Early American Puritanism: The Language of its Religion

Puritanism was brought to America by only a small handful of dedicated ministers and parishioners, and even at its height, the numbers of people directly involved were never large. Nor was the religion, as practiced by the first pilgrims, long lived, for it could not survive the challenges of the New World and the Eighteenth Century, just as years earlier it was apparent to Bradford chat his religion could not withstand the pressures of life in Holland. Yet this religion, practiced by a few and powerful in New England for less than a century, has long fascinated Americans and taken a major place in the development of American thought, history and literature. Perhaps this is so because the early ministers and divines were men of fierce dedication or perhaps because the Puritans recorded themselves so thoroughly, culminating in Cotton Mather's famous history the Magnalia Christi Americana. Whatever the reason, we look back upon them as the foundation of American civilization, as the bedrock upon which our culture was raised and to which we return with frequency for some greater insight into what we are as a people. Such an examination is, of course, psychological as well as historical, for many of our questions concern the character of the Puritans and the nature of their religion. Some general work in the area of the psychology of the Puritans and Puritanism has been done. John Demos' A Little Commonwealth helped us understand the psychoynamics of the Puritan family and Puritan life. In Power and the Pulpit in Puritan New England, Emory Elliot examines the changes in Puritan sermons as they related to the changing psychological demands of the generations following the founders, and David Leverenz in his article “Freud and the American