In New England, Puritans were no longer the persecuted minority they had been in their homeland. In America, they had the opportunity to form communities structured around their own spiritual principles—without interference from powerful church leaders in England. For example, the reliance on priests and bishops to negotiate a person's spiritual relationship with God was a complaint that the Puritans had about the Church of England. In New England, all children were taught to read and write so that they could study the Bible and not rely on others to know God. The Puritans' emphasis on education led to the founding of institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth.
Inevitably, communities of educated people produce new ideas—ideas that may conflict with those of the majority, just as the Puritans' beliefs conflicted with the majority of England's Christians. In the New World, strictly held spiritual beliefs and practices had guided the establishment of Puritan settlements and served as their rule of law. When new ideas began to emerge, something had to give or go away—would it be the power of the Puritan majority or the influence of nonconforming individuals?
In this lesson, you will learn about the transformation of the Puritan sensibility, or way of seeing the world. Who challenged the old ways? How were those dissenters dealt with? Who attempted to reawaken the Puritan spirit that had guided the original Pilgrims to America?
Question
In addition to the value placed on education, what other values did the Puritans contribute to the American sensibility?
Puritans also held town meetings, gatherings where everyone in the community had a right to be heard, a tenet of democracy still valued in America today.
