemporaneous with the issuance of God's command to create, wherein was birthed love giving agency to creation and with agency came the ability to depart from God, love, and fellowship with all. The nuance  then addresses theodicy without necessitation biblical literalism. - re slater

The H. Henry Meeter Center

John Preston on the Purpose and Place of the Natural Knowledge of God

by Dr. Richard Muller

Sep 30, 2021

This presentation was given by Dr. Richard Muller (Calvin Theological Seminary) at our conference on The Puritans and Their Impact (September 24-25, 2021).  A brief summary follows below:

"John Preston’s sermons, most notably those in his Life Eternall, exemplify the early seventeenth-century development of an English Reformed homiletical theology in which hortatory elements were combined with fairly detailed theological argumentation, both positive and apologetic - intended for the edification of an educationally receptive laity. In the context of his sermons and in the process of formulation of a full homiletical body of divinity, Preston provided an analysis of the problems of faith and reason and of the use of natural knowledge of God illustrative of an approach that was neither fideistic nor rationalistic. His approach to formulation evidences the impact of the more technical scholastic development of Reformed thought at the same time that it adapts doctrine to its practical application—both following out the programs of William Perkins and William Ames and adumbrating the rise of homiletical theologies among the Puritans and exponents of the Dutch Nadere Reformatie."

---

The H. Henry Meeter Center

"A publiq spirit for Sions sake": 

Puritan Activism in the Early Restoration

by Dr. Adrian Weimer

Sep 30, 2021

This presentation was given by Dr. Adrian Weimer (Providence College) at our conference on The Puritans and Their Impact (September 24-25, 2021).  A brief summary follows here:

"After the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, New England colonists were faced with an imperial metropolis intent on consolidating its power. Drawing on resources from the Protestant Reformation and the English civil wars, colonial men and women mobilized around protecting their local institutions, forming a robust constitutional culture. This culture was marked by an ideal of public-spiritedness, a capacity among ordinary people to identify and critique arbitrary rule, and widespread mobilizing through petitions and fast days."

---

The H. Henry Meeter Center

The Wars of the Lord: How the Puritans Conquered America's First People

by Dr. Matthew Tuininga

Sep 30, 2021

This presentation was given by Dr. Matthew Tuininga (Calvin Theological Seminary) at our conference on The Puritans and Their Impact (September 24-25, 2021). A brief summary follows here:

"The Puritans came to New England believing they were establishing the kingdom of Christ in a new world and that their Christianity would liberate its people from darkness. But their version of Christianity also played a major role in leading them to dominate the natives. A conquest they foresaw as spiritual, peaceable and benevolent devolved into a military conquest that was virtually genocidal. Puritan theology shaped how this unfolded and how it was justified, from beginning to end."

---

The H. Henry Meeter Center

The Decline of Doctrine in Seventeenth-Century Cambridge

by Chad Van Dixhoorn

Sep 30, 2021

This presentation was given by Dr. Chad Van Dixhoorn (Westminster Theological Seminary) at our conference on The Puritans and Their Impact (September 24-25, 2021). A brief summary follows here. This paper deploys John Arrowsmith’s newly translated "Plans for Holy War" as a lens through which to study the perceived decline of the importance of doctrine in mid-seventeenth century Cambridge University. In "Plans for Holy War," a work of astonishing scholarship written by a dying Cambridge don - contemporary events led Arrowsmith to argue that Christian warfare must be waged in the world of theology. Exploring the dangers seen by Arrowsmith entails the intricate work of reconstructing local and national politics and understanding criticisms of Oxbridge academic theology in his own day.

---

The H. Henry Meeter Center

Remembering the Puritans

by Abram Van Engen

Sep 30, 2021

This presentation was given by Dr. Abram Van Engen (Washington University, St. Louis) at our conference on The Puritans and Their Impact (September 24-25, 2021). A brief summary follows here. Heroes and villains. The beginning of religious toleration and the extension of religious oppression. Refugees fleeing persecution for liberty and opportunity abroad; settler colonialists taking land in acts of war and genocide. The Pilgrims and Puritans have been remembered and remade in countless ways in American history, literature, and culture. This talk considers how, why, and when they came to national fame, looking in particular to the role they have played as an origin story for a nation they never conceived.

