Excerpt from Understanding The Scarlet Letter by Claudia Durst Johnson
(pp. 29-35)

Background and History

Before we can proceed to analysis of the place of the Puritans in The Scarlet Letter, some fundamental definitions need to be established. Who exactly were the Puritans? When did their religion develop? What relationship do they have with other religious sects? Why did they come to the New World? What course did Puritanism follow in the New World? Why did Puritanism disappear? (29-30)

It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and wider range than for centuries before.

The Scarlet Letter, 158

To understand the origins of Puritanism and its position with regard to other Christian religions, let us look at a simple diagram:

We see from this that the Puritans are classified in the larger sense as Christian, in a narrower sense as Protestant, and in a still more specialized sense as Calvinist. They regarded Catholics as their chief opponents, but also believed that high church Anglicans, Methodists (who did not come to the fore until late in the seventeenth century), Baptists, and Quakers were wrong in their religious beliefs. Their opposition to these last sects was so vehement that they persecuted them and refused to allow the establishment of their churches in Massachusetts Bay until 1665, when at last a Baptist congregation was tolerated---a full thirty-five years after the Puritans came to Boston. Presbyterians and Congregationalists are likely the chief descendents of the old Puritanism, which had disipated by the middle of the eighteenth century (30-31).

Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings.

The Scarlet Letter, 159

How did Puritanism develop? To answer this we need to look back many years before Puritanism appeared, to the fifteenth century, when most nations had official religions and tolerated no others. In the late Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church dominated all of western and northern Europe and most of the Christian world, seeing itself as the "one universal church." It was a tight but increasingly corrupt and vulnerable world, centered in Rome under the leadership of the pope, filled with conflict and seething with social, economic, and newly discovered national unrest.

Then, in 1517, a German monk, Martin Luther, nailed to the church door at the University of Wittenberg a list of ninety-five questions, or challenges---the famous ninety-five theses---which he intended only as subjects for debate (in accordance with the Custom of the time). But so ripe were the times and so widespred the discontent that within months all of Europe was inflamed; soon it was in arms. Central to Luther's challenges (and to the entire Protestant Reformation) was the idea that every man was own priest---a belief that, if followed to its logical conclusion would render unnecessary priests, bishops, the papacy, and the entire church hierarchy. (Priests, in fact, according to Luther should be spiritual guides to help show the way, not formal leaders or intercessors. ) Key also for Luther was the idea that men should be, or are, justified before God by an inner faith---"justification by faith"---not by good works or any outward show of virtue.

At about the same time in Zurich, Switzerland, a reformer named Zwingli preached much the same reforms for the same reasons until he was killed in one of the earliest bloody battles fought between Protestants and Catholics. In Geneva a third reformer, John Calvin, preached another form of Protestantism, which swept through Germany, France, and the Lowlands, and across the Channel to England (31).

In England the Reformation, fused with all these elements, took a very peculiar turn. The English king, Henry VIII (who in fact privately retained his basic Catholic beliefs to the very last), after winning the accolade "Defender of the Faith" from the pope for his vigorous attack on Luther, formally broke with the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 over the matter of divorce and thus formed the Church of England (or Anglican Church) with himself as head (32).

The growth of the many Christian denominations known as Protestants derives from this rebellion by Luther, through one route or another. These denominations include various "Reformed" churches; Presbyterians; Methodists; Baptists; Lutherans; Episcopalians; and others. The Puritans, Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers were all classified as "dissidents," rebels against the main Catholic, Lutheran, or Anglican churches.

Out of this mix of elements came the Puritans---one of a number of groups preaching reformation and opposing certain practices and beliefs of the Church of England. With the English government---and the English church---feeling harassed on all sides, and particularly sensing real danger from its chief rivals, France and Spain, and with the Puritans feeling seriously limited and threatened in a hostile environment, the situation became intense. English playwrights ridiculed, and the English government forcibly attempted to smother, the newly formed and strangely dressed sect. The Puritans, striving to be "pure" and pristine in their daily lives, became true social oddities.

In 1581 the first Congregational (Puritan) Church was established at Southwark in London, England. One branch of Puritans was called Separatists because they wanted to pull away from the established Anglican Church to form a separate church. Another branch of Puritans was comprised of non-Separatists who wanted to reform the Protestant church, not form a new sect (32).

