In a congregational church, there is no prayer book, no formal creeds or belief statements, and the head of the church isn’t a Pope or the King, but Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures. Sometimes called non-separating Puritans, this less radical group shared a lot in common with the Separatists, particularly a form of worship and self-organization called “the congregational way.” So who, then, were the Puritans? While the Separatists believed that the only way to live according to Biblical precepts was to leave the Church of England entirely, the Puritans thought they could reform the church from within. The Puritans were members of a religious reform movement that arose within the Church of England in the late 16th century. With the help of the native Wampanoag people, the Pilgrims learned to fish and farm their new lands, resulting in the famous feast of Thanksgiving attended by natives and new arrivals in 1621. Roughly half of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower died that first winter from starvation, exposure and disease. The Pilgrims, led by Bradford, arrived in New England in December. READ MORE: Colonists at the First Thanksgiving Were Mostly Men Because the Women Had Perished Before 1800, the Separatists who landed at Plymouth Rock were known as the “first-comers” or “forefathers.” The first usage of capital-P “Pilgrim” appeared around 1800, when a group of citizens in Plymouth proposed the creation of a Pilgrim Society to organize the annual celebration of the founding of the Plymouth Colony in 1620. “So they left that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place near twelve years but they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.”Ĭurtin points out that Bradford didn’t name his community “Pilgrims,” and wouldn’t have heard the term in his lifetime. Writing years later in Of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford recounted the tearful farewell at the docks in Delftshaven, where a ship would take the Separatists to meet the Mayflower in London. Not all of the Separatists could make the cross-Atlantic journey, including their spiritual leader, Reverend John Robinson. They decided that the only way to live as true English Christians was to separate even further and establish their own colony in the New World. But while life in Holland was peaceful, it wasn’t English, and the Separatists feared that their children were losing their native culture. The Separatists first fled to the Netherlands, a wealthy maritime superpower that was far more religiously diverse and tolerant. Pilgrim leader William Bradford, later the Governor of Plymouth Colony, reads the Mayflower Compact on board the Mayflower off the coast of what became known as Massachusetts. “When it became impossible for them to continue in this way, they began to seek another place to live.” Pilgrims Look to the New World “Once they decided that the only way they could be true to their conscience was to leave the established church and secretly worship, they were hunted and persecuted, and many of them faced the loss of their homes and the loss of their livelihood,” says Donna Curtin, executive director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts. One group of farmers in Northern England, known disparagingly as the Separatists, began to worship in secret, knowing full well that it was treasonous. READ MORE: How Henry VIII’s Divorce Led to Reformation and the Church of England Who Were the Pilgrims?Įvery British citizen was expected to attend the Church of England, and those who didn’t were punished by the state. The newly created Church of England was similar to Catholicism in every way, except instead of the Pope carrying divine authority, it was the British Crown. The Reformation was slower to arrive to the British Isles, but England had its own split from the Roman Catholic church in 1534 when King Henry VIII wanted a divorce and the Pope wouldn’t grant it. They began to question why the Roman Catholic worship services were so different than those of the primitive Christian church. Thanks to the printing press, non-clergy had access to the Bible in their native languages for the first time.
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