Title: Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans and Theocracy in the 17th Century – Brewminate
Headings: Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans and Theocracy in the 17th Century
Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans and Theocracy in the 17th Century
“A City upon a Hill”
Religion and Culture in Puritan New England
Religious Intolerance in Massachusetts Bay
Puritan Relationships with Native Peoples
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Content: Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans and Theocracy in the 17th Century – Brewminate
Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans and Theocracy in the 17th Century
Posted on December 15, 2019
by MAMcIntosh
They wanted to bring about the reform of Protestantism throughout the English Empire. “A City upon a Hill”
A much larger group of English Puritans left England in the 1630s, establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the New Haven Colony, the Connecticut Colony, and Rhode Island. Unlike the exodus of young men to the Chesapeake colonies, these migrants were families with young children and their university-trained ministers. Their aim—according to John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay—was to create a model of reformed Protestantism, a “city upon a hill,” a new English Israel. The idea of a “city upon a hill” made clear the religious orientation of the New England settlement, and the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony stated as a goal that the colony’s people “may be soe religiously, peaceablie, and civilly governed, as their good Life and orderlie Conversacon, maie wynn and incite the Natives of Country, to the Knowledg and Obedience of the onlie true God and Saulor of Mankinde, and the Christian Fayth.” To illustrate this, the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company shows a half-naked Native American who entreats more of the English to “come over and help us.” The 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
Like their Spanish and French Catholic rivals, English Puritans in America took steps to convert native peoples to their version of Christianity. John Eliot, the leading Puritan missionary in New England, urged Native Americans in Massachusetts to live in “praying towns” established by English authorities for converted Native Americans and to adopt the Puritan emphasis on the centrality of the Bible.