---

The H. Henry Meeter Center

Puritans Conference Speakers Panel

Sep 30, 2021

Here is the concluding panel of our conference, featuring all six of our conference speakers: Margaret Bendroth, Richard Muller, Adrian Weimer, Matthew Tuininga, Chad Van Dixhoorn, and Abram Van Engen.

* * * * * * * * * *

SUGGESTED CONFERENCE READINGS

* * * * * * * * * *

Dave Roos | Lambert/Getty Images

What’s the Difference Between

Puritans and Pilgrims?

https://www.history.com/news/pilgrims-puritans-differences

July 31, 2019 | updated March 16, 2021

Both sought a different religious practice than what the Church of England dictated, but they were otherwise distinct groups of people.

Many Americans get the Pilgrims and the Puritans mixed up. Common thinking is: They were both groups of English religious reformers. They both landed in modern-day Massachusetts. And they were both stuffy sourpusses who wore black hats, squared collars and buckled shoes, right?

Well, maybe not the buckles.

To understand the biggest differences between the Pilgrims and the Puritans, one has to go back to the Protestant Reformation, which swept across Europe after Martin Luther (supposedly) nailed his “95 Theses” to the church door in 1517. 

Thanks to the printing press, non-clergy had access to the Bible in their native languages for the first time. They began to question why the Roman Catholic worship services were so different than those of the primitive Christian church.

The Reformation was slower to arrive to the British Isles, but England had its own split from the Roman Catholic church in 1534 when King Henry VIII wanted a divorce and the Pope wouldn’t grant it. The newly created Church of England was similar to Catholicism in every way, except instead of the Pope carrying divine authority, it was the British Crown.

Who Were the Pilgrims?

Every British citizen was expected to attend the Church of England, and those who didn’t were punished by the state. One group of farmers in Northern England, known disparagingly as the Separatists, began to worship in secret, knowing full well that it was treasonous.

“Once they decided that the only way they could be true to their conscience was to leave the established church and secretly worship, they were hunted and persecuted, and many of them faced the loss of their homes and the loss of their livelihood,” says Donna Curtin, executive director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts. “When it became impossible for them to continue in this way, they began to seek another place to live.”

Pilgrim leader William Bradford, later the Governor of Plymouth Colony, reads the Mayflower Compact on board the Mayflower off the coast of what became known as Massachusetts. | Pilgrim leader William Bradford aboard the Mayflower. Credit: MPI/Getty Images

Pilgrims Look to the New World

The Separatists first fled to the Netherlands, a wealthy maritime superpower that was far more religiously diverse and tolerant. But while life in Holland was peaceful, it wasn’t English, and the Separatists feared that their children were losing their native culture. They decided that the only way to live as true English Christians was to separate even further and establish their own colony in the New World.

Not all of the Separatists could make the cross-Atlantic journey, including their spiritual leader, Reverend John Robinson. Writing years later in Of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford recounted the tearful farewell at the docks in Delftshaven, where a ship would take the Separatists to meet the Mayflower in London.

“So they left that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place near twelve years; but they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.”

Curtin points out that Bradford didn’t name his community “Pilgrims,” and wouldn’t have heard the term in his lifetime. The first usage of capital-P “Pilgrim” appeared around 1800, when a group of citizens in Plymouth proposed the creation of a Pilgrim Society to organize the annual celebration of the founding of the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Before 1800, the Separatists who landed at Plymouth Rock were known as the “first-comers” or “forefathers.”

The Pilgrims, led by Bradford, arrived in New England in December. Roughly half of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower died that first winter from starvation, exposure and disease. With the help of the native Wampanoag people, the Pilgrims learned to fish and farm their new lands, resulting in the famous feast of Thanksgiving attended by natives and new arrivals in 1621.

* * * * * * * * * *

Nawrocki/ClassicStock/Getty Images

The History of the Puritans

https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/puritanism

October 29, 2009 | Updated July 30, 2019

The Puritans were members of a religious reform movement known as Puritanism that arose within the Church of England in the late 16th century. They believed the Church of England was too similar to the Roman Catholic Church and should eliminate ceremonies and practices not rooted in the Bible.

Puritans felt that they had a direct covenant with God to enact these reforms. Under siege from Church and crown, certain groups of Puritans migrated to Northern English colonies in the New World in the 1620s and 1630s, laying the foundation for the religious, intellectual and social order of New England. Aspects of Puritanism have reverberated throughout American life ever since.

