Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H.L. Mencken, early 20th-century American satirist
If our cartoon seems odd and “not quite Puritan” you would do well to consider that Luke the Evangelist, author of one of the four canonical gospels and first historian of the Church, recorded that the Bereans searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so (Acts 17:11); we might do well to apply this same care to everything we’ve been taught . . . and especially to what we’ve been taught from the pulpit and in Sunday school!
Our misperception of the Puritans largely begins with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850). This work, set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony of the mid-17th century, was one of the first mass-produced novels in the United States and it remains a standard in the high school and college classroom. Many of you have either read the text or have watched one or more of its many theater and film adaptations. Unfortunately, “truth” was the first casualty of The Scarlet Letter; it is a novel about a fictitious people living in a largely mythical culture.
Instead, “we must picture these Puritans as the very opposite of those who bear that name today: as young, fierce, progressive intellectuals, very fashionable and up-to-date. They were not teetotalers; bishops, not beer, were their special aversion.”¹
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True Puritanism is as “American” as you get. Although this brief introduction isn’t meant to be a lesson in American history, consider that the Puritans laid the foundation for American democracy as well as for our system of popular education, and that they established our national character of privacy, mutual respect, wealth through hard work, and submission to Almighty God—qualities now largely absent from the nation we have become.
And so let us begin by dispelling much of what we’ve been taught about the comic caricatures who have come to represent “Thanksgiving” and who supposedly took to swimming in the icy North Atlantic whenever they inadvertently gazed upon a member of the opposite sex.
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Although there was never a Puritan “denomination,”² we know that the Puritans followed a Calvinist soteriology³ (doctrine of salvation) and that they held to a Baptist (independent-congregationalist) polity rather than to a Presbyterian (hierarchical) form of “group-church” governance. In other words, rather than worshiping as a “denomination” with a centralized government, the Puritans worshiped in a loose affiliation of like-minded but independent Christian churches.
Leaving aside the academic arguments and at the sure and significant risk of offending the many who would howl in the details, many of our Puritan forefathers might today be seen as “Particular” or “Reformed” Baptists, with close ties to both the Presbyterians and the Moravian Brethren.
Foremost, their focus was on being “Christian”; denominational separation and identities—often growing out of the mechanics of baptism and of church governance—were of secondary importance.³
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Despite what we might have been (badly) taught, the Puritans of the New England colonies were anything but drab and dour folk!
Indeed, the Puritans of the 16th and 17th centuries were religious conservatives who sought to “purify” (hence the term “Puritan”) the Church of England from its Catholic traditions and manufactured contrivance by strictly adhering to what was factually commanded in Scripture. Still, they were hardly “puritanical” by today’s definition.
The Puritans considered unbridled, passionate sex with one’s spouse to be a gift and a duty(!) from God. In marked contrast to Catholic teaching—which considered sex to reside somewhere between “soiled” (when used for procreation) and “outright sinful” (when enjoyed solely for pleasure, hence the continuing Catholic prohibition against birth control)—Puritans were greatly encouraged to engage in regular physical intimacy apart from its “baby-making” purpose.
Rather than being made to feel guilty or embarrassed about engaging in what the official Catholic saw as a “necessary evil”—despite God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28 to Adam and Eve and Genesis 9:1 to Noah and his family)—the Puritans were advised from the pulpit to pursue and enjoy this great gift of God as much as possible and as often as possible.³
“The Puritans believed that both sexes should experience ‘delight’ during sexual intercourse. According to the medical and marital advice literature of the time, procreation could not occur without female orgasm, which required that the woman become sexually aroused. A popular marital guide of the time admonished men that, ‘When the husband cometh into the wife’s chamber he must entertain her with all kind of dalliance, wanton behavior, and allurements to venery.’ New England courts upheld the view that women had a right to expect ‘content and satisfaction’ in bed; he who failed to provide it was judged ‘deficient in performing the duty of a husband.'”³
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And, remarkable for the time is that, in a Puritan Assembly, a woman could not be cast off should her husband’s affections turn elsewhere nor even should she not be able to bear children; further, she was not subject to her husband’s whim in the marriage bed.
The Puritans were serious about the marriage covenant and were equally serious about the responsibilities of each toward the other in that covenant.
Women and men were equally expected to fulfill their sexual obligations.
In fact, in the first divorce recorded in the New World (1640), the Boston Assembly excommunicated James Mattock and banished him from the community because he “denyed conjegal fellowship unto his wife.” In other words, Mrs. Mattock was granted a divorce and her husband was excommunicated from their religious community because he would not attend to the sexual needs of “the Mrs.”!³
When we consider fact and reality, we quickly come to understand that “the Puritans” were hardly “puritanical.”
So much for Puritan “abstinence”!
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It may likewise surprise us that, although the Brothers and Sisters were cautioned against excess, the Puritans had no universal prohibition against smoking, dancing, beer, ale, wine, rum, or alcoholic cider.
