1607 vs 1620

Who were the Puritans? 

 Refugees from the English government’s demands for conformity to a single mainstream, state-established church. Their thinking was dominated by the word covenant, one a covenant between God and church and the other between the governed and the government.    They left England of deliberate dissent = treason!!

Turmoil in England ( resulted in 20,000 more immigrants coming to New England (60,000-80,000 emigrants scattered throughout North America & West Indies).  

Massachusetts Bay colony. In 1691, the small Plymouth colony of 7,000 people merged with Massachusetts Bay colony.  The king had refused to grant Pilgrims a legal charter for Plymouth Plantation.

John Winthrop - Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony

Covenant Theology: Winthrop believed Puritans had a covenant with God  to lead new religious experiment in New World   "We shall build a city upon a hill"

Under the authority of a legislative assemble in New England the Puritans were able to freely construct the kind of church and society that they believed conformed to the Calvinist vision

Religion and Politics in Puritan Massachusetts

Religion and politics in the "Massachusetts Bible Commonwealth" - The church and state were a single combined institution, and those opposing the Puritan’s religious beliefs were not tolerated. (banished, jailed, or executed.) 

Eventually, Puritan churches grew collectively into the Congregational Church 

Churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs.

Non-religious men and all women could not vote

Townhall meetings - all male property holders and at times other residents to vote and publicly discuss issues. Majority-rule show of hands.

Praying towns were developed by the Puritans of New England from 1646 to 1675 in an effort to convert the local Native American tribes to Christianity. The Natives who moved into these towns were known as Praying Indians.   New Spain and Missionary Work

The Seduction of growth in the Massachusetts Bay Colony  (Cod vs. God?)

"My Fathers and Brethren, this is never to be forgotten that New England is originally a plantation of Religion,

not a Plantation of Trade. Let merchants and such as are increasing Cent per Cent remember this. . . . 

that worldly gain was not the end and designe of the people of New England, but Religion."    

John Higginson, “The Cause of God and His People in New England,” 1662.

Economic Activity: Massachusetts became biggest and most influential of New England colonies.  Fishing, shipbuilding, fur trade, lumbering; some dairy farming, and  farming wheat & corn. 

Gradually as the New England colonies experience economic growth and prosperity they were pulled in the same direction as the Southern colonies. After 1700 commercial success made Boston a thriving town of merchants

Demograhics:  New England represented a different demographic cross sections. They attempted to organize themselves as a communally as possible to maintain moral oversight