Puritans: A Definition

The roots of Puritanism are to be found in the beginnings of the English Reformation. The name “Puritans” (they were sometimes called “precisionists”) was a term of contempt assigned to the movement by its enemies. Although the epithet first emerged in the 1560s, the movement began in the 1530s, when King Henry VIII repudiated papal authority and transformed the Church of Rome into a state Church of England. To Puritans, the Church of England retained too much of the liturgy and ritual of Roman Catholicism.

Did you know? In keeping with their focus on the home, Puritan migration to the New World usually consisted of entire families, rather than the young, single men who comprised many other early European settlements.

Well into the 16th century, many priests were barely literate and often very poor. Employment by more than one parish was common, so they moved often, preventing them from forming deep roots in their communities. Priests were immune to certain penalties of the civil law, further feeding anticlerical hostility and contributing to their isolation from the spiritual needs of the people.

The Church of England

Through the reigns of the Protestant King Edward VI (1547-1553), who introduced the first vernacular prayer book, and the Catholic (1553-1558), who sent some dissenting clergymen to their deaths and others into exile, the Puritan movement–whether tolerated or suppressed–continued to grow.

Some Puritans favored a presbyterian form of church organization; others, more radical, began to claim autonomy for individual congregations. Still others were content to remain within the structure of the national church, but set themselves against Catholic and episcopal authority.

As they gained strength, Puritans were portrayed by their enemies as hairsplitters who slavishly followed their Bibles as guides to daily life or hypocrites who cheated the very neighbors they judged inadequate Christians.

Yet the Puritan attack on the established church gained popular strength, especially in East Anglia and among the lawyers and merchants of London. The movement found wide support among these new professional classes, who saw in it a mirror for their growing discontent with economic restraints.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, an uneasy peace prevailed within English religious life, but the struggle over the tone and purpose of the church continued. Many men and women were more and more forced to contend with the dislocations–emotional as well as physical–that accompanied the beginnings of a market economy.

Subsistence farmers were called upon to enter the world of production for profit. Under the rule of primogeniture, younger sons tended to enter the professions (especially the law) with increasing frequency and seek their livelihood in the burgeoning cities. The English countryside was plagued by scavengers, highwaymen and vagabonds–a newly visible class of the poor who strained the ancient charity laws and pressed upon the townsfolk new questions of social responsibility.

Puritans in New England

In the early decades of the 17th century, some groups of worshipers began to separate themselves from the main body of their local parish church where preaching was inadequate and to engage an energetic “lecturer,” typically a young man with a fresh Cambridge degree, who was a lively speaker and steeped in reform theology. Some congregations went further, declared themselves separated from the national church, and remade themselves into communities of “visible saints,” withdrawn from the English City of Man into a self-proclaimed City of God.

The Reformation

One such faction was a group of separatist believers in the Yorkshire village of Scrooby, who, fearing for their safety, moved to Holland in 1608 and then, in 1620, to the place they called Plymouth in New England. We know them now as the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock.

A decade later, a larger, better-financed group, mostly from East Anglia, migrated to Massachusetts Bay. There, they set up gathered churches on much the same model as the transplanted church at Plymouth (with deacons, preaching elders and, though not right away, a communion restricted to full church members, or “saints”).

Differences Between Pilgrims and Puritans

The main difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans is that the Puritans did not consider themselves separatists. They called themselves “nonseparating congregationalists,” by which they meant that they had not repudiated the Church of England as a false church. But in practice they acted–from the point of view of Episcopalians and even Presbyterians at home–exactly as the separatists were acting.

By the 1640s, their enterprise at Massachusetts Bay had grown to about 10,000 people. They soon outgrew the bounds of the original settlement and spread into what would become Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine, and eventually beyond the limits of New England.

Who Were the Puritans?

The Puritan migration was overwhelmingly a migration of families (unlike other migrations to early America, which were composed largely of young unattached men). The literacy rate was high, and the intensity of devotional life, as recorded in the many surviving diaries, sermon notes, poems and letters, was seldom to be matched in American life.

