Things You Get Wrong About The Puritans

How did the first settlers in America celebrate Christmas? According to the Week, not at all. America's earliest settlers were members of the Calvinist Puritan denomination that hated Christmas and banned it, scolding their children from participating in it at all (as pictured above). This is just one example that has given the Puritans a bad reputation in American popular imagination, even among other Protestants. They have been seen as strict theocrats, who, to paraphrase the words of journalist H.L. Mencken, were haunted by the fear that "someone, somewhere, might be happy." 

But was this reputation deserved? Probably not, as the truth behind the Puritans, as usual, was more complicated and nuanced. While New England Puritan society did enforce strict social mores, many of the negative stereotypes arose later, are distortions of the historical record, or arise from judging the Puritans using modern standards. In reality, the Puritans were crucial to the creation of the United States' first schools and colleges. They found joy in life's simple pleasures and, although they railed against excess, were not against fun. Although their society did not last, they left their mark upon society in the form of the United States Constitution, which according to the First Amendment Encyclopedia, owes a great debt to the Puritan intellectual tradition. Here are some common misconceptions debunked.

According to Christian History Institute, a major myth posits that Puritan immigration to America stemmed from persecution. This myth is partially true. As the Library of Congress notes, the Puritan clergy, who were officially part of the Church of England, were sometimes brutally punished for falling out of line. High officials with Puritan sympathies, according to British Heritage, lost their jobs and often their property, too. According to the National Archives, however, this persecution had a political dimension. Criticism of the Church of England equated to the crime of lèse majesté, since the king was the church's head. Puritan ministers, as Church of England clerics, per the royal website, swore to uphold royal authority. If they criticized the church, they criticized the king, violated their oaths, and committed treason. Thus, Puritan ministers had good reason to leave England. But not so much for ordinary people.

Christian History Institute notes that many Puritans followed their ministers to America to partake in a grand experiment. They envisioned a new society in the New World that is best captured in Governor John Winthrop's 1630 sermon en route to Massachusetts Bay. In his Exodus-inspired sermon, Winthrop (pictured above) exhorted his followers to build a "city on a hill," a beacon to guide the world to God. Should the Puritans stray, God would punish them as an example to the world. Witnhrop's followers and their successors must have believed in the vision to risk everything in a new, foreign land. Little did they know, their "city on a hill" would sow the first seeds of a new nation.

European and Native American relations are uncritically and one-dimensionally portrayed in contemporary historiography. The natives are victims, and the Europeans as hateful oppressors. But the reality is more complicated, and the Puritans were in the middle of it all. Relations between Puritans and Native Americans were mixed. The Puritans did not hate Native Americans. They did, however, disapprove of Native American religion and sought the conversion of the New England tribes to Christianity. According to Dartmouth College, Eleazer Whitelock founded the school in order for this very purpose. According to VOA, around a quarter of New England's Native population embraced Christianity.

Despite Christianity's modest success among the tribes, relations between Native Americans and Puritans were tense. But the animus appears political and economic, not racial. According to Connecticut History, the expanding Puritan colonies needed more land to support their populations, while the Wampanoag leader Metacom sought to check them. But the spark was ironically the death of the Christian Native American interpreter John Sassamon. According to American Antiquarian, he warned the New England colonies of an impending Wampanoag attack and was murdered, likely by his own people, as a traitor. The subsequent execution of three of Metacom's men ignited King Philip's War, which saw massacres of Natives and Europeans alike. But even this conflict was not clear-cut, since the Pequot and Mohegan tribes allied with the colonists. As the alliances of the war show, Puritans did not seek the extermination of Natives, but rather sought to convert them and civilize them according to their own standards. They reserved their hatred for the popish antichrist in Rome and their archenemies, the Quakers (via LOC).

Theocracy is a dirty word today — and a misused one. Professor John Rees, writing in the online journal e-International Relations, notes that it is often a slur of anti-religion activists to silence their political opponents. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a theocracy is a government run by religious leaders. Partnership of Historic Bostons notes that the Puritan colonies are referred to as such throughout literature (The First Amendment Encyclopedia even does so). But they were not theocracies in the proper sense of the word.

The New England colonies had civil governments, a tradition that probably began with the explicit rejection of English theocracy. In England, the king was the highest religious and civil authority. Bishops served as judges and ministers, a marriage that encouraged church corruption. Excommunicants lost their careers, possessions, and lives. In contrast, New England rejected theocratic government. Puritan ministers were explicitly forbidden from holding any political office and could not deprive excommunicants of their political rights or property.

Although Puritan society was not theocratic, it did believe in secular enforcement of Christian morality. The First Amendment Encyclopedia correctly states that the civil authorities of New England were expected to punish public sinners and extirpate heresy from society. After all, they were building a beacon of light for the world to follow. But this was not theocracy; it was a government informed by religious tenets.

Arthur Miller's 1953 play "The Crucible" depicted Puritan New England as a closed-minded, zealous society with little regard for reason. Although Miller's play was not a faithful representation of 17th-century New England life, Patheos notes that American schools portray it as such. But American students also dream of attending top universities, including Harvard (pictured above), Yale, and Dartmouth. Ironic that Puritans founded all three schools.

Colleges such as Harvard were the pride of New England. But it was a hard road to get in. The Puritan system expected college-bound students to master the Greco-Latin classics apart from the "three R's". According to Memoria Press, Puritan grammar schools (which at the time meant "Latin school"), drilled students in classical languages as early as age 7. Cotton Mather, son of the famous pastor and Harvard president Increase Mather, was fluent in Latin by age 12 and graduated Harvard at 15, a testament to his abilities and the excellence of Puritan education. He mastered logic and rhetoric, too, and believed that faith and reason were always in dialogue, not in contradiction. Certainly not very "Puritanical" of him.

Religion explains the Puritan emphasis on education, which sought to create faithful, exemplary citizens who could outwit Satan. According to the New England Historical Society, ignorance made sinners. The Old Deluder (Satan) could easily tempt the ignorant with his lies. Thus, "the idle fool is whipped at school" for his own good and families contributed "college corn" to support Harvard. Regardless of intention, the system worked. According to Freedom Trail, of the Declaration of Independence's signatories, five were products of the Puritan intellectual tradition.

Puritanism is synonymous with witch hunting. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 epitomize Puritan zealotry and paranoia in popular imagination. But the journal Pneuma Review writes that the association of Puritanism with witch hunting is false. Rather, Salem provided fodder for the "devil's victory" as the trials' historical context was distorted and presented as something uniquely Puritan. Yet, virtually all 17th-century European societies believed in witchcraft, which, in the Old World, was subject to mob justice. But according to Historic Bostons, accused witches (men and women) in Puritan New England had the right to an investigation and trial if the evidence warranted one. In practice, the vast majority of accusations were dismissed.

The Salem panic was anomalous, and according to History, the reaction of some members of the Puritan clergy was remarkably measured, even though they all believed in witchcraft. Increase Mather opposed aggressive prosecution whose only evidence was dreams. When the trials went ahead against his advice, Mather (via the Bill of Rights Institute) famously declared that it was better for "ten suspected witches should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned." His words birthed the American principle of presumption of innocence.

Excluding Salem, the numbers don't lie. Witch paranoia in New England was rare. Only 65 trials and 16 executions out of a population of approximately 100,000 are attested between 1638 and 1697.