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What led the puritans to separate from the Church of England?


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I am reading about the Mayflower expedition and was wondering what specifically the puritans disagreed with? I am just completely amazed at how brave they were to take this voyage and wondered a little about their ideas and motivation. I have always understood they wanted to worship in their own way etc but what did that really mean in the early 1600's?

Thanks

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For the puritans specifically,

http://www.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/puritans.html

 

It's because they wanted things done a different way--they felt the Church wasn't following biblical commands strongly enough.

 

As for the founding of our country--freedom of religion, to practice as we saw fit. NOT to be persecuted for practicing a certain way.

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We also happen to be studying this at the moment. The Joy Hakim book Story of US Making the Thirteen colonies has an excellent section on it. Basically Separatist were a more extreme Puritan. Puritans did not want to leave the Church of England they just wanted to clean it up (more onthat in a minute) The Separatists left the Church of England. Now what it the Puritans not like. When Henry the VIII started the Church of England he kept the ceremonies, symbols and pagentry of the Roman Church. The Puritans didn't like it. My ds just wrote a report on the Puritans and he found lots of incorrect information about them. This seems to be a confusing topic in history.

Separatists settled Plymouth colony. The Puritans came later and the Seperatist did not want them in the colony so the Puritans settled in the area that is now Boston.

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I am reading about the Mayflower expedition and was wondering what specifically the puritans disagreed with? I am just completely amazed at how brave they were to take this voyage and wondered a little about their ideas and motivation. I have always understood they wanted to worship in their own way etc but what did that really mean in the early 1600's?

Thanks

 

Garrison Keilor says that they came over in search of greater restrictions than were permissible under English law. :D

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here's a website about the Pilgrims in Leiden, the Netherlands, where they went before going to Plymouth.

 

http://www.pilgrimhall.org/LeidenMuseum.htm

 

I hope I linked properly. We went there last year when we were studying Pilgrims and met the man who runs it, who is very very knowledgeable about the Pilgrims as well as being interesting and helpful. The website has some interesting links.

 

Another random fact -- our church in Amsterdam (now a Church of Scotland) was I believe the first church where the Pilgrims worshipped when they came to the Netherlands from England. We have a stained glass window depicting the Pilgrims in the church. Just a random fact.

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