In “Puritanism and Democracy: A Mixed Legacy,” Stephen Foster shows how, despite their assumptions of inequality, the government established in Massachusetts by the Puritans, evolved into something that was never intended; a government based on democracy. To be a Puritan was to be a member of “simply the most important body of people since the Apostles” (pg 23). Puritans felt it was their job, their divine duty, to establish a pure society based on God’s word. They would be “as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are upon” them (pg 24). Meaning they believed they would be this pure, godly society that the rest of the world would notice and strive to emulate. They loved their Mother England very much and were hoping to purge from her Catholicism, and their acceptability for things not of God. After they created a successful godly society, they believed they would be able to go back to England and re-create it there.

Puritans were somewhat intolerant and seemed to believe that if someone did not believe as they did, then that person’s opinion did not matter. When someone did try to voice an opinion that was different from theirs, then that

person was considered a heretic and was forced out of town. The Puritans did re-create some of the English ways and techniques as they saw necessary, but they did not re-create all of them. The Puritans believed heavily in building a society based on biblical principle derived from the Bible as interpreted by the elected few. Puritan social values called not just for “good bookkeeping, but for subordination, inequality, authority, unity, suppression of the individual will for the good of the whole” (pg 25). Basically, this amounted to the society agreeing that what they were trying to accomplish was more important than any one human being. Puritans willingly submitted themselves to the elected authority, whether it was religious, or political. Within the Puritan society, the Puritans were actually the minority and yet, in the beginning, this did not seem to matter. The non-puritan majority just accepted the Puritans’ authority.

The Puritans never intended to be considered democratic. What came out of the seventeenth century Puritanism does not in any way resemble what they were trying to achieve. The beginnings of democracy that we can now recognize were necessary to them because of their mistrust of themselves. Puritans never intended to leave the legacy of a democratic form of government, yet that was exactly what they did.

That contempt w

Some topics in this essay:
Webster’s Dictionary, Mother England, Massachusetts Puritans, Citty Hill, Stephen Foster, Inequality Equality, puritan society, godly society, church covenant, puritans intended, re-create puritans, whole” pg, society based, pg 25, religious political, god’s law,