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In the United States, the Puritan settlement of New England was a major influence on American Protestantism. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642, fewer settlers to New England were Puritans. The period of 1642 to 1659 represented a period of peaceful dominance in English life by the formerly discriminated Puritan population.
In addition, historians such as Perry Miller have regarded Puritan New England as fundamental to understanding American culture and identity. Puritanism has also been credited with the creation of modernity itself, from England's Scientific Revolution to the rise of democracy.
It is not typically summarised as a whole, since the political events of the 1640s, sometimes called the Puritan Revolution, have complex roots, not any more than the term "Puritan" can be given a useful and precise definition outside the particular historical context. The Puritan's main purpose was to purify the Church of England and to make ...
Under Charles I, the Puritans became a political force as well as a religious tendency in the country. Opponents of the royal prerogative became allies of Puritan reformers, who saw the Church of England moving in a direction opposite to what they wanted, and objected to increased Catholic influence both at Court and (as they saw it) within the Church.
The major Whig historian, S. R. Gardiner, popularised the idea that the English Civil War was a "Puritan Revolution" [193] that challenged the repressive Stuart Church and prepared the way for religious toleration. Thus, Puritanism was seen as the natural ally of a people preserving their traditional rights against arbitrary monarchical power.
The Puritan ministers and theologians during the reign of King James that contributed to the further development of the Puritan movement in England were many. The most outstanding contributors include: Thomas Cartwright (1535–1603) preacher, scholar, and controversialist, considered the patriarch of the Presbyterian movement within Puritanism ...
Like most Puritans, he advocated further reforms to the Church of England from within. A second Puritan development under Grindal was the rise of the Puritan prophesying, modelled on the Zurich Prophezei (Puritans learned of the practice through the congregation of refugees from Zurich established in London), where ministers met weekly to ...
King James I and Charles I made some efforts to reconcile the Puritan clergy who had been alienated by the lack of change in the Church of England.Puritans embraced Calvinism (Reformed theology) with its opposition to ritual and an emphasis on preaching, a growing sabbatarianism, and preference for a presbyterian system of church polity, as opposed to the episcopal polity of the Church of ...