The Puritans’ ecclesiastical order was as intolerant as the one they had fled. Yet, as a loosely confederated collection of gathered churches, Puritanism contained within itself the seed of its own fragmentation. Following hard upon the arrival in New England, dissident groups within the Puritan sect began to proliferate–Quakers, Antinomians, Baptists–fierce believers who carried the essential Puritan idea of the aloneness of each believer with an inscrutable God so far that even the ministry became an obstruction to faith.

Puritanism in American Life

Puritanism gave Americans a sense of history as a progressive drama under the direction of God, in which they played a role akin to, if not prophetically aligned with, that of the Old Testament Jews as a new chosen people.

Perhaps most important, as Max Weber profoundly understood, was the strength of Puritanism as a way of coping with the contradictory requirements of Christian ethics in a world on the verge of modernity. It supplied an ethics that somehow balanced charity and self-discipline. It counseled moderation within a psychology that saw worldly prosperity as a sign of divine favor. Such ethics were particularly urgent in a New World where opportunity was rich, but the source of moral authority obscure.

By the beginning of the 18th century, Puritanism had both declined and shown its tenacity. Though “the New England Way” evolved into a relatively minor system of organizing religious experience within the broader American scene, its central themes recur in the related religious communities of Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists and a whole range of evangelical Protestants.

More recently, the word “Puritan” has once again become a pejorative epithet, meaning prudish, constricted and cold–as in H. L. Mencken’s famous remark that a Puritan is one who suspects “somewhere someone is having a good time.”

Puritanism, however, had a more significant persistence in American life than as the religion of black-frocked caricatures. It survived, perhaps most conspicuously, in the secular form of self-reliance, moral rigor and political localism that became, by the Age of Enlightenment, virtually the definition of Americanism.

* * * * * * * * * *

RELATED CONTENT

https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/pilgrims

What’s the Difference Between Puritans and Pilgrims?

Many Americans get the Pilgrims and the Puritans mixed up. Common thinking is: They were both groups of English religious reformers. They both landed in modern-day Massachusetts. And they were both stuffy sourpusses who wore black hats, squared collars and buckled shoes, right? ...read more

The Pilgrims

Some 100 people, many of them seeking religious freedom in the New World, set sail from England on the Mayflower in September 1620. That November, the ship landed on the shores of Cape Cod, in present-day Massachusetts. A scouting party was sent out, and in late December the ...read more

Plymouth Colony

In September 1620, during the reign of King James I, a group of around 100 English men and women—many of them members of the English Separatist Church later known to history as the Pilgrims—set sail for the New World aboard the Mayflower. Two months later, the three-masted ...read more

george-whitefield-preaching

Great Awakening

The Great Awakening was a religious revival that impacted the English colonies in America during the 1730s and 1740s. The movement came at a time when the idea of secular rationalism was being emphasized, and passion for religion had grown stale. Christian leaders often traveled ...read more

mayflower-compact-hero2

Mayflower Compact

The Mayflower Compact was a set of rules for self-governance established by the English settlers who traveled to the New World on the Mayflower. When Pilgrims and other settlers set out on the ship for America in 1620, they intended to lay anchor in northern Virginia. But after ...read more

quakers-meeting

Quakers

The Religious Society of Friends, also referred to as the Quaker Movement, was founded in England in the 17th century by George Fox. He and other early Quakers, or Friends, were persecuted for their beliefs, which included the idea that the presence of God exists in every ...read more

The 13 Colonies

Traditionally, when we tell the story of “Colonial America,” we are talking about the English colonies along the Eastern seaboard. That story is incomplete–by the time Englishmen had begun to establish colonies in earnest, there were plenty of French, Spanish, Dutch and even ...read more

A reproduction of an oil painting from the series “The Pageant of a Nation” by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, depicting passengers of the Mayflower—including John Carver, John Alden, Myles Standish, John Howland, William Bradford, John Allerton and Samuel Fuller—signing the Mayflower Compact.

