No I don't want to , but I will give you the truth.
The Puritans
by Jennifer Keirans
Some Myths About Puritans:
Puritans thought sex was evil and condemned those, especially women, who enjoyed it. False. This is myth is wrongly implied by most modern-day uses of the word "puritan," as in this famous line, attributed to H.L. Mencken: "A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun." In fact, Puritans had no particular issue with sex. They knew that both men and women were subject to sexual desires. They certainly knew that women experienced arousal and o rgasm - conventional Protestant wisdom of the 16th and 17th centuries was that women might grow ill or mad if they didn't experience regular sexual release. Puritans thought that sex should only happen in the marriage bed, and that adultery and premarital sex were sins. They also thought that married couples should embark upon lovemaking prayerfully - they should always remember that sexual pleasure is a gift from God. In all these attitudes towards sex, they were in perfect agreement with Anglicans and other Protestants of the same period, and with quite a few modern-day Christians as well.
In a similar spirit, alcohol was never forbidden by any Puritan group; drink was one of the blessings that God provided and everyone was allowed to enjoy it. However, habitual drunkenness was regarded as a wicked sin and was met with severe punishment. Music, dancing, and poetry were all enjoyed, though wild enthusiasm was discouraged. The Puritans shut down London's theaters, not because they believed plays to be inherently sinful, but because theaters were places where people could (and did) meet prostitutes and form illicit liaisons. The closing of theaters and other such dens of iniquity (public bathhouses also got the axe) was as much a public health measure as a moral one, for syphilis was a horrific epidemic with no known cure.
Puritans believed in a theocratic government that denied people the rights to free speech and religion. True and False. The colony in Massachusetts, a model for everything they believed an earthly community should be, was definitely fashioned along these lines. They believed that God had allowed them to make the dangerous Atlantic crossing, and had helped them to survive in the howling wilderness, because they had a commission from him to succeed in their godly community. Therefore, they had an obligation to punish every transgression immediately and thoroughly. God's eye was upon them.
It should be remembered that the concept of "separation of church and state" had not been formulated yet, and that no government in Europe or America kept moral and civil law apart. Too, this "theocracy" was not imposed by tyrannical ministers upon their helpless flock, but was entered into with enthusiasm by the Puritan immigrants.
Not all Puritans had the same outlook, however. Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan Lord Protector of England during the Interregnum, was faced with a kingdom of subjects who held a challenging mix of religious beliefs. In response, he enforced religious toleration for all Protestant groups. He was tolerant and protective of England's Jews as well. As I've already noted, it was after the restoration of Charles II that religious orthodoxy was enforced - not during the Puritan-led Interregnum.
Puritans were dogmatic and anti-intellectual. False. The Puritans taught all their children, even girls, to read. As they struggled against bitter cold, starvation, poor farming conditions, wild beasts and Indians in the terrifying wilds of North America, the Puritan colonists not only maintained schools, but in 1636 they started Harvard College. When the college suffered financial setbacks, ordinary farmers and fisherman contributed what they could to keep it open.
They didn't just read the Bible, either. Heirs of the Renaissance, Puritans found value in the philosophers, poets and dramatists of antiquity, even though they considered these classical writers to be heathens. Anyone who has read the work of the great Puritan poet John Milton must recognize a dazzling degree of scholarship. Few Puritans were as accomplished as Milton, but the point remains: learning, literacy, and reason were important to the Puritans. When they heard of scientific advances, they were not threatened or appalled; they believed that through study, scholarship, experiment and logic, one might divine God's plan.
Puritans burned witches and others at the stake. False. While it is true that several people were executed by Puritans in the New World, usually for witchcraft, none were burned. 1692, the famous witch trials of Salem resulted in the deaths of twenty-five people and the imprisonment of dozens of others. Nineteen were hanged, one was tortured to death, and five died in prison. These deaths were tragic and unnecessary, as many Puritans realized after the hysteria had subsided; influential minister Increase Mather proclaimed, "It were better that ten suspected witches should escape than that one innocent person should be condemned." A far more common punishment for serious crime in Massachusetts was banishment. In 1635, a devout Puritan minister named Roger Williams got into serious trouble. He preached that the Church of England was Antichrist and that the Massachusetts churches were infected with evil for refusing to separate totally from the Anglicans. (Remember that the New England Puritans thought that they had a mission to lead the Church of England into righteousness by their holy example.) He urged his congregation to denounce all other congregations in Massachusetts (and the rest of the world) as untrue churches. For his extremely seditious opinions, Williams was exiled. As far as I know, no person was ever burned at the stake by Puritans in the New World for any reason.
Witches were burned at the stake in England and throughout Europe, most intensively from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries; but Puritanism can hardly be blamed for that.
Puritans were self-righteous hypocrites. True and False. Some of them certainly were. They were human, and like all humans they brought their faults with them when they came to church. Certain individuals surely used their faith as platform from which to raise themselves up and to judge others. Other individuals were genuinely virtuous. Most Puritans, as is true with most members of any group then and now, fell somewhere in between.
Sources:
Jacques Barzun. From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
Antonia Fraser. The Weaker Vessel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984.
Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, eds. The Puritans: A Sourcebook of their Writings, volumes 1 and 2. New York: Harper and Row, 1938.
Edmund S. Morgan. The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1958.
Billy G. Smith and Gary B. Nash, eds. The Encyclopedia of American History, Volume 2: Settlement, 1908 to 1760. Harper, 2003.
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