Postexceptionalist Puritanism

Abstract

Since she came hither, she hath found her heart more dead and dull, etc., and being in much sickness when she came first into the land, she saw how vain a thing it was to put confidence in any creature.But yet it wrought some discontent in her own spirit, but [she] hath since witnessed the Lord's love to her.Sometime a heart to run and sometime to sit still in the Lord's way.-Elizabeth Olbon, "The Confessions" (1638-45)In the 1630s thousands of men, women, and childrenlike Elizabeth Olbonleft England's eastern shores for New England.These individuals were already migrants.They had, in all likelihood, moved at least once in their lives to escape religious persecution and to fulfill a religious ideal in a less encumbered setting.These religious migrants have become known as the Puritans, a group of people loosely defined through a shared and often zealous adherence to the reformed theological tradition, largely following the work of John Calvin.Beginning in the sixteenth century, the Puritan movement took root in specific regional locales throughout Germany, Scotland, the Low Countries, and England.Religious conflict simmered from the 1580s forward and intensified during the reign of Charles I (1625-49) as Puritans repeatedly called for further reform, often through appeals to the early church and antiquity.Religious and political tension and persecution caused groups of Puritans to leave England in search of new lands and communities.

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