William Bradford

As a longtime member of a Puritan group that separated from the Church of England in 1606, William Bradford lived in the Netherlands for more than a decade before sailing to North America aboard the Mayflower in 1620. He served as governor of Plymouth Colony for more than 30 ...read more

Jamestown Colony

On May 14, 1607, a group of roughly 100 members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River. Famine, disease and conflict with local Native American tribes in the first two years ...read more

history-lists-witch-trials-2

7 Bizarre Witch Trial Tests

1. Swimming Test As part of the infamous “swimming test,” accused witches were dragged to the nearest body of water, stripped to their undergarments, bound and then tossed in to to see if they would sink or float. Since witches were believed to have spurned the sacrament of ...read more

The Mayflower

In September 1620, a merchant ship called the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, a port on the southern coast of England. Normally, the Mayflower’s cargo was wine and dry goods, but on this trip the ship carried passengers: 102 of them, all hoping to start a new life on the other ...read more

englightenment-hero

Enlightenment

European politics, philosophy, science and communications were radically reoriented during the course of the “long 18th century” (1685-1815) as part of a movement referred to by its participants as the Age of Reason, or simply the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in ...read more

cromwell-association-marks-the-anniversary-of-oliver-cromwells-death

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell was a political and military leader in 17th century England who served as Lord Protector, or head of state, of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland for a five-year-period until his death in 1658. Cromwell was known for being ruthless in battle, and he ...read more

industrial-revolution-hero

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution marked a period of development in the latter half of the 18th century that transformed largely rural, agrarian societies in Europe and America into industrialized, urban ones. Goods that had once been painstakingly crafted by hand started to be ...read more

Why Did the Pilgrims Come to America?

When the Pilgrims set sail from Europe in 1620, several powerful reasons propelled them across the Atlantic Ocean to make new lives in America—but religious liberty was not their most pressing concern. While it’s popularly thought that the Pilgrims fled England in search of ...read more

thanksgiving-hero

Thanksgiving 2021

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday in the United States, and Thanksgiving 2021 occurs on Thursday, November 25. In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Native Americans shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving ...read more

The First Thanksgiving

Colonists at the First Thanksgiving Were Mostly Men Because Women Had Perished

As families around the country prepare to gather with family, eat turkey and perhaps partake in some Black Friday shopping, they might be surprised to learn how much we don’t know about the origins of the Thanksgiving. Nearly all of what historians have learned about the first ...read more

English Civil Wars

Between 1642 and 1651, armies loyal to King Charles I and Parliament faced off in three civil wars over longstanding disputes about religious freedom and how the “three kingdoms” of England, Scotland and Ireland should be governed. Notable outcomes of the wars included the ...read more

columbus-day-2

Christopher Columbus

The explorer Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502. He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did. Instead, he stumbled upon the Americas. Though he did not really ...read more

arrival-of-william-of-orange-in-england-5-november-1688-1903

Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution, also called “The Revolution of 1688” and “The Bloodless Revolution,” took place from 1688 to 1689 in England. It involved the overthrow of the Catholic king James II, who was replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of ...read more

Stamp Act

The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British Parliament. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years' War (1756-63) and ...read more

Bacon's Rebellion

Why America’s First Colonial Rebels Burned Jamestown to the Ground

Jamestown had once been the bustling capital of the Colony of Virginia. Now it was a smoldering ruin, and Nathaniel Bacon was on the run. Charismatic and courageous, he had spent the last several months leading a growing group of rebels in a bloody battle against William ...read more

henry-iv

Church of England

The Church of England, or Anglican Church, is the primary state church in England, where the concepts of church and state are linked. The Church of England is considered the original church of the Anglican Communion, which represents over 85 million people in more than 165 ...read more

King Philip’s War

King Philip’s War—also known as the First Indian War, the Great Narragansett War or Metacom’s Rebellion—took place in southern New England from 1675 to 1676. It was the Native Americans' last-ditch effort to avoid recognizing English authority and stop English settlement on ...read more

French and Indian War

Also known as the Seven Years’ War, this New World conflict marked another chapter in the long imperial struggle between Britain and France. When France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley brought repeated conflict with the claims of the British colonies, a series of battles ...read more

july 4, 1776, the continental congress, the declaration of independence, the american revolution

Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence was the first formal statement by a nation’s people asserting their right to choose their own government. When armed conflict between bands of American colonists and British soldiers began in April 1775, the Americans were ostensibly fighting only ...read more

25 May 1953, Nevada Test Site, Nevada, USA — “Grable” Explosion During Operation UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE — Image by © CORBIS

