PILGRIM AND PURITAN: A DELICATE DISTINCTION by Richard Howland Maxwell

Near the end of his term as president of the United States, Ronald Reagan delivered an address in
which he sought to call the American people back to the values of - in his words - "that old Pilgrim,
John Winthrop." Reagan's successor in office, George Bush - who, according to some, ought to have
known better because he is a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland - compounded the
historical error in his 1992 Thanksgiving proclamation by saying, "This Thanksgiving… let us renew
the solemn commitment that John Winthrop and his fellow Pilgrims made more than 100 years ago."
Mr. Bush not only had the Pilgrims and Puritans confused; he missed their dates by more than two
centuries! And a bit more recently, the November 1994 issue of the Daughters of the American
Revolution Magazine suggested that we include in our Thanksgiving that year "the Puritans in
Plymouth, Massachusetts from whom most of our traditions come." The same article later described
the "first Thanksgiving" as "the 1621 feast to celebrate the first long winter the Puritans survived in the
New World."
These illustrations of the apparent ignorance of many Americans concerning at least some parts of
our own history have produced among some of us Mayflower descendants an emotional reaction. We
become highly incensed if someone refers to the Plymouth settlers as "Puritans," and we become
downright angry at the thought that Winthrop might be called a "Pilgrim." The purpose of my
presentation today is to examine with as little prejudice as possible the shared history, similarities,
and differences between the two groups we commonly call Pilgrims and Puritans.
Let's start with some basic definitions. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a Puritan as "A
member of a group of English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries advocated strict
religious discipline along with simplification of the ceremonies and creeds of the Church of England."
The Puritans, in short, were people who wanted to reform or purify their church. A pilgrim (spelled
with a lower-case "p"), is defined in that same dictionary as "A religious devotee who journeys to a
shrine or sacred place, or one who embarks on a quest for something conceived of as sacred." A
pilgrim is one who makes a journey for a religious purpose.
In America, we've added specific references to those two terms. We apply the name Pilgrim (with a
capital "P") to the small band of English people who came here in 1620 on a vessel called the
Mayflower and settled in Plymouth. We use the name Puritan to refer to a much larger group of
English immigrants, led by John Winthrop, who came here ten years later and started Massachusetts
Bay Colony. Both groups were motivated by their religious convictions. Both groups wished to purify
their church by applying the principles of the Protestant Reformation.
In other words, the Pilgrims who settled Plymouth were puritans seeking to reform their church, and
the Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay were pilgrims (with that lower-case "p") who moved to a
whole new land because of their religious convictions. Now you know why I call it a "delicate
distinction!"
What the two groups have most in common is Puritanism, so it seems appropriate that we take a few
minutes to consider that movement: the issues which called it into being, its beliefs, and a bit of its
history. In a biography of William Bradford entitled Bradford of Plymouth, Bradford Smith offered a
concise description of the movement called Puritanism. He wrote:
Puritanism in England was essentially a movement within the established church for the
purifying of that church - for ministers godly and able to teach, for a simplifying of ritual, for a
return to the virtues of primitive Christianity. There was nothing revolutionary about the main
body of its doctrine. . Its innovating principle was in the idea that the Bible, rather than any
established religious hierarchy, was the final authority. Therefore every man, every individual,
had direct access to the word of God. It was the Puritan's aim to reconstruct and purify not only
the church, but individual conduct and all the institutions men live by.
The Protestant Reformation that had taken place in the sixteenth century in Germany, Switzerland,
and elsewhere on the European continent had not really touched England nearly a century later. By
the Act of Supremacy in 1534, King Henry VIII had taken control of the Church in his country away
from the Pope, but little else had changed. The Church of England was the official and only church in
England. Everybody belonged to it, whether they wanted to or not. Every resident of a given
community was automatically a member of the parish in that community. Worship services were read
from a Prayer Book. There was little or no teaching or preaching that went on in worship; therefore,
there was little need for a trained clergy or for the clergy to make any effort at preparation for worship.
