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Women were excluded from enacting laws, serving in courts, creating taxes, and supervising land distribution, all of which were government functions. The role of religion was also divided by gender, since nearly every colonist in New England was Christian in some form. In this area, women were also seen as lesser to God than men were.
Husbands were the spiritual heads of the household, while women were to demonstrate religious piety and obedience under male authority. [77] Furthermore, marriage represented not only the relationship between husband and wife, but also the relationship between spouses and God. Puritan husbands commanded authority through family direction and ...
The Puritans were originally members of a group of English Protestants seeking "purity", further reforms or even separation from the established church, during the Reformation. The group is also extended to include some early colonial American ministers and important lay-leaders.
A small minority of Puritans were "separating Puritans" who advocated for local, doctrinally similar, church congregations but no state established church. The Pilgrims, unlike most of New England's puritans, were a Separatist group, and they established the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Puritans went chiefly to New England, but small numbers went ...
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 ...
The Puritan movement would grow even stronger under King Charles I, and even for a time come to take control of England with the English Commonwealth and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, following the English Civil War. But it was certainly under the rule of King James (1604–1625) where the Puritan movement found great momentum.
Hutchinson was called a heretic and an instrument of the devil, and was condemned to banishment by the Court "as being a woman not fit for our society". [79] The Puritans sincerely believed that, in banishing Hutchinson, they were protecting God's eternal truth. [80] Winthrop summed up the case with genuine feeling:
The Puritans were also dismayed when the Laudians revived the custom of keeping Lent, which had fallen into disfavor in England after the Reformation. The Puritans preferred fast days specifically called by the church or the government in response to the problems of the day, rather than on days chosen by the ecclesiastical calendar.