Puritans have a bad name among most Americans. We think of them as dour, stubborn, cold, unfeeling, anti-romantic prudes who, in the words of H. L. Mencken, were "desperately afraid that somebody, somewhere might be having a good time." When people think of the Puritans, they think of the Salem witch trials, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," Jonathan Edwards's fire-and-brimstone sermons, the persecution of Anne Hutchinson and other real and perceived wrongs. Yet alongside those real and alleged traits of intolerance, obstinacy, stubbornness and infuriating self-righteousness, there is far more to their story.
Much of what was important about Puritanism is very much alive in the U. S. today. Early in the 20th century the German sociologist Max Weber wrote a book called "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." That Protestant work ethic to which Weber referred ori-originated among the Puritans, who believed above all that their time on this earth should be spent in productive labor—the benevolent and efficient use of God-given resources; they were thrifty, industrious, and wedded to their religious beliefs. Furthermore, Puritans did not reject pleasure by any means; they were people who obviously enjoyed conjugal love—they had very large families.11
Puritans wore bright clothes on occasion, and they celebrated successful harvest, and drank alcoholic beverages. They sang and danced and made music, but they did so at times they considered appropriate, and always in moderation. They did not regard sex as evil, only that it should be conducted within the sanctity of marriage. In fact, once a Puritan couple were engaged, if they had intimate relations, it was not considered a fatal flaw. It was not uncommon for a Puritan bride to be pregnant at the time of her wedding.
The Puritan political system, which was rooted in their Congregational religious organization, also grew in the North and spread across the Midwest. In the New York village where I grew up, our population was under 5,000, yet we were fully incorporated political entity with our own mayor, police and fire departments, school system, public works department, and so on. Where I now live, in Virginia, we are governed by counties for the most part, which arises from the fact that colonial Virginia was dominated by the Anglican Church, which was organized in parishes, which in turn became counties. In other words, New England local government down to the town level, made famous by the "town meeting," is a part of our political heritage that survives in substantial portions of the nation. Just as the Puritans rejected the idea of higher religious authorities such as bishops and cardinals and other—as they put it—remnants of popery, they resisted the power of higher authority, unless of course it was one of their own ordained ministers.
(The Puritans, after all, were on the Whig Parliamentary side in the English Civil War against King Charles I and the Royalists. During the subsequent period of Puritan rule under Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, many Puritan colonists returned to England.)
Given the Puritan history of resistance to authority, it is no surprise that much of the revolutionary fervor which erupted in the colonies in the 1760s and 1770s had its roots around Boston. The British army was sent to Boston in the 1760s for the purpose of rooting out the seeds of the incipient rebellion. The "Intolerable Acts" passed in reaction to the Boston tea party were directed exclusively against the Massachusetts Bay colonists. Indeed, John Adams and other revolutionary leaders were descendants of those early Puritans and carried much of their spirit with them.
For these and many other reasons, the Puritan legacy is still with us—their blood runs in our veins, much deeper and stronger than many of us might wish to admit. On the other hand, there is much about their legacy that is positive—ideas of political and individual freedom, liberty, hard work, perseverance, dedication, stewardship: All those features of the American character are owed in great measure to the Puritans.
The Puritans believed beyond much doubt that they were absolutely on the right track. John Winthrop's "Model" describes a society that, if the Puritans had been able to achieve it, would have been a reasonable facsimile of paradise on Earth. Being human, they could not sustain their religious fervor, nor live up to the idealized conditions Winthrop laid out, but they created a strong, vibrant society that prospered and influenced American behavior and attitudes far beyond their temporal and geographical boundaries.
World History
