Essay On Roger Williams And Anne Hutchinson Individualism
Zachary May 979-292-5141
English 2327
Mid-Term Exam Essays
Essay 1
Puritans were passionate reformers seeking to bring the Church of England to a state of purity in comparison with Christianity at the time of Christ and decided to form their own religious colonies in America. They considered religion to be a complex and highly intellectual affair. Thus, leaders were highly trained scholars with authoritarian positions that developed a “built-in hierarchism” (http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7eCAP/PURITAN/purhist.html#pil, 3). Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson believed and preached “Individualisme”
Puritan ideas further than they were meant to go in the context of the colony’s hierarchal society (http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7eCAP/PURITAN/purhist.html#pil, …show more content…
Hutchinson was considered “an outbreak of dangerous individualism” with her Quaker idea of “inner light” which allowed everyone direct access to God (http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7eCAP/PURITAN/purhist.html#pil, 5). This was in direct conflict with the Puritan belief that “the Bible was the Lord’s revealed word, and only through it does He directly communicate to human beings” http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7eCAP/PURITAN/purhist.html#pil, 5). At the church of Boston, she was thought to have brought two errors with …show more content…
This first incident most likely led Massachusetts’s authorities to question William’s religious beliefs. Williams held four extreme positions that both angered and threatened the leaders of the colony. His ideas destabilized the theocracy at the center of the Bay Colony government. First, he denied Massachusetts a proper land title “arguing that King Charles I could not bestow a title to something that belonged to the natives (NAAL, 174). Second, he argued, “No unregenerate person could be required either to pray in churches or to swear on oath in a court of law” (NAAL, 174). Third, that “Massachusetts Bay Colony Ministers should not only separate from the Church of England but repent that they had served it” (NAAL, 174). Lastly, “Civil authority was limited to civil matters and that magistrates had no jurisdiction over the soul” (NAAL, 174). Williams desired to separate church and state in order to “keep the holy and pure religion of Jesus Christ from contamination by the slightest taint of earthly support” (NAAL, 174). A warrant was issued for Williams because he had drawn twenty people to his support and they planned to erect a plantation around the Narragansett Bay “whence the infection would easily spread” into the churches (NAAL, 160). However, when they came to apprehend him he had already
English 2327
Mid-Term Exam Essays
Essay 1
Puritans were passionate reformers seeking to bring the Church of England to a state of purity in comparison with Christianity at the time of Christ and decided to form their own religious colonies in America. They considered religion to be a complex and highly intellectual affair. Thus, leaders were highly trained scholars with authoritarian positions that developed a “built-in hierarchism” (http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7eCAP/PURITAN/purhist.html#pil, 3). Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson believed and preached “Individualisme”
Puritan ideas further than they were meant to go in the context of the colony’s hierarchal society (http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7eCAP/PURITAN/purhist.html#pil, …show more content…
Hutchinson was considered “an outbreak of dangerous individualism” with her Quaker idea of “inner light” which allowed everyone direct access to God (http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7eCAP/PURITAN/purhist.html#pil, 5). This was in direct conflict with the Puritan belief that “the Bible was the Lord’s revealed word, and only through it does He directly communicate to human beings” http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7eCAP/PURITAN/purhist.html#pil, 5). At the church of Boston, she was thought to have brought two errors with …show more content…
This first incident most likely led Massachusetts’s authorities to question William’s religious beliefs. Williams held four extreme positions that both angered and threatened the leaders of the colony. His ideas destabilized the theocracy at the center of the Bay Colony government. First, he denied Massachusetts a proper land title “arguing that King Charles I could not bestow a title to something that belonged to the natives (NAAL, 174). Second, he argued, “No unregenerate person could be required either to pray in churches or to swear on oath in a court of law” (NAAL, 174). Third, that “Massachusetts Bay Colony Ministers should not only separate from the Church of England but repent that they had served it” (NAAL, 174). Lastly, “Civil authority was limited to civil matters and that magistrates had no jurisdiction over the soul” (NAAL, 174). Williams desired to separate church and state in order to “keep the holy and pure religion of Jesus Christ from contamination by the slightest taint of earthly support” (NAAL, 174). A warrant was issued for Williams because he had drawn twenty people to his support and they planned to erect a plantation around the Narragansett Bay “whence the infection would easily spread” into the churches (NAAL, 160). However, when they came to apprehend him he had already