Henry VIII

King Henry VIII (1491-1547) ruled England for 36 years, presiding over sweeping changes that brought his nation into the Protestant Reformation. He famously married a series of six wives in his search for political alliance, marital bliss and a healthy male heir. His desire to ...read more

american-revolution-hero

Revolutionary War

The Revolutionary War (1775-83), also known as the American Revolution, arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown. Skirmishes between British troops and colonial ...read more

Roger Williams

The political and religious leader Roger Williams (c. 1603?-1683) is best known for founding the state of Rhode Island and advocating separation of church and state in Colonial America. He is also the founder of the first Baptist church in America. His views on religious freedom ...read more

witches-ride

History of Witches

Witches were perceived as evil beings by early Christians in Europe, inspiring the iconic Halloween figure. Images of witches have appeared in various forms throughout history—from evil, wart-nosed women huddling over a cauldron of boiling liquid to hag-faced, cackling beings ...read more

What happened to the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke?

The origins of one of the America’s oldest unsolved mysteries can be traced to August 1587, when a group of about 115 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Later that year, it was decided that John White, governor of the new ...read more

The Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre was a deadly riot that occurred on March 5, 1770, on King Street in Boston. It began as a street brawl between American colonists and a lone British soldier, but quickly escalated to a chaotic, bloody slaughter. The conflict energized anti-British sentiment ...read more

The Mysterious Enslaved Woman Who Sparked Salem’s Witch Hunt

“I am blind now. I cannot see.” So ended the court appearance of the woman who kicked off the Salem witchcraft trials: Tituba, an enslaved woman who was the first to be accused of witchcraft in Salem. She had just given some of history’s most explosive testimony, a convoluted ...read more

Cudjo Lewis, the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the U.S. (Credit: Erik Overbey Collection, The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama)

One of the Last Slave Ship Survivors Describes His Ordeal in a 1930s Interview

More than 60 years after the abolition of slavery, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection: She located one of the last survivors of the last slave ship to bring captive Africans to the United States. Hurston, a known figure of the Harlem Renaissance who ...read more

Battle Lake Borgne Hornbrook

War of 1812

In the War of 1812, the United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain, in a conflict that would have an immense impact on the young country’s future. Causes of the war included British attempts to restrict U.S. trade, the Royal Navy’s impressment of ...read more

The Battle of Lexington

7 Events That Enraged Colonists and Led to the American Revolution

The American colonists’ breakup with the British Empire in 1776 wasn’t a sudden, impetuous act. Instead, the banding together of the 13 colonies to fight and win a war of independence against the Crown was the culmination of a series of events, which had begun more than a decade ...read more

Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British ...read more

Engraved portrait of English colonist, pioneer, sailor, and soldier John Smith (c. 1580 – 1631) as he stands with one hand on his hip and the other on the hilt of his sword, early 17th Century. Smith had fought as a mercenary in many European armies before he signed on to the Virginia Company’s project at Jamestown which became the first permanent English settlement in America. His negotiations with Powhatan, chief of the local Indians, are credited with saving the colony from ruin. (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)

John Smith

English soldier and explorer Captain John Smith played a key role in the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, in 1607. Early Life and Military Exploits Born around 1580 in Willoughby, a town in Lincolnshire, England, Smith left home at ...read more

The Salem Witch Trials

5 Notable Women Hanged in the Salem Witch Trials

In early 1692, during the depths of winter in Massachusetts Bay Colony, a group of young girls in the village of Salem began acting strangely. The daughter and niece of the local minister, Samuel Parris, claimed to be afflicted by invisible forces who bit and pinched them, ...read more

contrabands_at_headquarters_of_general_lafayette_by_mathew_brady-2

5 Myths About Slavery

1. Myth #1: There were enslaved Irish people in the American colonies. As historian and public librarian Liam Hogan has written: “There is unanimous agreement, based on overwhelming evidence, that the Irish were never subjected to perpetual, hereditary slavery in the colonies, ...read more

The Miserable Journey Aboard the Mayflower

Sailing for more than two months across 3,000 miles of open ocean, the 102 passengers of the Mayflower—including three pregnant women and more than a dozen children—were squeezed below decks in crowded, cold and damp conditions, suffering crippling bouts of seasickness, and ...read more

The Townshend Acts

The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. But American colonists, who had no representation in Parliament, saw the Acts as an abuse of power. The British sent troops to America to ...read more

Battles of Lexington and Concord

The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. On the night ...read more

