How Did The Puritans Follow The Church And Government Into Social Order?

Even though the Puritans were a holy group, they made social order a main priority rather than individual freedom there for getting rid of some of the rights that people were entitled to. Rights to the individual was what the Puritans were lacking such as freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to equal justice. With all of these restrictions, the Puritans basically terminate individual freedom and forced all of the Puritans to follow the church and government into social order. First, the Puritans removed the freedom of the press by not allowing the citizen of Salem to write or read any books. An example from Miller’s essay states they had no novelists and would not have permitted anyone to read a novel if one were handy. With no one reading in salem the citizen could never really know what was going on in town. They were forced to go by the churches word and nothing else. This was one of the many rights taken away. This is just one example of how the Puritans removed individual in place of social order.

It was so important to them that they had wanted everyone to attend church. They expected them to follow the same religion.They were not allowed to celebrate christmas as stated in miller’s essay they did not celebrate Christmas, and a holiday from work meant only that they must concentrate even more upon prayer. They were expected to attend church every sunday and if not they were confronted about their absent. This is shown when in the Crucible Act 2 scene 2 when Hale ask John Proctor why has he only attended church twenty-six times in seventeen