Religion in Colonial New England

HST 210: The US Experience

Pilgrims
• religious separatists 
• Sept 1620 - 109 set sail  
• Mayflower Compact
• Dec 1920 - Plymouth Colony 
o religion was compulsory
o no tolerance 
•  Rough first winter
• 1640 population approx. 3000
• 1630-1643 approx. 20,000 new colonists came to MA
Puritans
Who?
• reform the Church of England
• Seeking the true religion
• fled England 
• created a "nation of saints" or the "City upon a Hill,"
"redeemer nation."
• 1629 est. the Massachusetts Bay Colony
 
Overview of Puritan Culture
o deeply religious
o socially tight-knit
o politically innovative
• Harmony, Authority and Order 
Demographic Overview
 
• Puritan religious beliefs facilitated rapid settlement
• migrated as family groups
• skewed sex ratio 4:1
• early age of marriage for women
• high and rising rates of childbirth
• long marriages
Puritan Search For Order, The Family and the Law
• “little commonwealth” 
• nuclear in structure, 
• hired laborers, apprentices, or servants.
• convicts, children of the poor, single men and women lived 
 
The Importance of Kinship Ties
• commercial trading networks 
• large scale investments.
• Intermarriage
• "River Gods"
• Reforms : barring nepotism, rotation in office, prohibiting multiple
office holding, election of justices of the peace, officeholders must
reside in the jurisdiction they served.
Puritan Family and Public Life
• The household  was the fundamental unit of society
• POLITICS 
• CHURCH 
• ECONOMY
• EDUCATION AND RELIGION
• VOCATIONAL TRAINING
• WELFARE AGENCY 
• duty to ensure everyone lived up to expected roles
• punishment and intervention
• emphasis on discipline rooted in experiences in England
Patriarchal Models
 
• father endowed with patriarchal authority as the head of his
household. 
• family roles were part part of a continuous chain of
hierarchical authority
• PATRIARCHY
• rested on the father’s control of landed property or craft
skills. 
• children dependent upon father’s support  - deference to
their father’s wishes.
• commitment to female submission
Dissension in Puritan New England
 
 Roger Williams  
• religious tolerance, separation of Church and State, and a
complete break with the Church of England
• puritans were not pure  
• colonists were intruding on Indian land banished in
1635founded Rhode island in 1637
 
Anne Hutchinson
• midwife healer and spiritual minister
• covenant of grace, salvation to unworthy humans, personal
relationship with God
• threatened gender roles, the role of the minister, and did not
keep silent in church
• In August of 1637 she was condemned
• found guilty in civil trial
• put under house arrest to await her religious trial
• March 1638 was excommunicated -  accused Hutchinson of
blasphemy and of lewd conduct, for having men and women
in her house at the same time during her Sunday meetings.
• 1643 -her whole family except one daughter was killed by
native Americans and John Winthrop heard of her death he
judged it gods punishment for a heretic. 
Witchcraft in New England
• maleficium (familiarity with the devil)
• often accused of causing illness or death
• accused of killing domestic animals
• affliction could come through a look or a touch
• could turn themselves into animals
• recruit animals to do their bidding
• possess young girls as well as men
 
• Who was accused?
o middle aged women, married with few or no children,
prone to family conflict, history of petty crimes (or
accusations of), medical vocation, low socail position,
abrasive
• Accusations came from many sources 
• Witches offenses were: Challenging God's supremacy,
woman's role in colonial society, church