Which statement regarding the Puritans emigrated from England is not correct?

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This 1884 engraving by Thomas Gold depicts a Puritan couple walking to church in the snow. The bravery and initiative of the Puritans served as a source of inspiration for colonists during the Revolutionary War. Later, the framers of the Constitution would look to the Puritan era in history for guidance when crafting the First Amendment rights for freedom of religion.

The bravery and initiative of the Puritans served as a source of inspiration for colonists during the Revolutionary War. Later, the framers of the Constitution would look to the Puritan era in history for guidance when crafting the First Amendment rights for freedom of religion.

Puritans thought civil authorities should enforce religion

The term Puritan is commonly applied to a reform movement that strove to purify the practices and structure of the Church of England in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. As dissidents, they sought religious freedom and economic opportunities in distant lands. They were religious people with a strong piety and a desire to establish a holy commonwealth of people who would carry out God’s will on earth. In such a commonwealth, they felt, it was the duty of the civil authorities to enforce the laws of religion, thus holding a view almost the opposite of that expressed in the First Amendment.

Puritans tried to purify the established Church of England

The strength of the Roman Catholic Church made religion and government inseparable in portions of Europe during the Middle Ages, but Martin Luther challenged this hegemony in Germany when he nailed his ninety-five theses to a church door in 1517, and the Church eventually split along Catholic and Protestant lines. The English Reformation took shape in 1529 after the pope refused King Henry VIII’s request for a divorce. The king’s anger at the pope led him to split with the Roman Catholic Church and establish the Church of England, or the Anglican Church.

By the mid-sixteenth century, some reformers thought that Protestant denominations had not gone far enough in “purifying” the church and taking it back to its New Testament roots. Puritans were among those intent on purifying the established Church of England.

Puritans had a theocratic society

Many colonists came to America from England to escape religious persecution during the reign of King James I (r. 1603–1625) and of Charles I (r. 1625–1649), James’s son and successor, both of whom were hostile to the Puritans. As the immigrants’ numbers increased, they spread out across what is now Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The Puritans formally established the Massachusetts Bay Company, which operated under royal charter. The continued immigration of colonists to New England served to multiply the number of religious denominations, which led to increased conflict.

The fact that the Puritans had left England to escape religious persecution did not mean that they believed in religious tolerance. Their society was a theocracy that governed every aspect of their lives. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech or of the press were as foreign to the Puritans as to the Church of England. When other colonists arrived with differing beliefs, they were driven out by the Puritans. For instance, the minister Roger Williams, the founder of what became Rhode Island, fled Massachusetts after his proposal to separate church and state met with Puritan hostility.

The framers of the Constitution thought that one way of avoiding the religious intolerance of the Puritan era was to encourage a multiplicity of denominations; the First Amendment specifically prohibits the kind of national religious establishment that had once dominated colonies such as Massachusetts.

This article was originally published in 2009. Daniel Baracskay teaches in the public administration program at Valdosta State University.

Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the seventeenth century by men and women, who, in the face of European persecution, refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions and fled Europe. The New England colonies, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were conceived and established "as plantations of religion." Some settlers who arrived in these areas came for secular motives--"to catch fish" as one New Englander put it--but the great majority left Europe to worship God in the way they believed to be correct. They enthusiastically supported the efforts of their leaders to create "a city on a hill" or a "holy experiment," whose success would prove that God's plan for his churches could be successfully realized in the American wilderness. Even colonies like Virginia, which were planned as commercial ventures, were led by entrepreneurs who considered themselves "militant Protestants" and who worked diligently to promote the prosperity of the church.

European Persecution

The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to the British North American colonies sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of all citizens. Nonconformists could expect no mercy and might be executed as heretics. The dominance of the concept, denounced by Roger Williams as "inforced uniformity of religion," meant majority religious groups who controlled political power punished dissenters in their midst. In some areas Catholics persecuted Protestants, in others Protestants persecuted Catholics, and in still others Catholics and Protestants persecuted wayward coreligionists. Although England renounced religious persecution in 1689, it persisted on the European continent. Religious persecution, as observers in every century have commented, is often bloody and implacable and is remembered and resented for generations.