Although individual Puritan assemblies were self-ruled and some were more restrictive than others (like the Amish and others, and as remain many Baptist assemblies), it is well-documented that many New England Puritans retired to the communal “noon-house” between services so that both men and women might engage in snuff and a quiet pipe and to warm themselves with “flip”—a mixture of home-brewed beer, sugar, and a dash of rum given its special quality by an iron from the fireplace thrust into the pewter mug to both caramelize the sugar and heat the beverage. This ritual, we might assume, made the cold, winter afternoon service a bit more palatable than the morning service.
The assertion that the Puritans survived on non-alcoholic beverages is absolute nonsense, especially as “water” was the carrier of diseases such as dysentery and typhoid and which—along the coastal basin—could result in salt poisoning if brackish water was drawn from the estuaries or fossil aquifers. Because of its antimicrobial powers, our early settlers—adults and children alike—drank beer and alcohol as if these were water. Quite simply: Beer, wine, and spirits were safe for drinking because they were alcoholic beverages.
Once again, so much for Puritan “abstinence”!
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Although it was understood that men and women had distinct duties and different authorities, the Puritans believed that men and women were equals in the eyes of God. Consequently—and unlike in many social circles and religious communities of the time—the Puritan wife wielded great influence in the bedroom, in the home (often working as the primary breadwinner), and even within the community. Few men in positions of authority, including the town’s minister, could survive in the face of disapproval from the Assembly’s womenfolk.
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There were no arranged marriages; on average, the Puritan woman didn’t marry until 23 years of age. In addition, the typical Puritan woman was not only literate but well-educated, well-read, and well-spoken.
Anne Hutchinson is remembered for her popular home gatherings to discuss both Scripture and sermons and was a leading figure in the “Free Grace Controversy”³ that swept through New England in 1636-1638.
The first author in the New England colonies to be published and the first poet of the New World to be published was Anne Bradstreet, a Puritan wife who is today recognized as America’s first feminist and whose sex-charged works “debunk the myth of the stodgy, prudish Puritan so long a part of the American psyche.”³
Today, in that same tradition and in the tradition of the early Christian church, women are invited to serve as full members of the First Puritan Assembly, to be ordained as a deaconess, to actively participate in administering the ordinance of baptism, to hold authority in matters of church practice and governance, to actively serve in church administration, and to be elected by fellow women to sit in the position of judge in matters of church discipline.
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Nor did the Puritans live as a community of closed-minded religious zealots! Contrary to urban legend and unlike what was accepted in Catholic as well as in many Protestant circles, the Puritans had a great unease about “witch-burning”; not one of the accused at the Salem Witch Trials (1692-93) was burned at the stake.
In 1636 the Puritans established the first institution of higher learning in the Colonies, specifically to train the next generation of churchmen. Subsequently, in 1701, the Puritans went on to establish Yale University.³
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As for our mental picture of our Christian brethren at “Thanksgiving,” it should be noted that the Puritans neither sported those ridiculous buckles on their hats and shoes (we would have to wait for another century before these would become fashionable) nor dressed in “funeral black.” Puritan estate inventories record that Puritan wardrobes included caps and capes in colors of red, orange, green, blue, and yellow.³
And let us please move quickly beyond the out-of-context misinformation about how Puritans hate Christmas as well as all other occasions of merry-making!
We exchange valentines and we’re fond of the charcoal grill and fireworks on the 4th of July. And, according to the most recent in-house poll, a great many of our Puritan-Calvinist-Reformed ministers keep, during its proper season and in its proper manner, a Christmas tree in the living room and a dining-room table stacked with turkey and ham, mashed potatoes, cornbread dressing, cranberries, pecan pie, and an endless variety of cookies. And eggnog. Eggnog laced with an ample dose of either rum or brandy.
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Why such a lengthy discourse on “the Puritans”?
Ever since the Old Testament, believers have been led astray by false teachers and by ecclesiastical authorities who have taken away, or have added to, the Word of God so that governments and church authorities might gain and consolidate power over the uneducated masses.
You have been poorly taught that the Puritans were “puritanical” but —in terms of sexual and alcohol practice—were not these “drunkards”³ the most sexually liberated of any Christian denomination?
You have been poorly taught that the Puritans were a sect of religious goofballs, and yet did not these mysterious goofballs lay the foundation for the greatest nation in the world?
And now, if our society and the pulpits of our fellow Christian denominations have so badly maligned and misrepresented these relatively unimportant Calvinist Puritans, should we not worry that so many of our Christian Brothers and Sisters may have been misled—by this same society and by these same pulpits—in the far more serious business of our relationship to Almighty God?
Might it not be wise to search the Scriptures to see—for ourselves—whether those things were so?
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¹ C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), “Edmund Spenser, 1552-99” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (2013). “Clive Staples” Lewis was perhaps the greatest (Anglican) theological writer of the 20th century.
² For a discussion of the main branches of Puritans—the “Separatists” and the “Non”-Separatists—see Thomas Sovík, “On the Peculiar Preaching of the Word of God” in Here Am I; Guardian of the Word of God (2023).
While the “Non”-Separatists remained far more aligned to the Anglican Church (seeking “reform”), the Puritan Separatists found their key text—in the matter of “separating” from the organized hierarchy of the Catholic Church as well as from the “Anglican” Church of England—in the Word of God:
For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them (Matthew 18:20).