The Puritan Move to the New World

In 1620 the English monarchy, as eager to be rid of the Puritans as the Puritans were to be rid of the king, granted a group of Puritan Separatists a charter to make a settlement in the English colonies in the area that is now New Jersey and New York. There were economic incentives for the Puritan move to the New World, including economic upheaval in Europe and the prospect of making a profit in America, but their chief incentive was religious: they would be able to practice their religion without impediment. In late fall some 103 settlers, most of them Englishmen who had lived in the Netherlands for a time, sailed on the Mayflower and arrived in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, although they had been heading for an area a good deal south of New England. Unlike an earlier, purely commercial English venture in Virginia, the Plymouth Plantation group did survive, but by the end of the first year, the harsh conditions had taken the lives of over half of the people.

In 1628, provoked by King Charles I's increasing intolerance, a group of non-Separatist Puritans formed a business corporation, the Massachusetts Bay Company, for settlement of the New World. Their group arrived on Cape Ann, just north and east of what is now Boston, where the Reverend William Blackston (mentioned in The Scarlet Letter) had already settled in 1625 or 1626. Unlike the settlements financed by the Spanish crown in the New World, which were governed from Spain, the English colonies were largely run by the corporations that financed them. Most of these companies were located in Europe, but the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Company relocated the entire corporation from London to Massachusetts, giving it greater independence from the English crown. By 1630, 1,000 English settlers, largely Puritan and non-Separatist, had immigrated to the Boston area. By 1643 there were some 20,000 immigrants in the general area of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, making Boston the largest and most prosperous town in America (33).

The Struggle Against England

After the kings of Great Britain had assumed the right of appointing the colonial governors, the measures of the latter seldom met with the ready and general approbation, which had been paid to those of their predecessors, under the original charters. ...The annals of Massachusetts Bay will inform us, that of six governors, in the space of about forty years from the surrender of the old charter, under James II., two were imprisoned by popular insurrection.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, "My Kinsman, Major Molineux"

In 1642 the monarchy had been deposed by a Puritan commoner named Oliver Cromwell who ruled England until his death in 1658. During this time, the English colonies in America governed themselves without serious interference from the mother country. By 1660 a king, Charles II, was restored to the English throne, and the new royal government became acutely aware that the American colonies, which had been allowed to develop pretty much on their own, could be profitable to the mother country. In 1662, to protect English trade, Parliament passed the Navigation Acts, which prevented the colonies from trading freely with Europe. These so- called "abominable" acts remained in force until 1696. In 1685 King James II abolished self-government in the northern colonies, appointing royal governors in place of the governors elected by the people. Through his royal governors, the king had veto power over the colonial legislature. He also enforced the Navigation Acts. When James was deposed and William and Mary came to the throne in 1688, the Bostonians in Massachusetts Bay arrested the royal governor, Edmund Andros, and sent him packing back to England. (See Hawthorne's short story based on this incident, "My Kinsman, Major Molineux") (34).

For close to eighty years the Puritans held absolute power in New England. They contributed positively to the eventual breaking away from English control, the development of education, and the development of sea trade, urban business, farming, and, eventually, manufacturing. Our present political system derives from the legislative model they originally set up, which had fixed dates for regular elections by the voting populace, and which disregarded inherited status. Despite this, Puritan government was scarcely what could be called democratic: only males who owned land could vote; only members of the established church could vote. In addition, religious doctrine became civil law, and the rule of the leaders was absolute. While the whole of New England was largely Puritan, it is those who settled in and around Boston who are credited with such great influence on American culture and of whom Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote (34-35).

The Demise of Puritanism

And what hast thou to do with these iron men, and their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too long already.

The Scarlet Letter, 188

Toward the close of the seventeenth century, Puritanism, as it had been defined during the early days of settlement, began coming apart for a number of reasons. In 1692 a new charter, forced on Massachusetts Bay by the crown, lessened the political power of the clergy. Common citizens, previously accustomed merely to follow, began to see the clergy as overeducated, elitist, and out of touch with reality, as well as increasingly tyrannical. Moreover, the fierce cruelty and intolerance of the Puritan leaders in America caused them to lose the support of Puritans in England. At the same time, with New England merchants prospering from trade, congregations began to be more concerned with worldly matters than with the state of the soul and heaven and hell, thus lessening Puritanism's spiritual sway. Those who moved west, away from the New England Puritan community, enjoyed freedom from Puritan oppression, so converts were few and Puritanism remained confined to New England (35).

Claudia Durst Johnson,  Understanding the Scarlet Letter: a Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents, Greenwood Press, c. 1995