John Winthrop's Justification Of The Puritans

Evidence shows that the Puritans had politically influenced their colonies with their religious values. In the New World, a group of Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. There, the Puritans would create a government that would revolve around their covenant with God. On the way to the New World, John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, led a sermon, titled “A Model of Christian Charity”, about Puritan ideals (Winthrop). As well as determining Puritan ideals, the sermon urges colonists to unite as a “city on a hill” for others to look up to (Winthrop). John Winthrop knew that their colony would “be a service to the church” by “[carrying] the gospel” into this new part of the world (Winthrop). This colony would demonstrate

Many innocent people died in the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts. If you were accused of being a witch or one with the devil, you would be sentenced to death or put in prison. The only one to blame for the deaths of the individuals is the Puritan Society. Without their absent minds, none of the deaths would have happened. The Puritan Society is very religious, therefore they believed strongly in going to church and most importantly in God. When someone in the town noticed someone practicing different religions or not going to church then they were accused of being a witch.

During the seventeen-century, there were different types religious based colonies. One was the Pilgrims and the others were the Puritans. Their believes were very different. They traveled to America during 1620 for a better life. They were many things that the Pilgrims and Puritans religious did to influence their settlement in North America.

Some may think that both the New England and Chesapeake regions were alike, since they were settled by the English. However, they would be wrong as the two regions settled here with different motives. The Jamestown colony was led by John Smith, while the Mass Bay colony was led by John Cotton and John Winthrop. The Mass Bay colony was in the New England region while the Chesapeake area was in the Jamestown colony. These two regions developed into two unique societies because of their priorities, climate, growing seasons, and the interactions with the Natives in their region. They both differ because in New England they mostly settled for the freedom of their religion, while in Chesapeake they

Winthrop finally moved to the US and settled in Massachusetts. Winthrop’s migration is helpful in the determination of his views on the relationship between the government and religion in an ideal society. He was involved in the formation of a

Throughout Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration,” Rowlandson repeatedly makes mention to the idea of Puritan dominance over Native Americans. Rowlandson exemplifies this through the use of harsh diction, imagery, and biblical allusions. Rowlandson employs these methods in order to create a chasm between her people, the Puritans, and her captors, the Native Americans. Throughout the text, Rowlandson paints the Puritan community as “God’s chosen people,” justifying their forceful taking of Native land that lead to the onset of King Philip’s war. Ironically, many of Rowlandson’s techniques unintentionally portray her as more savage and immoral than her Native captors.

In the spring of 1692, Salem Massachusetts, the famous Salem Witch Trials begins after a group of girls claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused a group of women of witchcraft and using the so called “devil’s magic.” As the hysteria spread through the small colonies in Massachusetts a panic began to form as the innocent puritan lifestyle was threatened. In the end, 18 were sent to Salem’s Gallow Hill, and over 200 convicted of witchcraft, the known tradition of the Salem Witch Trials would undergo for years. The Salem Witch Trials grabbed American History by the neck and is not one of our most prideful moments.

During this farewell sermon, Cotton also states “In a vacant soil, he that taketh possession of it, and bestoweth culture and husbandry upon it, his right it is.” Upon God’s authority he tells the Puritan’s that what essentially becomes a base for Manifest Destiny, something John Winthrop also preached later

Life in the early 1600’s is a big contrast to the way we live in American in present day times. Back then America was just starting out as there were no official towns yet because not many Europeans lived here. All of that changed in the year 1607 when the first English settlement was built. Years later more came to America for different reasons; some came to have better opportunities and make a decent living but another big reason was to escape religious persecution. This was the beginning of Puritan life in America.

New England was, overall, more religious than the Chesapeake region. Settlers in New England were searching relief for religious persecution in Europe. Puritans, Quakers, and Catholics were coming in droves to America searching for an opportunity to have religious freedom. The New Englanders took religion seriously, making unitary laws according to Puritan standards. John Winthrop, later chosen as the first Massachusetts Bay Colony governor, was seeking religious freedom. Wishing to inspire the colonists to dwell in brotherly unity, he summoned them together to remind them “that if we [colonists] shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.” On the other hand, those in the Chesapeake region came for the wealth that America promised. They were there to become prosperous or die trying. Gold was one of the main reasons that

In search of religious freedom a group of devout Christians sailed across the ocean only to come across a new land, radically different from the one they left behind. From the initial journey, to the formation of the colonies, and finally their complicated relationship with “non-believers” Puritans strongly held religious convictions has played a key role in all of this.

About 124 years ago today, an important woman arrived at our colony, her name was Anne Hutchinson. She was one of our founders and a significant figure, not only known in this colony. Anne had a different interpretation of the Bible, this was against the Puritan rule in Massachusetts, and that’s why she was exiled to Rhode Island.

Any person who has studied Pennsylvanian history knows that William Penn wanted his colony, his “Holy Experiment,” to act as a haven of religious tolerance for his fellow Quakers and other marginalized groups. However, Penn was a business man as well as a member of the Society of Friends, and he knew that acquiring land on which to settle Europeans was the only way to make his colony successful and profitable. In order to reconcile his financial need to continually expand his holdings in Pennsylvania and his belief (founded in the Quaker teachings which professed the equality of all persons) that Native Americans had a right to their lands, Penn made it clear that land in Pennsylvania would be bought from the Indians, not taken from them.

The First Nations, the Virginians, and the New England Puritans all had a different respect or attitude towards the physical environment in North America. While the First Nations had inhabited the land for already some time, it was a new land for the European colonist. There are many different factors that contributed the three groups’ differing attitudes towards the environment, but it comes down to their purposes or goals in the “New World.” In the long run, these differing attitudes had multiple consequences.

New England and the Chesapeake region through their way of life advanced by compromising and discovering new and intellectual developments. Initially the regions acquired knowledge from one another, but between the two regions there was a differentiation. The distinctions not only caused separation, but the significant reasons were religion, government, political, and economics.