For the Separatists, neither pope nor priest nor bureaucracy was needed for man to engage in a direct relationship with his Creator.
³ Just as there was never a “Puritan” denomination, neither was there a “Calvinist” domination (although later this did become the shorthand method of identifying this particular branch of the Reformed movement). Calvin (1509-1564) himself denounced naming any such new movement after “John Calvin,” finding it difficult enough yet sufficient enough to be “Christian.” John Calvin, “Leçons ou commentaires et expositions sur les rélévations du prophète Jeremie” (1565), from his commentaries on 48 books of the Bible.
³ Although we generally associate the practice with the Catholic Church, many Protestant denominations and pulpits likewise advise against considering the theology, ides, and interpretations of “those other people” lest we be swayed by the Devil in their midst. And yet the words with which we most disagree often provide the greatest food for thought.
Setting aside any disagreement (or at least setting aside those words, written in 1990, that may be misinterpreted when read through a lens of “2023” wokeness, entitlement, and a social justice that is not of God), our thoughts may be profitably provoked by reading Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go (2004). In this work, author Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, suggests that “religion” and “denomination” allow us to maintain our image of God and God’s Will as we want God to be while true Christianity insists that we allow God to be “as He is”—noting that it was the priests and theologians (whose behavior would have needed to change) who denied Christ and sent Him to the cross while the poor accepted Christ for who He was (and is). Was it not this way among the Pharisees and Sadducees of the Sanhedrin? As Fr. Rohr observes: “Religion is the safest place to avoid God.”
We will see this very plainly even in the first series delivered at Rye Chapel, Made Whole from the Ashes of a Great Divorce, it was shown how man (in his “self” and in his government and in his church denominations) took what God commands concerning adultery, divorce, and remarriage and then refashioned the Law of God into statutes and societal norms that we, as sinners, prefer.
³ Charles A. Mills, The Puritans and Sex at http://timetravel21.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-puritans-and-sex.html.
³ History.com incorrectly records the New World’s first divorce as having occurred in 1643, wherein “Anne Clarke of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was granted a divorce from her absent and adulterous husband, Denis Clarke.” A&E Television Networks, “First Divorce in the Colonies,” This Day in History: 5 January 1643 at https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-divorce-in-the-colonies.
³ In a much-condensed summary: Although forbidden to do so by Timothy 2:12, Anne Hutchinson (1612–1672) held gatherings in her home for women as well as for men and ministers alike, teaching that the doors of Heaven were open to all believers without need of “church.” Her excommunication and banishment from the community in 1638 seem curious because Anne’s preaching grew directly out of the pulpit of the Reverend John Cotton, a preeminent Calvinist minister and theologian of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (who later turned against Mrs. Hutchinson).
Mrs. Hutchinson was accused of espousing views not in sympathy with Puritan-Calvinistic theology and accused of “traducing [speaking negatively about] the ministers” who themselves, no doubt, were “traducing” Anne Hutchinson. In hindsight, we might consider the original sin of Mrs. Hutchinson to be one of upsetting the patriarchal structure of a Puritan society in which men ruled their families, their churches, and their government; in hindsight, we might consider that, while the Pilgrims-Puritans came to the New World in the quest for religious freedom, a welcomed diversity in religious practice was extended neither to those within the community nor to non-Puritan newcomers.
³ Jeremy W. Johnston, “America’s First Poet, Anne Bradstreet: A Progressive Conservative,” The Imaginative Conservative at https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2021/02/america-first-poet-anne-bradstreet-progressive-conservative-jeremy-johnston.html.
³ Patriarchy has been a problem of the church since its early days, “patriarchy” not being merely a “male-oriented fraternity” but a collective in which relationships are defined by “highers” and “lowers” and which too quickly fosters the need and the ability to preserve the status quo. Not only has this led to keeping women from offering their full contribution to the church—and it is extremely valuable that women can see the world through a different lens than do men!—but it simultaneously creates an environment in which those at the top become “comfortable” with the discomforts of “the lessers” (the women, the poor and the needy, the homeless, the elderly, etc.).
³ In 1701 Yale University was the fourth university to be established in New England, following Harvard in Cambridge, MA (1636), the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA (1693), and St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD (1696).
³ As a historical footnote: On 5 July 1779, Ezra Stiles—president of Yale University and professor of ecclesiastical history, philosophy, and astronomy and former classmate of Benjamin Franklin—stood in the steeple of the college chapel with his telescope and gave first warning of the landing of the British fleet (the armada having been noticed the previous evening by the town’s sentries), after which the student militia rose to defend the city at the Battle of New Haven.
³ For an accurate account of how the Puritans dressed (complete with photos and drawings) see Dress Like a Pilgrim; A Procurement Guide by Mayflower Guard, published online by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants at https://themayflowersociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Dress-Like-a-Pilgrim-Procurement-Guide_revised_9_2021.pdf. Sarah Laskow, The Hidden Rules of the Puritan Fashion Police may likewise be found online at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sumptuary-laws-puritan-fashion-colonies-modesty
³ Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:34.