“Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.” “God is Great. God is Great”. These are the words which every Muslim is required to chant several times a day. The same notion of God’s greatness is also portrayed in Puritan life. The Puritans are a people of religious fervor and strict adherence to the Bible who, without doubt, looked to God in every facet of their life. It is human nature to relate to things we know in order to make sense of the topic at hand. After recently studying Puritan texts, I feel that they express some of the same ideas as the Muslims. Some of the ideas include a sense of community, a contract with God, the notion of fear, and the removal of material goods. The ideas from John Winthrop’s from “A City Upon a Hill”, Anne Bradstreet’s “Verses Upon the Burning of Our House”, Edmund Morgan’s The Puritan Dilemma, and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible all express similar ideas to those of the Muslims. The Muslims have allowed me to create a better understanding of the Puritan ideology present in the gambit of Puritan texts. I understand that the power of religion is a unifying force which can lead to a decline in society.
The idea of a united community is a concept that both the Muslims and Puritans share. In Wintrhop’s sermon he says, “we must be knit together in this work as one man… commerce together, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together.” Winthrop hoped that religion would help unite the Puritan community by forcing its members to indulge in the same religious ideology. This is similar to the Muslim practice of coming together in order to pray to Allah. The Quran states that people should, “strive together…Towards all that is good,” and that, “Allah will bring you Together,” (2:148). Muslims from all around the world participate in a pilgrimage to Mecca, also known as the Hajj. The Hajj proved to be a positive fixation for the growth of civilization as it fostered a unified religious society. The ancient tradition helps make sense of Winthrop’s sermon “A City Upon a Hill”. The Puritans wanted to unite their community, but had to have everyone devoted to their plan. Therefore they called for everyone to unite and pray to God on the “City Upon A Hill”.
As America slowly began molding into the creases of different values and cultures, so did its literature. One trait that had always been securing itself within the lines of these literary texts was the protagonists’ naivety. Theses characters typically established an intention to do good things, but eventually fail due to tumbling upon tempting obstacles and falling into the trance of distractions. An example of this situation occurred long ago during the 16th and 17th century. A cult of English Protestants known as Puritans aimed to “purify” the Church of England by excreting all evidence of its descent in the Roman Catholic Church. The Puritans enforced strict religious practices upon its believers and regarded all pleasure and luxury as wicked or sacrilegious. Although their “holy” cond...
A Puritan lawyer, John Winthrop, immigrated to New England because his views on religion were different from those in England. Even though Puritans are Protestants, Puritans tried to purify the English Church. In 1630 on board of the Arabella on the Atlantic Ocean on way to Massachusetts, he wrote “A Model of Christian Charity” which gave his views on what a society should be. ‘…the condition of mankind, [that] in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity, other mean and in subjection….[Yet] we must knit together in this work as one man.’ (Doc. A). In this he is saying that men may be different but to make a new world work, they must work together. All through his speech he mentions God. For example, he opens his sermon with ‘God Almighty in his most holy and wise providence…’. This shows that in New England, the people were very religious.
In the late 1600’s, literature is dissimilar from today’s, such as focusing on being sent into the fiery pits of hell only because one hasn’t converted to Puritanism. There are also different types of writing to display the righteousness and positives of being a converted and loyal to the Puritan culture. Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards are two popular Puritan authors who project different messages and portray a varying energy through a slim number of their pieces. The poems, “To My Dear and Loving Husband” or “Upon the Burning of Our House” by Anne Bradstreet or “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards are fit examples of the Puritan age and what Puritans belive to be religiously
Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity) This statement by John Winthrop, demonstrates importance of religion in the lives of the New England settlers. "We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body." (John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity).
He instructs them “to doe Justly, to love mercy, to walke humbly with [their] God” to avoid the typical misfortunes that occur with new settlements, such as the disaster of Jamestown (paragraph 1). These instructions depict the Puritan lifestyle as open performances of kindness and encouragement of others to perform these same acts. Here, Winthrop emphasizes the values of community and brotherhood. In Winthrop’s eyes, everyone is a living example of God and His goodness, and everyone must show God’s compassion through every action, lest they “shame the faces of many of gods worthy servants, and… their prayers be turned into Cursses upon us” (paragraph 2). In this speech, the internal goals of America can be found, such as kindness, meekness, and brotherly affection. Winthrop instructs the new colonists to “entertaine each other in brotherly Affeccion,” which is similar to the American concept of a nation formed from brotherhood (paragraph 1). Americans at least had the intent of living by the true morals of Christianity, like altruism and almsgiving, but somewhere along in its development, these morals became easier said than
Religion is still important in many facets of society, but not in the same structure John Winthrop had hoped for. Overall, the “City on a Hill” was meant to serve as an example society for others to study and learn from, no matter if it succeeded or failed, which it ultimately accomplished. Although many Puritan beliefs have gone by the wayside, they were able to set a precedent for future generations.