Because it was an extension of the government, the English church was as subject to political abuse
and favoritism as any other governmental agency. One result was that the office of the parish priest
became a sinecure given as an expression of the favor of the hierarchy; many of the clergy were
assigned to parishes but never went near them! The church members had nothing to say about all of
this; they were expected to quietly accept whatever the hierarchy of the church thrust upon them. In
his biography of John Robinson entitled The Pilgrim Way, Robert Merrill Bartlett summarized the
problems which led to the rise of Puritanism in England as being "the tyranny of the hierarchy, the
indolence of the clergy, and the lethargy of the laity."
The initial impetus for the Puritan movement came from a highly enlightened area of England, and the
movement was noted from the beginning for its intellectual substance. Dr. Bartlett wrote of the
Puritans:
They were part of the intellectual and cultural ferment of the Elizabethan period. They were
close to the amenities of Lincoln, Boston, York, and within the arc of influence that emanated
from Cambridge [University]. . They were substantial thinkers, and their contribution was not
only religious and intellectual but of literary significance as well. . These Puritans marshaled a
mighty brain trust. Their movement was one of the intellectually best equipped in history; and
they prevailed in their reformation through the force of their logic expressed in dynamic
Elizabethan English.
As in any movement bent on major social change, Puritans differed among themselves about the
degree of change that was necessary and what it would take to effect that change. They were all
radical, of course; that's the nature of any movement that seeks change. But some were more radical
than others.
The least radical of the Puritans were committed to purifying their church from within, with as little
upheaval as possible. They were content with the idea of a state church and very aware that to
challenge that church could be construed as an act of treason. They therefore sought to bring about
within the structure of the Church of England the changes they most wanted: the Bible, not the church
hierarchy, to be the ultimate authority; membership by choice and therefore limited to those who had
at least some degree of religious motivation; and an active clergy who carried out some teaching as
well as purely liturgical functions.
Then there was a group who wished to retain the Anglican Church identity but reform its polity - its
form of organization - to give each local congregation control over its own affairs. These people were
a small minority in the Church in England and were known as congregationalists.
A major dividing line comes between the two groups that I've just described and the next: the
Separatists. Most simply stated, these were people who had given up on any possibility of real reform
within the Anglican Church and sought to separate from it and start their own churches. Again, there
were differing points of view among the Separatists. They are often lumped together under the name
Brownist because the first vocal Separatist was a minister named Robert Browne. But Browne was
extremely radical, and not all Separatists agreed with him either theologically or on church polity.
Most of the Separatists who stayed in England favored a structured form of church organization
called presbyterianism, which was already strong in Scotland. Those Separatists who came to New
England favored the congregational approach to church polity but rejected Browne's extremism.
And that brings us to these shores. The Pilgrims at Plymouth were Separatists; the Puritans at
Massachusetts Bay were not. As a matter of fact, one of the deepest concerns for Governor Winthrop
was the fear that, in New England, his followers would be drawn to the Separatism that was already
here because of the presence of Plymouth Colony. And that, in effect, is what ultimately happened.
Both Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth perceived themselves as purely English colonies, subject to
English law and loyal to the English monarch. But with England an ocean away, the colonists in New
England - just as much at Massachusetts as at Plymouth - had to make decisions and devise the
systems by which their society and its institutions would operate. Even though the Church of England
continued to be the official church in Massachusetts Bay Colony, there were no bishops or other
hierarchy present to sustain its bureaucracy. The act of moving from old to New England had brought
about a kind of de facto separatism, and in time the Congregational form of church polity became the
accepted way throughout the colony.
That system had undergone much development by the Plymouth group during their exile in Holland
and under the leadership of their beloved pastor, John Robinson. Of Robinson's thoughts on the
matter, Bartlett wrote:
Robinson drew a distinction between the faith and order of the Church of England. He could
accept its faith, but not its order. . Robinson believed that church polity was an essential part of
church doctrine. The order of the church was of basic importance. Its principles had been
instituted by Jesus and his early followers, and there was no place in this system for an
ecclesiastical hierarchy. The English parish system, which included people without regard to
character, was also alien to a communion of saints. . The church should be composed of those
who had separated themselves from the world, that is, those who were dedicated Christians.
They were "gathered" into organized companies for communion and mutual service. They
were bound through a covenant with God and as a consequence the power which Jesus gave
to the church was lodged in them. The congregation had the power to choose and ordain its
own minister, to choose its own officers, to receive and dismiss members.
