Who Were the Puritans and Does it Matter

 

Among the nooks and crannies where people argue about what seem to others as tiny issues is a debate about the Puritans. The debate seems to be about whether we today should refer to them with great respect or with ridicule. If the Puritans were like any other group of humans they had many different views, ideas and disagreements. In general, it seems like the original settlers came here for a variety of reasons, religious, secular and economic. They brought with them knowledge about how things were run where they came from and tried to put some of it in place on this continent. 

The Puritans were a different group from the Pilgrims. The former wanting to purify the Church of England and the latter wanting to separate from it. Controversies in Christianity, the more things change the more they stay the same. If you were a nonbeliever at the time, or, an American Indian for that matter, listening to the two groups argue religion must have made eyes roll.

Records of these groups comes from the period 1600 and 1650. It was not until about 125 years later the Constitution was written which did not include Christianity as the national religion. I always think of the "Founding Fathers" as those around the time of the Constitution and George Washington. Yet, the particular set of original white people who started moving natives off of their land were mostly Christians of one ilk or another. 

I, myself, don't think it matters whether we admire the Puritans and Pilgrims or whether we laugh at them. Obviously, they took the dangerous voyage here voluntarily. They did this for their own personal and self serving reasons. 

That white people came here has benefited we who are white people. That they were heroes or people to be admired I'm not so sure.