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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 ...
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]
Puritans in New England and Quakers in Pennsylvania opposed theatrical performances as immoral and ungodly. Elementary education was widespread in New England. Early Puritan settlers believed that it was necessary to study the Bible, so children were taught to read at an early age. It was also required that each town pay for a primary school.
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.
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 ...
However, the first Puritans in America who were called such have arrived between 1629 and 1640 and settled in New England, specifically the Massachusetts Bay area. These did not consider themselves completely separated from the English Church, however, and originally believed that they would one day return to purify England. [25]