Those hallmarks of the Congregational way came, in time, to be accepted in both colonies and were
to undergo further development as New England matured. Despite their differences concerning
separation from the Anglican Church, Puritanism was a shared commitment that did more to draw the
two New England colonies together than to force them apart. They did, however, have differences.
Some were subtle; most were significant.
An obvious difference between the two groups is their size. When the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth
in December of 1620, it brought 102 passengers, half of whom were to die in that first terrible winter.
Ten years later, no fewer than 17 ships, headed by the Arbella, made port at Salem, bringing with
them a thousand settlers for Massachusetts Bay. After another decade had gone by, the population of
Plymouth Colony was a mere 2,500, while that of Massachusetts Bay had risen to 20,000.
Another less-than-subtle difference between the two groups is the economic and social status of their
people. The Pilgrims at Plymouth were, for the most part, yeomen - working people. There were
some among them successful enough to merit the title "Master," but none who appended to his name
the title "Gent." There was not even an ordained minister in the group. The colonists of
Massachusetts Bay, by contrast, were better educated, more economically and socially successful,
and brought with them educated clergy to give leadership to both the church and the community.
William Bradford, the governor whose leadership shaped the Plymouth colony, had been a fustian
worker (fustian is a corduroy-like cloth); his counterpart in Massachusetts, John Winthrop, was a
trained lawyer who had worked in the English government service.
These differences in size and the social class of the members of the two colonies may be the reason
that many have confused the two groups and underestimated the importance of the smaller of them.
Indeed, the English historian Arthur Percival Newton wrote:
The Massachusetts migration was an event entirely without precedent in the modern world; Virginia,
Newfoundland, and Guiana had attracted merely the adventurers and the needy; the Mayflower
pilgrims, though later ages have glorified them, were too few in number, too humble in station, and
too far removed from the main currents of English life to be of importance; but now sober, well-to-do
men of middle age, to whom the spirit of adventure was entirely foreign, were contemplating a
transfer of themselves, their families, and their goods to new homes across the seas, there to found
not a colony, but a commonwealth.
The more subtle differences between our two groups of colonists were largely the product of the
years that the Pilgrims had spent in Holland. There, they had been influenced by Dutch ways of doing
things and by the deep and generous spirituality of their pastor, John Robinson. Under these
influences, the Pilgrims had further developed the Puritan concept of covenant, the voluntary but
sacred agreements by which they understood themselves bound together in church and community.
This highly developed idea of covenant tends to separate the Pilgrims of Plymouth from the Puritans
of Massachusetts Bay in at least three ways.
The first is in the colony's government. The members of both colonies had a voice in selecting their
leaders, but once that choice was made there was a subtle but significant difference in attitude about
those leaders.
Plymouth's Mayflower Compact was viewed by the members of that colony as a covenant. Those
who were elected to office were bound by the terms of the covenant just as were all members of the
community; they were in that sense equals. Philosophically, therefore, Plymouth's government came
close to being a true democracy; its elected officers derived their powers by the consent of the
governed within the terms of their shared covenant.
In Massachusetts Bay, a more English philosophy prevailed. The Governor, Deputy Governor,
Assistants, and other officers were chosen by the people. Once chosen, however, they understood
themselves to be ruling with divine authority. Edmund Morgan, in his book The Puritan Dilemma; The
Story of John Winthrop, put it this way: "Rulers, however selected, received their authority from God,
not from the people, and were accountable to God, not to the people."
Although it is not really an accurate use of the word, Massachusetts Bay has been described as a
theocracy , and that for two reasons. The colony was founded on motivations that were primarily
religious, so for the governing officials to be under divine authority meant they were also answerable
to God. In keeping with that point of view, the clergy - the most educated men in the community -
were often consulted and played a significant, though unofficial, role in the making of government
decisions.
The relationship of church and state is the second area in which the colonies differed significantly, if
subtly. Morgan describes the situation in Massachusetts Bay:
The relationship between church and state was one of the things that the Puritans knew they
must get right. They were certain that God had prescribed the terms of it, and they had thought
much about it before leaving England, where church and state were confounded at every level
from parish to Crown. In Massachusetts the Puritans drew a firmer dividing line between the
two than existed anywhere in Europe. The state was still responsible for supporting and
protecting the church: as guardian of the divine commission the state must punish heresy like
any other sin. And it did so, inflicting loss of civil and political rights as well as other penalties.
