Essay Sample on Puritan Beliefs

📌Category: History, Religion
📌Words: 990
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 30 January 2022

Everyone has two things that determine their identity: their past and their culture. Rising in the 16th century, the Puritans believed that they shouldn’t have to follow ideas not listed in the Bible. They separated from the Church of England as they believed that the Church’s ideals were too similar to those of the Roman Catholic Church. In the English Church, many of the priests were illiterate and barely followed the Bible’s ideals: being filled with riches, overindulging, and overall in direct contradiction to Church morals (Document C). Many of the priests were illiterate in the teachings of the Bible often being sold the position they held. This led many people to believe they were impure and by their names, the Puritans, they wanted to purify the Church. Because the Puritan’s didn’t want to follow the Church’s rules, they moved to America where they established the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colony. There, they dedicated themselves to a constitution of religion leading them to work hard, hold themselves in “moral” integrity, and embracement of the patriarchy

In the Puritan colonies they believed that hard work was the key to success. Puritan’s thought that one of the ways to get in God’s favor was to work hard and that in order to be saintly, someone should work a lot and make due with what he gets ( Document B). Due to the fact that Cotton says that someone should always take whatever he can get, it demonstrated that they believed people should always work hard. By repeating the word “saintly”, the author ,Cotton, is trying to convey that if someone doesn’t work hard and use all that is given to them, they won’t be saintly and that they won’t be in God's favor. They looked down upon the idea that someone has time to do anything and that time wasted would mean that it is unprofitable( Document F). Robert Keayne’s will and testament shows us that the people there didn’t think that time to do much else other than work as he was a person who worked his days away. He’s writing this for the other townspeople to show them that he didn’t waste anything and that no one could criticize him since he did so much work. His audience was also to the future generations to also show that they did do so much work. Keayne was a regular business man and if used as a generalization, most people were like him: a person who valued work and believed that material wealth is an important way to get to God.

In addition to working hard due to their high religious constitution, they also held themselves in moral integrity. They used the idea that God put them on the earth to do something and so they did it. Whatever laws they made they used the “word of God” to show that they are only doing this because God said so ( Document E). This also establishes the rules that they put in place. Although now we don’t see these rules as functional, they thought it as such because the codes referred to God everyone should follow them. The fact that each document includes God and then goes on to say that God allows/ makes them so this only shows how much they worshipped God. They believed that God is the top of the little commonwealth so they take everything in the Bible a little too literally. John Winthrop said that God gave them a plan and saved them from damnation ( Document A) showing how they believed God and whatever they did couldn't be wrong. Given the idea that they have to surrender themselves to God in order to be “good'' they believed that following God couldn’t be wrong. While the rest of the world indulged in the Transatlantic Trade system, the Puritans didn’t reach their necks out to gain slaves. This made them think that they were more lawful and moral since they didn’t want to get slaves “unless it be lawful” (Document G). Puritans believed that the forceful taking of slaves was unlawful. However, they always seemed to find a way around it. They were indeed slave owners and people who even advocated for the slave trade such as George Whitefield and Johnathan Edwards. Even though there was a scattering of people who used slaves, many thought of it as unnecessary. 

From the rigid idea of morality in the colonies, they used their religious ideals to push ideas of the patriarchy. They believed that men had the right to everything ( Document E). The code of laws is that the writers believed that men were so high above a social ladder. The Puritans believed that God gave man the right to anything from evading the law to always having what they were “entitled” to. The purpose of these laws was to set an example of patriarchy for everyone to follow and read. Since they were deeply religious, they would follow the laws set. They thought of their families as little commonwealths having the head of the household as God but then men. This is shown by the fact that many of the documents only included “men”, “man”, “him”,demonstrating how much they favored men in comparison to women. Women were at the end of the little commonwealth so they perpetuated the idea of the little commonwealth. Women who questioned authority or the word of the Bible were publicly shamed or even worse, killed. The shame was to deter others from doing the same thing. In the trial of Anne Hathaway, she held congregations about the Bible, claiming that she was a prophet. This led her to be on the wrong side of the perimeter fence, a concept that defines what’s acceptable and not. However, men who did the same thing did not face punishments to that degree showing how much they believed that men could do no wrong. This idea of not being able to do wrong showed how much they favored males and in turn, held patriarchal ideals. 

So when we see the Puritan development during the 1620 and 1680, we can tell that their values and ideals influenced their life. Throughout their development, the Puritans were deeply religious and that not only influenced the way they worshipped, but also the way they lived their life. From moral integrity, to workmanship, to their social hierarchy, religion factored into all of it.

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