Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the early 17th century, thousands of English Puritans settled in North America, almost all in New England.Puritans were intensely devout members of the Church of England who believed that the Church of England was insufficiently reformed, retaining too much of its Roman Catholic doctrinal roots, and who therefore opposed royal ecclesiastical policy.
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's main purpose was to purify the Church of England and to make England a more Christian country. History of the Puritans under Elizabeth I, 1558–1603; History of the Puritans under James I, 1603–1625; History of the Puritans under Charles I, 1625–1649; History of the Puritans from 1649; History of the Puritans in North America
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.
If the Puritans were caught worshipping in secret, they could be put in prison. The Netherlands was open to the Puritans and their beliefs but wanted them to adapt to their religious ways. The puritans felt that it was their calling to spread the word of the Gospel to the New World, which led them to America. [7]
Consequently, most felt no need to settle in the American colonies. Very few immigrants to the Colony of Virginia and other early colonies, in any case, were Puritans. Virginia was a repository for more middle class and "royalist" oriented settlers, who were leaving England following their loss of power during the English Commonwealth.
According to Britannica, German settlers brought with them the tradition of putting up Christmas trees to America, but most Puritans rejected this custom because of its foreign pagan roots. And ...
In the middle of the 18th century, the government restricted voting rights with a property qualification and a church membership requirement. [60] Congregationalism was the established church in the colony by the time of the American War of Independence until it was disestablished in 1818.