Fundamental Religious Orientation of the New England and Southern Colonies, and Its Impact on General Value Systems.

Fundamental religious orientation of the New England and Southern colonies, and its impact on general value systems.
Fundamental religious orientation in Europe was primarily and predominately the Roman Catholic Church, until a German Roman Catholic monk, Martin Luther, nailed his written, 95 Theses on the door of the castle church in Willenberg Germany, in 1517. This began the Protestant Reformation. Another Protestant Church break-away from the Roman Catholic Church began when King Henry VIII of England persuaded the Parliament of his country to pass the Act of Supremacy, making him the head of the Church of England. Originally, King Henry VIII was Roman Catholic, until he wanted to divorce his wife Catherine. Pope Clement VII refused to grant him a divorce, so with his new power as the head of the Church of England granted, King Henry VIII divorced his wife using his own authority. Pope Clement VII excommunicated King Henry VII from the Catholic Church. In 1534, the Church of England became the official.
The Church of England was a state church, so everyone in England had to pay taxes for it. Protestant “isms” or beliefs began to flourish. Calvanism, founded by John Calvin lead to religious Puritanism, Presbyterianism and the Dutch Reform Church. The English Puritans were members of the radical Protestant sect that followed the teachings of John Calvin. They wanted their own Congregational churches, and they wanted to elect their own ministers. The Church of England refused their requests. The Church of England began to persecute the Puritans. They were no longer allowed admittance to the Universities in England. The Puritans wanted to “purify” the Church of England and have them revert back to the days of the Acts of the Apostles. They disapproved of secular amusements like dancing and card playing, and also they did not approve of many things being used within the Church of England, i.e. silk and satin vestments, incense, elaborate polyphonic music, silver or gold chalices. They did not like the ways of the Church of England, and their persecution escalated with the arrests of their ministers. They came to the New World in 1628 seeking religious freedom, and formed the Massachusetts Bay Colony with settlements arriving intensively between the 1630s and 1640s. Ironically, as discussed earlier, the Puritans would be guilty of a persecution of their own kind in the New World. Anyone not conforming to the Puritan way in America was fined, banished from their colony, whipped or even imprisoned. Their core religious belief was predestination. When God created man, he created man to go to either heaven, or to hell. Those who went to heaven were born with the Spirit of God within them. Those who were not born with His Spirit, were destined for hell—no matter what their deeds on earth were. Probably god predestined one to go to heaven. They had a covenant—an agreement—with God. They were the chosen people. It should be their will to do everything possible to obey God, and He will take them to heaven. Native Americans were all going to hell in a hand-basket. In the Puritan belief, “God meant for the Puritan to take over Indian lands as a reward for their piety and hard work. (Tindall 45). They believed they had a mission to establish a new city of God, as stated in the Bible, and they believed in congregationalism, whereby each individual church is independent to one another. They also believed in a ministry, whereby everyone was morally equal; but the better educated ministers would be better able to interpret the Bible. Only men could be ministers. The Bible was the ultimate authority. The Puritans valued obedience. Although they believed in personal interpretation of the Bible, one’s interpretation better be correct, or else they would be persecuted. Conflicts arose in the Puritan religion. Roger Williams was a Puritan minister who believed they needed to treat the Indians better, and that they needed to separate completely from the Church of England. He was thrown out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He founded Rhode Island. Ann Hutchinson was another victim of the Puritans. She thought that the conscious was the ultimate authority, not the Bible. She also believed that people could communicate directly with God—without the help of male ministers or the Bible. In 1637 Massachusetts Bay colony, her beliefs were against the law—especially for women. She too was banished.
Also in New England, prior to the arrival of the Puritans, came the Pilgrims. They too were being persecuted by the Church of England. So much so, that Pilgrims left England in 1607 and headed for Holland. In 1608 they established a congregation in Leyden, Holland. But, unpleased with only receiving unskilled labor jobs due to discrimination, and not happy that their children were being influenced by Dutch culture and language, the Pilgrims left Holland and headed for America. 102 men, women and children led by William Bradford filled the Mayflower. In 1620, the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. The pilgrims officially separated from the Church of England, unlike the Puritans who kept their ties with the mother land. The pilgrims did not want to purify the Church of England, although they did believe in predestination. “Prior to their departing of ship, William Bradford recorded the first document of colonial self-governance: The Mayflower Compact. This compact was a harbinger of the Declaration of Independence to come a century and a half later.” (Elson 206). This compact also became the foundation of a distinctive American trait: consensual government. “The Pilgrims who established Plymouth Colony were bent not on finding gold or making a fortune but on building a Christian commonwealth.” (Tindall 34). Their values were spiritual.
Much later, in 1682, the Quakers came to Pennsylvania, under the leadership of William Penn. Women, as well as men were active in this religious life. The Quakers paved the way for other religions to migrate to America, because the Quakers believed that everyone was morally equal, and everyone was a brother or a sister. The Quakers did not have ministers. Their rituals were called “meetings” and had no prescribed services. The Quakers were opposed to violence—except for a few, i.e. Nathanial Green fought in the Revolutionary War, even though he was a Quaker.
There is not much to say about the colonial South as far as religion. The colonists came from England, and abided by the Church of England. Unlike their neighbors in the North, the church did not play a dominate role in their area. The Southern colonists mostly had secular values, not religious ones.