The People of Boston and Their Connection to God

768 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Religion in American colonies

Because of the destroying angel standing over the Town, a day of prayer is needed that we may prepare to meet our God.'' – Cotton Mather, 1721

April 22nd, 1721: Boston is one of the biggest cities in colonial America with a population of 12,000 Puritans. The Puritans, constituting all of the population, were severe and took their convictions very seriously, and unless you wished to be hanged, whipped, or exiled, your best option was to conform and keep any differing beliefs to yourself. Of course there were some heretics who didn’t follow this: in 1651Boston, Obadiah Holmes was imprisoned and publicly whipped for being a Baptist, Anne Hutchison and John Wheelwright were banned from Boston for expressing dissident beliefs, and Mary Dyer was hanged for being a Quaker and still repeatedly entering Boston to express discontent with the Anti-Quaker law.

To the people of Boston, this treatment to the different was normal; religion was a huge part of their daily life, a reason for living, an idea that seeped into different facets of behavior: hard work, rigid morals, and education, all of which helped them to build a stable society upon which to expand and to try to please the Lord; and anyone who threatened that deserved to be punished. The people of Boston liked to believe that they had a special connection with God unlike anyone else, and prided themselves on it. God was the ultimate answer in times of struggle as well as times of prosperity; to the people of Boston, God mattered more than anything else.

During this time, Boston was still taking shape. It had more intellectuals than most other colonies; there were philosophers, inventors, eleven doctors, and one doctor with an actual, certified degree. These people were working hard to improve Boston, coming up with new remedies, inventions, and ideas that helped expand people’s way of thinking (while of course staying within Puritan guidelines).

On this particular day in April, the HMS Seahorse, a British Naval vessel returning from the Caribbean, waited in the Boston Harbor. The ship was inspected, given the go-ahead to dock in Boston, and the sailors entered town, passing the printing presses, houses, and various shops. As the men invariably looked for somewhere to rest or eat and drink, one sailor amongst them began to scratch at the sores sprouting within his mouth.

December 13, 1706: Boston is very cold this

Show More
Related

  • A Comparison Of The New England And The Chesapeake Bay Colonies

    980 Words  | 2 Pages

    The colonists had different reasons for settling in these two distinct regions. The New England region was a more religiously strict yet diverse area compared to that of the Chesapeake Bay. The development of religion in the two regions came from separate roots. After Henry VIII and the Roman Catholic Church broke away from each other, a new group of English reformers was created called the Puritans. The Puritans came from protestant backgrounds, after being influenced by Calvinistic ideas. When their reforms were thwarted by King James I of England, they fled to the New World in what is now known as the "Great Migration". The Puritans were then joined by Quakers, Protestants, and Catholics in the religiously diverse New England area. These diverse religious factions were allowed to live freely but under the laws of New England. It was due to this religious freedom that these people came to escape religious persecution back home. The New Englanders had a religion-based society and religion was based on family. As the Bible highly regarded family, it condemned adultery. Adultery was considered a punishable crime. Adulterers were marked as impure by a letter "A" stitched on their clothing, as in the book "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. As religion was a very high priority in New England, it was very much less severe in the Chesapeake Bay region. The one established church in the region, the Anglican Church of Jesus Christ, was only then established in 1692, more than 70 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

    Read More

  • Sons of Liberty: Boston, 1765

    929 Words  | 2 Pages

    Boston was the largest harbors during the colonial era. Products going to and from Britain were rotating out of Boston daily. When word reached Boston of the...

    Read More

  • The Benefits of Sin Revealed in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

    1656 Words  | 4 Pages

    Puritan society in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was a system based on religion. The Bible and the law were intertwined and could not be separated, not even in the minds of the people. Therefore it was difficult to argue that there were any laws at all that were worth having, if they were not spelled out explicitly in the Bible. Hester had committed adultery and given birth to a bastard child, and there it was, in the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not commit adultery. And so she was punished. The Puritans nodded and were satisfied, comfortabl...

    Read More

  • God's Providence: The English Colonies

    2298 Words  | 5 Pages

    Idea of God’s providence permeated throughout the thoughts and writings of the leaders of the early English colonists to America. Contemporaries take for granted the religiosity of the New England colonists, but for the Chesapeake Bay, especially around Jamestown, God’s providence gave explanations for why certain things happened the way that they did and acknowledged the presence of God everywhere that they went. The settlers of the Chesapeake Bay area were discoverers, adventurers, (primarily) men who sought wealth, riches, and authority in a land untouched; a “land as God made it” while those who chose to lead New England came for very different reasons and saw themselves as the chosen, the ones tasked with carrying onward and outward, to escape persecution and conduct their lives and religion the way that they wanted to. Out of these differences, there developed two separate, but connected, understandings of and uses for God’s providence.

    Read More

  • How Did Boston Get Its Name

    341 Words  | 1 Pages

    Boston is a small town in Thomas County, located in southwest Georgia. Boston was a hunting ground for the Creek and Apalachee Indians. The Indians thrived in the region until the early 1800’s. People in Boston can find their collections of arrowheads and other artifacts from the natives.

