Religious Intolerance In The Puritan Society

Over half a million people died in the bloody, hard-fought battles of the English Civil War in the mid-1600s, and the appalling destruction and religious persecution that resulted from this conflict was stimulated by the religious intolerance that King Henry VIII of England coerced upon his kingdom, demanding that it abide by the teachings of his newly established Anglican Church. This spurred a large group of English Protestants reformers, commonly known as the Puritans, to disaffiliate themselves from the traditional teachings of the Anglican Church and venture to a prospective land where they could institute their own regulations without the consent of the king. The Puritans, upon their arrival to the New World in the early to mid-17th century, sought to establish a utopian society as “the city upon a hill” based on the ideals of religious freedom, devotion, and practicality, and their austerity would create tensions among themselves and Native Americans, ultimately impacting the subject matter of the era’s literature.

The religious intolerance of 17th century England instigated the Puritans to create a society of their own in the New World. The origins of Puritanism date back to the late 1500s, when King Henry VIII of England decided that he would depart from the conventional practices of the Roman Catholic Church, thus igniting severe tensions over religion (Kessler 779). It is reasonable to say that his decision would alter the course of history from that point on, as disgruntled bands of English people would steadily contradict the king’s strict religious policies. Essentially, Henry VIII’s idealism contributed to the eventual idealism of the Puritans, who would tactfully use their status in English society at the time to v...

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... authority and people to be abstemious, or self-disciplined to help the goodness of the whole community. They escaped the Old World, that of intolerant England in the 17th century, to the promising land of the New World that holds unimaginable possibilities for opportunity and freedom. The puritans lavished in the amount of liberty they had to govern themselves. To an extent, the collectivist group was somewhat very restrictive in how one may act. The idea that God is watching everyone’s move and He can drop anyone to the pits of Hell at His will, as described by Johnathan Edwards, caused many people to be modest and well-mannered as they give respect other good citizens and God. Their writings reflect their lack of zeal in themselves as their style was plain and simple, but some have hidden components that reference God as the Almighty mastermind of the conflict.