But in prosecuting heresy it did not operate as the agent of the churches. It formed its own
judgments with the aid of a jury or in the General Court, where the representatives of the
people sat in judgment with the magistrates. The church had no authority in the government
and the government was particularly careful not to allow the actions of any church to affect civil
and political rights. In England excommunication carried heavy civil disabilities, in
Massachusetts none. The right to vote and hold office was not revoked by loss of church
membership.
Though the clergy had no political authority of any kind, they did enjoy a very powerful indirect
influence. They were highly respected by their congregations, and when unpopular measures had to
be adopted, the magistrates counted on their assistance in reconciling people to the necessity of
obedience. When a difficult decision had to be made, the magistrates frequently consulted the
ministers, who were learned men and wise in the laws of God. In this way, though they were barred
from the exercise of authority, a back door was left open through which they could influence state
policy.
At Plymouth, church and state were even more markedly separated . Like all Puritans, both groups
held that the Bible - as opposed to church leaders or their pronouncements - is the final authority. In
Plymouth, they interpreted that to include the idea that what Scripture does not specifically claim as a
religious function remains a civil one. The best-known result of this thinking was the belief in
Plymouth that marriage was a civil rite, not a religious one. Governor Bradford himself explained that
marriage is "a civill thing, upon which many questions aboute inheritances doe depende, with other
things most proper to their cognizans… and no wher found in the gospell to be layed on the ministers
as a part of their office." Bradford's biographer summarized the Pilgrim attitude this way:
Whatever the elders had planned at Leyden, it is clear that Bradford and the younger
generation wanted to create, under God and His guidance, a Christian commonwealth in which
Scripture should be the guide but with civil and religious functions clearly separated.
The third area in which I perceive a significant difference between the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the
Puritans of Massachusetts Bay has to do with attitude. There was about the members of the Bay
colony an arrogance which they brought with them from England. Using a kinder vocabulary, Edmund
Morgan described it as "that unabashed assumption of superiority which was to carry English rule
around the world." It's expressed in the belief that, even though they may have been chosen by the
people, the autocratic leaders in Massachusetts ruled by divine right. And it's seen in the way that
these colonists related to others, including members of other English colonies as well as the Native
Americans.
This difference in attitude is illustrated in an incident described by Robert Bartlett:
In 1635 members of Pastor John Warham's church in Dorchester decided to move to the
Connecticut River. They visited the Plimoth trading post at Windsor that was in charge of
Jonathan Brewster. He extended them hospitality and helped them secure canoes and guides
to explore the area. He was shocked when they announced that they were taking over
Plimoth's land and building on it. Brewster pointed out that the Pilgrims had bought the land
from the Indians in order to establish their fur trade, and that thousands of acres were available
for their Dorchester colony. But the newcomers stuck to their purpose, assured that providence
had so willed it. During these confrontations two shallops of Dorchester settlers set out from
Boston for the Connecticut post. Their boats were wrecked on Brown's Island in Plimoth Bay.
Plimothians rushed to the scene and gathered in the victims and their possessions. A third
boat that was carrying cargo to the Windsor site for the migrants was blown ashore off
Sandwich. Once again the people of Plimoth salvaged the goods and turned them over to the
owners. Obviously the Dorchester colonists must have been somewhat chagrined by these
demonstrations of brotherliness. In due time, as they reflected upon their haste and avarice,
they decided to forego their claim on the Pilgrims' land and to move on into the wilderness.
There are differences between the two groups of English immigrants who settled the area in which
we now meet. Undoubtedly, the exile, the terrifying journey on the Mayflower, and the suffering in the
first winter at Plymouth had much to do with the gentler attitude of the Pilgrims. So also had their
years of living in Holland's more tolerant society and the influence on them of one deeply spiritual
man, John Robinson.
But our Pilgrims and Puritans also had many similarities. They had a shared history and experience of
old England. They shared a commitment to God and the Biblical revelation so strong that, because of
it, both groups were willing to cross an ocean and set up new homes on an unknown continent. As
time went on, the two colonies came to depend more and more upon one another until finally both the
boundary between their lands and the delicate distinction between their cultures faded into obscurity.
370-plus years later, we give thanks to God for both groups.