John Winthrop was a Puritan and one of the leading founders in the Massachusetts Bay Colony who gave the speech “Model of Christian Charity” in 1630 while aboard the Arbella on the way to Salem. In this speech, Winthrop mentions many values and morals he believes people need to follow in order to survive. One value he mentions is that people should “rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together”. Winthrop is really explaining that he wants everyone to be one unit and believe the same things in terms of God. Anne Hutchinson, who was under the rule of Winthrop, held many meetings where she taught false information of the bible.
Religion was the foundation of the early Colonial American Puritan writings. Many of the early settlements were comprised of men and women who fled Europe in the face of persecution to come to a new land and worship according to their own will. Their beliefs were stalwartly rooted in the fact that God should be involved with all facets of their lives and constantly worshiped. These Puritans writings focused on their religious foundations related to their exodus from Europe and religions role in their life on the new continent. Their literature helped to proselytize the message of God and focused on hard work and strict adherence to religious principles, thus avoiding eternal damnation. These main themes are evident in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mathers, and John Winthrop. This paper will explore the writings of these three men and how their religious views shaped their literary works, styles, and their historical and political views.
The "A Model of Christian Charity" sermon, delivered by John Winthrop, is an example of the deeply religious Puritans that settled in Boston. They felt they had a convent with God to live a righteous life, a life that put God commandments and the community first. The puritans were very concerned with proper behavior theirs and others. The settlers of Boston were pious Puritans who regularly reassessed the state of their souls. By living this righteous life, the Puritans believed the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the "City upon the Hill" and they would be the light of the world. John Winthrop stated in the closing statement of his sermon how deeply the Puritans walked with God.
The Puritans came and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony around 1630 with the ideas to shape New England culture. The Puritans were religious separatists, which meant they had left the Church of England. King James the first threatened to push the puritans out or do worse. In reslult the puritans ended up leaving and finding their own place to settle. Their main purpose was to spread their religious beliefs and to find land for economical reason.Puritans held very strong beliefs on the way they lived their life. They wanted to spread their beliefs and ideas among the colonies. The amount of Puritans continued to grow larger based on the control of the leaders, 13 years after they settled there were about 20,000 puritans living in the area. The Puritans had their own ideas and values which helped shape the political, economic, and social structure of the New England colonies.
Most could probably see that is was painfully obvious as to who the religious fanatics were. New England’s colonists seemed to have a more religious tone, than did that of the Middle or Southern regions. The Puritans, who had apparently come to America to escape ridicule and religious persecution, were taking up on that very idea, punishing all those whom did not share in their ideas. They were stiff, strict people and did not allow for much, but the main idea is that they were driven by a higher power, God. This made the Puritans successful Massachusetts’s colonists in that they were strong-willed and willing to make their government work. The type of government chosen by the Puritans worked well, a theocratic environment. A theocracy is defined as government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided. According the John Winthrop, who was to be their governor for some number of years, it seemed that their grand purpose in A...
Winthrop, Puritanism means living in the world, but not taking his mind off God. He cannot
From the first to the sixteenth centuries, merchants and trade played a prominent and influential role in society. Christianity and Islam in their origins had divergent attitudes toward increasingly important trade, but their viewpoints developed over time until 1500. Christianity first had a negative opinion of merchants, while Muslims saw them in a more positive light. Although they were different in this way, they shared some resemblance in that they both agreed that merchants should be virtuous and equitable in their transactions. In order to better comprehend how the outlook of Christians and Muslims transformed over time, one must first examine how they perceived merchants at their origins.
The Puritan Dilemma is the story of John Winthrop growing up in the Puritan colonization of America. This book tells the reader of the events that Puritans had to go through during that time period. The book also talks about the attempts, both by John Winthrop and the Puritans, to establish a new type of society in the New World, something they couldn’t do in England. This story is told by the theology of the Puritan ideas, and focuses a lot on how their beliefs intervene in their daily lives, churches, and political ideologies. Puritanism was the belief that the Church of England should remove traditions that inherited from the Catholic Church, and make the Church of England more pure in Christ.
The Sovereignty and Goodness of God is a primary source document written in the 17th century, by a well-respected, Puritan woman. This book, written in cahoots with Cotton and Increase Mather, puritan ministers, tells the story of her capture by Indians during King Phillip’s War (1675-1676). For three months, Mary Rowlandson, daughter of a rich landowner, mother of three children, wife of a minister, and a pillar of her community lived among “savage” Indians. This document is important for several reasons. First, it gives us insight into the attitudes, extremes, personalities and “norms” of the Puritan people we learn about in terms of their beliefs, and John Calvin’s “house on a hill”. Beyond that, despite the inevitable exaggerations, this book gives us insight into Indian communities, and how they were run and operated during this time.