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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.
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 influence on slavery was still strong at the time of the American Revolution and beyond. In the decades leading up to the American Civil War , abolitionists such as Theodore Parker , Ralph Waldo Emerson , Henry David Thoreau and Frederick Douglass repeatedly used the Puritan heritage of the country to bolster their cause.
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 ...
In the 17th century, the word Puritan was a term applied not to just one group but to many. Historians still debate a precise definition of Puritanism. [6] Originally, Puritan was a pejorative term characterizing certain Protestant groups as extremist. Thomas Fuller, in his Church History, dates the first use of the word to 1564.
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 ...
Puritans argued that the bishops were attempting to aggrandize themselves at the Parliament's expense. In the end, James acceded to Parliament's demand, and withdrew the book of canons. The 1604 parliament marks the first time that the Puritans had allied themselves with the cause of Parliament over against the cause of the bishops.