Continental Congress

From 1774 to 1789, the Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States. The First Continental Congress, which was comprised of delegates from the colonies, met in 1774 in reaction to the Coercive Acts, a series of measures ...read more

Painting depicting the marriage ceremony of British colonist John Rolfe (1585 – 1622) to Native American Pocahontas (1595 – 1617), the daughter of Chief Powhatan of the Algonquian tribe, in 1614. After a painting by Henry Brueckner, circa 1855. (Kean Collection/Getty Images)

John Rolfe

John Rolfe (1585-1622) was an early settler of North America known for being the first person to cultivate tobacco in Virginia and for marrying Pocahontas. Rolfe arrived in Jamestown in 1610 with 150 other settlers as part of a new charter organized by the Virginia Company. He ...read more

John Locke

The English philosopher and political theorist John Locke (1632-1704) laid much of the groundwork for the Enlightenment and made central contributions to the development of liberalism. Trained in medicine, he was a key advocate of the empirical approaches of the Scientific ...read more

Vintage portrait of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary whose "Common Sense" and other writings influenced the American Revolution, and helped pave the way for the Declaration of Independence.

How Thomas Paine's 'Common Sense' Helped Inspire the American Revolution

Even after armed hostilities broke out between the American colonists and British forces in 1775, many prominent colonists seemed reluctant to consider the idea of actually breaking away from Britain, and instead insisted that they were still its loyal subjects, even as they ...read more

Samuel Adams

Founding Father Samuel Adams was a thorn in the side of the British in the years before the American Revolution. As a political activist and state legislator, he spoke out against British efforts to tax the colonists, and pressured merchants to boycott British products. He also ...read more

Pocahontas

Pocahontas was a Native American woman born around 1595. She was the daughter of the powerful Chief Powhatan, the ruler of the Powhatan tribal nation, which at its strongest included around 30 Algonquian communities located in the Tidewater region of Virginia. As far as ...read more

english-history-illustration-pic-12th-february-1689-this-illustration-shows-william-and-mary-being-offered-the-crown-by-the-lords-and-commons-at-whitehall-the-monarchs-as-william-iii-and-mary-ii

English Bill of Rights

The English Bill of Rights was an act signed into law in 1689 by William III and Mary II, who became co-rulers in England after the overthrow of King James II. The bill outlined specific constitutional and civil rights and ultimately gave Parliament power over the monarchy. Many ...read more

Christianity

Christianity is the most widely practiced religion in the world, with more than 2 billion followers. The Christian faith centers on beliefs regarding the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. While it started with a small group of adherents, many historians regard ...read more

Battle of Saratoga

The Battle of Saratoga occurred in September and October, 1777, during the second year of the American Revolution. It included two crucial battles, fought eighteen days apart, and was a decisive victory for the Continental Army and a crucial turning point in the Revolutionary ...read more

ask-were-witches-burned-at-the-stake-istock_000014643549large-2

Were witches burned at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials?

In January 1692, a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts became consumed by disturbing “fits” accompanied by seizures, violent contortions and bloodcurdling screams. A doctor diagnosed the children as being victims of black magic, and over the next several months, ...read more

Signing of the Mayflower Compact

How the Mayflower Compact Laid a Foundation for American Democracy

On the morning of November 11, 1620, when the Mayflower dropped its anchor off the coast of Cape Cod, the group of English Separatists later known as the Pilgrims fell to their knees and blessed God for bringing them safely across the “vast and furious ocean” to a new life in the ...read more

jamestown-gettyimages-50996537

What Was Life Like in Jamestown?

The first settlers at the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia hoped to forge new lives away from England―but life in the early 1600s at Jamestown consisted mainly of danger, hardship, disease and death. All of the early settlers in 1607 were men and boys, including ...read more

Battle of Yorktown

When British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and his army surrendered to General George Washington’s American force and its French allies at the Battle of Yorktown on October 19, 1781, it was more than just military win. The outcome in Yorktown, Virginia marked the conclusion of ...read more

Smallpox-Edward-Jenner-GettyImages-1056342166

How 5 of History’s Worst Pandemics Finally Ended

As human civilizations flourished, so did infectious disease. Large numbers of people living in close proximity to each other and to animals, often with poor sanitation and nutrition, provided fertile breeding grounds for disease. And new overseas trading routes