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Puritanism and
Predestination
Christine Leigh Heyrman
Department
of History, University of
Delaware
©National Humanities Center
The Puritans were a varied group of religious reformers who emerged
within the Church of England during the middle of the sixteenth century.
They shared a common Calvinist theology and common criticisms of the
Anglican Church and English society and government. Their numbers and
influence grew steadily, culminating in the English Civil War of the
1640s and the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s. With the restoration
of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Puritanism went into eclipse in England,
largely because the movement was identified with the upheaval and
radicalism of the Civil War and Cromwell's tyrannical government, a
virtual military dictatorship.
But it persisted for much longer as a vital force in those parts of
British North America colonized by two groups of Puritans who gradually
cut their ties to the Church of England and formed separate
denominations. One group, the Congregationalists, settled Plymouth in
the 1620s and then Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in
the 1630s. Another group, the Presbyterians, who quickly came to
dominate the religious life of Scotland and later migrated in large
numbers to northern Ireland, also settled many communities in New York,
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania during the late seventeenth century and
throughout the eighteenth century.
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| Gregg/Duggan |
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Increase Mather, "The Wicked mans Portion,"
1675
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"That excesse in wickedness
doth bring
untimely Death."
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| Puritans in
both Britain and British North America sought to cleanse the culture of
what they regarded as corrupt, sinful practices. They believed that the
civil government should strictly enforce public morality by prohibiting
vices like drunkenness, gambling, ostentatious dress, swearing, and
Sabbath-breaking. They also wished to purge churches of every vestige of
Roman Catholic ritual and practice—the ruling hierarchies of bishops and
cardinals, the elaborate ceremonies in which the clergy wore ornate
vestments and repeated prayers from a prescribed liturgy. Accordingly,
New England's Congregational churches were self-governing bodies,
answerable to no higher authority; mid-Atlantic Presbyterian churches
enjoyed somewhat less autonomy because a hierarchy of "presbyteries" and
"synods" made up of leading laymen and clergymen set policy for
individual congregations. But both Congregationalist and Presbyterian
worship services were simple, even austere, and dominated by long,
learned sermons in which their clergy expounded passages from the Bible.
Perhaps most important, membership in both churches was limited to the
"visibly godly," meaning those men and women who lead sober and upright
lives. New England Congregationalists adopted even stricter standards
for admission to their churches—the requirement that each person
applying for membership testify publicly to his or her experience of
"conversion." (Many Presbyterians also regarded conversion as central to
being a Christian, but they did not restrict their membership to those
who could profess such an experience.)
Guiding Student Discussion
Explaining
most of the above to your students will be easy enough, except, of
course, this matter of conversion. At the very mention of that term, a
sea of blank faces will shimmer before your unhappy eyes. Nonetheless,
gamely pursue the subject with them. Pull out all the stops to convey
what conversion meant—because it is key to understanding the
spirituality of the Puritans (as well as all later evangelicals). What's
more, explaining this religious experience is a surefire way to get
students thinking and talking. No matter how confused they seem at
first, most will "get it" and even "get into it" if you give them a
chance.
You might tell them about the Puritan belief in predestination, which
provides the wider context for understanding conversion. This doctrine
was first elaborated by John Calvin and then adopted by
Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and a variety of other religious
groups. Calvin held that human beings were innately sinful—utterly
depraved by inheriting the original sin of Adam and Eve, the biblical
parents of the human race.
But
Calvin also taught that God, in his infinite mercy, would spare a small
number of "elect" individuals from the fate of eternal hellfire that all
mankind, owing to their corrupt natures, justly deserved. That elect
group of "saints" would be blessed, at some point in their lives, by a
profound sense of inner assurance that they possessed God's "saving
grace." This dawning of hope was the experience of conversion, which
might come upon individuals suddenly or gradually, in their earliest
youth or even in the moments before death. It is important to emphasize
to students that, in the Calvinist scheme, God decided who would be
saved or damned before the beginning of history—and that this decision
would not be affected by how human beings behaved during their lives.
The God of Calvin (and the Puritans) did not give "extra credit"—nor,
indeed, any credit—for the good works that men and women performed
during their lives.
Once you have gotten this far, some students will be wondering
(aloud, with any luck) why any sane person would accept the doctrine of
predestination. The gist of their objections will be, to echo some of my
own students, that predestination "is, like, TOTALLY unfair." Some may
observe that the Puritans' God was a distinctly undemocratic sort of
deity, an unfeeling tyrant rather than a loving parent. Many more may
notice that the Puritans' God offered no incentive for upright moral
behavior: this deity had decided who will be saved or damned before the
beginning of human history, and no good actions on the part of men and
women could change that divine decree and alter their preordained fates.
(The brighter kids may also point out that Calvinist theology denied
human beings any free will.) That being the case, lots of students will
ask you why the Puritans didn't sink into despair—or decide to wallow in
the world's pleasures, to enjoy the moment, since they could do nothing
to affect their eternity in the afterlife.
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| Library of Congress |
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Title
page (detail) of the 1560 "Geneva Bible," which reflected
Calvinist doctrine and was probably the Bible taken by the
Puritans to the New World. Scriptural verses surrounding the
image:
"Great are the troubles of the righteous;
but the
Lord delivereth them out of all."
Psalms, 34:19
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"FEARE YE NOT, STAND STIL, AND BEHOLDE
the
salvation of the Lord,
which he will shewe to you this
day.
THE LORD SHALL FIGHT FOR YOU; THEREFORE
holde you
your peace."
Exodus
14:13-14
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| Once
students have aired these opinions (and it's important to let that
conversation run its course, perhaps even writing their objections on
the blackboard), your most important job is to REFOCUS the class
discussion. You can do that by emphasizing one simple fact—namely, that
many men and women, in both Europe and America (the Puritans among
them), wholeheartedly embraced the belief in predestination. Indeed,
they often referred to predestination as "a comfortable doctrine,"
meaning that it afforded them great solace and security. What's crucial
here, in other words, is that you encourage students to shift from
talking about why Puritanism doesn't appeal to them and into speculating
about the HISTORICAL QUESTION of WHY, indeed, it DID appeal to so many
early modern Europeans and British colonials. What you're striving for
here is to encourage your students to develop EMPATHY with people in the
distant past—to get them to IMAGINE the sort of historical
circumstances, the kind of social existence, that might have made
predestination a compelling (and reassuring) belief for large numbers of
men and women.
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