Puritans, Baptists and Quakers

The hotter sort of Protestants

Under Elizabeth I, many committed English Protestants felt the Reformation had stopped halfway (see Britain's Reformations). The church still had bishops, priests in white surplices, kneeling at Communion, the sign of the cross at baptism, and wedding rings. These were "rags of popery." Critics called these zealous Protestants Puritans, because they wanted to purify the church. Contemporaries also called them "the hotter sort of Protestants."

Puritanism was more than a protest about ceremonies. It was an intense spirituality:

• The Bible as the rule for all of life: worship, church, family, business and politics.
• Preaching: long, carefully argued sermons were the center of worship. "Lecturers" were hired just to preach.
• Conversion and assurance: Puritans, mostly Calvinist in theology, examined their souls closely for signs that they were among God's elect. They kept spiritual diaries. Theologians like William Perkins wrote guides to the "practical divinity" of the Christian life.
• The godly household: daily family prayer and Bible reading, with the father as household "priest."
• The Sabbath: Sunday kept strictly as a day of worship and rest. No games, no work.
• A covenant community: the dream of a nation bound to God by covenant, like ancient Israel.

Puritans were not the joyless killjoys of legend. Many enjoyed music, drink and marital love. But they took sin and holiness with utmost seriousness.

King against Parliament

King James I (1603–1625) disappointed Puritan hopes. At the Hampton Court Conference (1604) he rejected their demands but agreed to a new Bible translation, the King James Version (1611). His son Charles I (1625–1649) went further. With Archbishop William Laud, he promoted a "High Church" style: altars railed off at the east end, rich ceremony and the "beauty of holiness." They also favored Arminian theology over Calvinism. Puritans saw it as creeping Catholicism, especially since Charles's queen was Catholic. Laud's courts punished Puritan critics. Some had their ears cut off.

Thousands of Puritans emigrated. Others resisted. In 1637 Charles tried to impose a Laudian prayer book on Presbyterian Scotland, and the Scots rebelled. Needing money, Charles had to call Parliament, which was full of Puritan sympathizers. Disputes over religion, taxes and royal power led to the English Civil War (1642–1651).

Revolution and the Commonwealth

Parliament abolished bishops and the Book of Common Prayer. It summoned the Westminster Assembly of theologians, which produced the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) and its catechisms. They became the standard of Presbyterian churches worldwide. Its Shorter Catechism begins with a famous question and answer: man's chief end is "to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."

Parliament's army, the disciplined, psalm-singing New Model Army, defeated the king. Its leading general was Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), a Puritan country gentleman convinced that God was guiding his victories. In 1649 Charles I was tried and beheaded, shocking Europe. Cromwell ruled as "Lord Protector." He allowed broad toleration for most Protestant groups, and he readmitted Jews to England (1656) after more than 350 years of exclusion. But he banned the Prayer Book, closed theaters, and brutally conquered Catholic Ireland, where massacres at Drogheda and Wexford are still remembered. The poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, served his government.

The revolution unleashed a flood of radical sects. There were Levellers (democrats), Diggers (communists), Fifth Monarchists (expecting Christ's imminent rule), Ranters and Seekers. Some of these new groups lasted.

How Puritanism produced England's “dissenting” churches

The Baptists

Some English Separatists, Puritans who gave up on reforming the national church and formed independent congregations, fled to the Netherlands. In Amsterdam in 1609, influenced by Mennonites, John Smyth concluded that the true church consisted of believers baptized on their own confession of faith. He baptized himself and his followers. In 1612 Thomas Helwys brought part of this group back to England, founding the first Baptist church on English soil. He wrote A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity, one of the first English pleas for complete religious liberty, even for Muslims and Jews: "Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them." He died in prison.

These early "General Baptists" held Arminian views. In the 1630s, "Particular Baptists," who were Calvinist, emerged and adopted baptism by full immersion. Baptists insisted on believers' baptism, congregational self-government and the separation of church and state.

The Quakers

George Fox (1624–1691), a shoemaker's apprentice, wandered England searching for spiritual truth. He found that no minister could help him. Then he heard a voice: "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition." He taught that every person has an "Inner Light" of Christ within them and can know God directly, without clergy, sacraments or set liturgy. In 1652, after a vision on Pendle Hill, he began gathering followers, the Religious Society of Friends, nicknamed Quakers because they trembled before the Lord, or because Fox told a judge to "tremble at the word of the Lord."

Quakers met in silence, waiting for the Spirit to move someone to speak. Women could speak and minister equally, an extraordinary practice. Margaret Fell, later Fox's wife, was a key leader and wrote a defense of women's preaching. Quakers refused to swear oaths, to pay tithes, to take off their hats to social superiors, or to fight. They addressed everyone as "thee" and "thou." Thousands were imprisoned and hundreds died in jail. In 1681 William Penn, son of an admiral, received a vast American land grant from the king and founded Pennsylvania as a "holy experiment" in religious liberty and peaceful relations with Native Americans. Quakers later led the campaign against slavery.

Restoration and persecution

After Cromwell's death, the monarchy and the Church of England were restored in 1660 under Charles II. The Act of Uniformity (1662) required all ministers to use the revised Prayer Book and accept episcopal ordination. About 2,000 Puritan ministers who refused were ejected from their parishes, the "Great Ejection." Further laws (the "Clarendon Code") banned dissenting meetings. Dissenters ("Nonconformists") were barred from the universities and public office.

One victim was John Bunyan (1628–1688), a tinker and Baptist preacher from Bedford. He spent twelve years in prison rather than promise to stop preaching. In jail he wrote The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), an allegory of the Christian life as a journey. Christian travels from the City of Destruction, through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, to the Celestial City. For two centuries it was, after the Bible, the most widely read book in English. Richard Baxter, a moderate Puritan pastor, wrote classics of pastoral care and devotion and was also imprisoned.

After the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 replaced the Catholic James II with the Protestant William and Mary, the Act of Toleration (1689) allowed Trinitarian Protestant dissenters to worship freely, though they still faced civil restrictions. Catholics and Unitarians were excluded. It was a partial but crucial step toward religious liberty.

New England

Many Puritans sought a fresh start across the Atlantic. In 1620 a group of Separatists, the Pilgrims, sailed on the Mayflower and founded Plymouth Colony. They signed the Mayflower Compact to govern themselves. Their harvest feast in 1621 is remembered as the first Thanksgiving.

In 1630 a much larger, wealthier Puritan migration founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their governor, John Winthrop, preached that they would be "as a city upon a hill," with the eyes of all people upon them. The phrase became a lasting image of American identity. They established Congregational churches, in which each congregation was self-governing, and founded Harvard College (1636) to train ministers.

New England Puritans sought religious freedom for themselves, not for others. When Anne Hutchinson, a gifted woman who led Bible discussions in her home, challenged the ministers' teaching on grace, she was banished (1638). The minister Roger Williams, who argued that the state had no authority over conscience and that the land belonged to Native Americans, was expelled and founded Rhode Island (1636), the first colony with full religious liberty, where Baptists, Quakers and Jews found refuge. Massachusetts hanged four Quakers on Boston Common (1659–1661). In 1692 the Salem witch trials led to the execution of twenty people, an episode later regretted by its judges.