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Some strong religious beliefs common to Puritans had direct impacts on culture. Puritans believed it was the government's responsibility to enforce moral standards and ensure true religious worship was established and maintained. [99] Education was essential to every person, male and female, so that they could read the Bible for themselves.
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 Willy
Puritan fears, beliefs, and institutions fueled the witch craze in towns such as Salem from an interdisciplinary and anthropological approach. [84] From a gendered approach, offered by Carol Karlsen and Elizabeth Reis, the question of why witches were primarily women did not fully surface until after the second wave of feminism in the 1980s.
The Puritans had moreover come to control most of the English Parliament. 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.
During Henry's reign, Protestants remained a minority of the English population, and Henry alternated between favoring his Protestant advisers and his traditional ones who wanted to maintain Catholic belief and practices. [1] Protestants were also divided among themselves.
Congregationalists, however, remembered how their Puritan ancestors were oppressed by bishops in England and had no desire to see the same system in America. [64] Ministers preached patriotic sermons on Sundays and during militia musters. Jonathan Mayhew, for example, preached an early revolutionary sermon on The Danger of Unlimited Submission.
Many Puritans believed the Church of England should follow the example of Reformed churches in other parts of Europe and adopt presbyterian polity, in which an egalitarian network of local ministers cooperated through regional synods. [16] Other Puritans experimented with congregational polity both within the Church of England and outside of it.
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England.