Execution of Mennonites

Murder of David van der Leyen and Levina Ghyselins, Ghent, 1554. Engraving by J. Luyken, from T. J. V. Bracht (or Thieleman van Braght), Het Bloedig Tooneel De Martelaers Spiegel. . . . Amsterdam: J. van der Deyster, et al., 1685. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (1)

A Jesuit Disemboweled

John Ogilvie (Ogilby), Societas Jesu, 1615. Engraving from Mathias Tanner, Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitae profusionem Militans. . . . Prague: Typis Universitatis Carolo-Ferdinandeae, 1675. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (4)

The Expulsion of the Salzburgers

Lutherans leaving Salzburg, 1731. Engraving by David Böecklin from Die Freundliche Bewillkommung Leipzig: 1732. Rare Books Division. The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (7)

A Pair of Salzburgers, Fleeing Their Homes

Salzburgische Emigranten. [left page] [right page] Engraving from [Christopher Sancke?], Ausführliche Historie derer Emigranten oder Vertriebenen Lutheraner aus dem Erz-Bistum Salzburg, Leipzig: 1732. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (8)

Persecution of Huguenots by Catholics

Massacre Fait a Sens en Bourgogne par la Populace au Mois d'Avril 1562 . . . Lithograph in A. Challe, Histoire des Guerres du Calvinisme et de la Ligue dans l'Auxerrois, le Sènonais et les autres contrèes qui forment aujourd'hui le dèpartement de l'Yonne. Auxerre: Perriquet et Rouille, 1863. General Collections, Library of Congress (2)

Persecution of Catholics by Huguenots

Frightful Outrages perpetrated by the Huguenots in France. Engraving from Richard Verstegen, Thèâtre des Cruautez des Hérétiques de notre temps. Antwerp: Adrien Hubert, 1607. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. (3)

Drowning of Protestants

Massacre of the Protestant Martyrs at the Bridge over the River Bann in Ireland, 1641. Engraving from Matthew Taylor, England's Bloody Tribunal: Or, Popish Cruelty Displayed . . . . London: J. Cooke, 1772. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (5)

Persecution of Jesuits in England

Die Societas Jesu in Europa, 1643-1644 [left page] [right page] from Mathias Tanner, Die Gesellshafft Jesu biss zur vergiessung ihres Blutes wider den Gotzendienst Unglauben und Laster . . . Prague: Carlo Ferdinandeischen Universitat Buchdruckeren, 1683. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (6)

Martyrdom of John Rogers

The Burning of Master John Rogers. Engraving from John Fox, The Third Volume of the Ecclesiastical History containing the Acts and Monuments of Martyrs. . . . London: Company of Stationers, 9th edition, 1684. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (9)

John Rogers Portrayed in New England

Crossing the Ocean to Keep the Faith: The Puritans

Puritans were English Protestants who wished to reform and purify the Church of England of what they considered to be unacceptable residues of Roman Catholicism. In the 1620s leaders of the English state and church grew increasingly unsympathetic to Puritan demands. They insisted that the Puritans conform to religious practices that they abhorred, removing their ministers from office and threatening them with "extirpation from the earth" if they did not fall in line. Zealous Puritan laymen received savage punishments. For example, in 1630 a man was sentenced to life imprisonment, had his property confiscated, his nose slit, an ear cut off, and his forehead branded "S.S." (sower of sedition).

Beginning in 1630 as many as 20,000 Puritans emigrated to America from England to gain the liberty to worship God as they chose. Most settled in New England, but some went as far as the West Indies. Theologically, the Puritans were "non-separating Congregationalists." Unlike the Pilgrims, who came to Massachusetts in 1620, the Puritans believed that the Church of England was a true church, though in need of major reforms. Every New England Congregational church was considered an independent entity, beholden to no hierarchy. The membership was composed, at least initially, of men and women who had undergone a conversion experience and could prove it to other members. Puritan leaders hoped (futilely, as it turned out) that, once their experiment was successful, England would imitate it by instituting a church order modeled after the New England Way.

Richard Mather

Richard Mather. Relief cut by John Foster. Copyprint. c. 1670. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts (11)

The Bible Commonwealths

The New England colonies have often been called "Bible Commonwealths" because they sought the guidance of the scriptures in regulating all aspects of the lives of their citizens. Scripture was cited as authority for many criminal statutes. Shown here are the two Bibles used in seventeenth-century New England and a seventeenth-century law code from Massachusetts that cites scripture.

Seventeenth-Century Laws of Massachusetts

The General Laws and Liberties of the Massachusets Colony: Revised and Reprinted [left page] [right page] Cambridge, Massachusetts: Samuel Green, 1672. Law Library, Rare Book Collection, Library of Congress (16)

Eliot's Algonquin Language Bible

The Holy Bible: Containing the Old Testament and the New, Translated into the Indian Language. . . . [left page] [right page] Cambridge, Massachusetts: Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson, 1663. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (18)

Which statement regarding the Puritans emigration from England is not correct?

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Why did the Puritans separate from the Church of England quizlet?

Which of the following were among the reasons the Puritan separatists from England chose to leave their new home in Holland?