    Read More

  • A Model of Christian Charity

    1596 Words  | 4 Pages

    In 1630, the Massachusetts Bay Company set sail to the New World in hope of reforming the Church of England. While crossing the Atlantic, John Winthrop, the puritan leader of the great migration, delivered perhaps the most famous sermon aboard the Arbella, entitled “A Model of Christian Charity.” Winthrop’s sermon gave hope to puritan immigrants to reform the Church of England and set an example for future immigrants. The Puritan’s was a goal to get rid of the offensive features that Catholicism left behind when the Protestant Reformation took place. Under Puritanism, there was a constant strain to devote your life to God and your neighbors. Unlike the old England, they wanted to prove that New England was a community of love and individual worship to God. Therefore, they created a covenant with God and would live their lives according to the covenant. Because of the covenant, Puritans tried to abide by God’s law and got rid of anything that opposed their way of life. Between 1630 and the 18th century, the Puritans tried to create a new society in New England by creating a covenant with God and living your life according to God’s rule, but in the end failed to reform the Church of England. By the mid 1630’s, threats to the Puritans such as Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Thomas Hooker were being banned from the Puritan community for their divergent beliefs. 20 years later, another problem arose with the children of church members and if they were to be granted full membership to the church. Because of these children, a Halfway Covenant was developed to make them “halfway” church members. And even more of a threat to the Puritan society was their notion that they were failing God, because of the belief that witches existed in 1692.

    Read More

  • Winthrop and Rowlandson: Common Puritan Ideals

    1986 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...ve Indians. From the copious use of examples in Winthrop's work, and the concise detail in Rowlandson's narrative, one can imbibe such Puritans values as the mercy of God, place in society, and community. Together, these three elements create a foundation for Puritan thought and lifestyle in the New World. Though A Model of Christian Charity is rather prescriptive in its discussion of these values, Rowlandson's captivity narrative can certainly be categorized as descriptive; this pious young woman serves as a living example of Winthrop's "laws," in that she lives the life of a true Puritan. Therefore, both 17th century works are extremely interrelated; in order to create Winthrop's model community, one must have faith and closely follow Puritan ideals, as Rowlandson has effectively done in her A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In English Colonies Essay

    1086 Words  | 3 Pages

    Since the church was a major factor in the Massachusetts colony problems emerged about the colonists’ personal liberties regarding religion. In his speech, Winthrop compared a woman’s loyalty to her husband to the people’s relationship to the church. “The woman’s own choice makes such a man her husband; yet being so chosen, he is her Lord, and she is to be subject to him, yet in a way of liberty, not of bondage…” (p.31 line 30). To paraphrase, Winthrop believes that a man’s religion should be his own choice and not forced unto him by his government as this would lead to their liberties being subject to the government’s will. However, once a man surrenders himself to a certain religion, he is supposed to be a ‘servant’ to the

    Read More

  • What Role Did Religion Play In Shaping American Culture In The 1600's

    386 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the 1500’s people were punished for their religious beliefs. Well, that’s sort of why a group of separatists known as the pilgrims broke away from Great Britain and settled in a part of Massachusetts they called “Plymouth”. Even though all of the colonies played a major role in forming America as it is today, Massachusetts Plymouth was the most important because there was religious freedom, the settlers befriended the natives, and they had their own government system.

    Read More

  • English Colonization of America

    1119 Words  | 3 Pages

    Puritans left England because they wanted a place where they could have religious tolerance. When the Church of England separated from Catholicism under Henry VIII, Protestantism flourished in England, however the Puritans believed the religion needed to be purified so they left. Their religious ideologies were conveyed through John Winthrop's " City on a Hill" speech, it expressed the basic ideology behind the settlement structure. It claimed that the Puritans in New England lived according to God's will and would stand together as one. Also they wanted ti prove to the world what a heavenly perfected society they can create. Their towns were well organized, with the church being the basis of everyone's daily life. An example of their oneness is "Articles of Agreement in Springfield Massachusetts 1636," they wanted to establish equality and have everyone working together mutually. They learned useful farming techniques from the Native Americans, and farming was their prime source of the economy. And later they relied on artisan-industries like carpentry, shipbuilding, and printing. The Puritan work ethic kept people from working for extreme material gai...

    Read More

  • Characteristics Of The Pilgrims

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Of Plymouth Plantation, a work quoted in Mayflower, William Bradford attributes the death of a “proud and very profane” sailor aboard the Mayflower to “the just hand of God” (pp. 30–31). What does this almost jubilant response to another person’s suffering suggest about the nature of Bradford’s religious beliefs? How did this attitude continue to reveal itself in the other experiences of the Pilgrims and the Puritans?

    Read More

  • Puritan Religious Beliefs

    327 Words  | 1 Pages

    There were many devastating events that took place in the year of 1692, however the occasion that arouse in colonial Massachusetts, between February of 1692 and May of 1693, were unfortunate incidents. The lives of nineteen people were taken all because of Puritan Religious Beliefs. Assumptions of these people resulted in not only suffrage in jail but the possibility of death. The mania that outburst was superintended by a thoracic governance, whether than the natural right to a impartial trial.

    Read More

  • Roger Williams First Rebel Analysis

    819 Words  | 2 Pages

    building a well-devoted believers of God. As they struggled to attain order in England, they left

    Read More

  • William Bradford and Thomas Morton

    1101 Words  | 3 Pages

    Zuckerman, Michael “Pilgrims in the Wilderness: Community, Modernity, and the Maypole at Merry Mount”, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Jun., 1977), pp. 255-277. The New England Quarterly, Inc.

    Read More

  • The Boston Massacre

    1417 Words  | 3 Pages

    Bowden, Catherine Drinker, John Adams and the American Revolution. Boston: The Little, Brown and Company, 1949.

    Read More

More about The People of Boston and Their Connection to God

Open Document