puritanism

puritanism. In popular usage ‘puritan’ is a term of mild abuse for an overly strict religious killjoy. Historians use it more neutrally to describe a group of ‘godly’ or ‘precise’ laity and clergy in England in the 16th and early 17th centuries who were unhappy at the lack of progress towards establishing a firmly Protestant Church of England, saw the Elizabethan religious settlement as incomplete, and wanted to reform the Church of England along more ‘biblical’ lines. Many of the ‘godly’ had certain attitudes in common: a belief in a Calvinist doctrine of double‐predestination and in the primacy of grace and word in salvation, a concern to identify the presence of God's grace in oneself, sabbatarianism, a commitment to Presbyterian disciplinary structures, the rejection of ‘popish remnants’ and ‘superstitious practices’ in worship, and the apocalyptic belief that the pope was Antichrist. Many were persecuted in England during Elizabeth's reign, particularly those seeking to establish Presbyterianism within the Church of England.

The rigour of ecclesiastical discipline in England and Scotland led some puritans to seek refuge in Ireland, where their commitment to preaching and their fierce anti‐Catholicism were welcomed by an established church desperate for zealous clergy. The firm Calvinism of the first comprehensive confession of the Church of Ireland, the Irish Articles of 1615, made it still easier for the Irish church to accommodate puritanism. However, under Charles I, Archbishop William Laud and Lord Deputy Thomas Wentworth took firm measures to stamp out puritanism within the Irish church, imposing on it in 1634 the English Thirty‐Nine Articles and stricter disciplinary canons. This was followed by the desmissal of puritan ministers with Presbyterian sympathies.

Puritan influence reached its peak in Ireland following the execution of Charles in 1649, when, after the suppression of the church of Ireland, the various Protestant religious sects and groups were free to seek converts and influence. Following the Restoration puritans generally looked to creat separate non‐conforming churches: Presbyterian, Baptist, Quaker, and Congregational. ‘Puritanism’ thus becomes ‘nonconformity’. Nevertheless, the distinctly low‐church tenor or the established church during subsequent centuries can still be linked to its early tolerance to puritan ideas.

Bibliography

Ford, Alan , The Church of Ireland 1558–1641: A Puritan Church?, in Alan Ford, James McGuire, and Kenneth Milne (eds.), As by Law Established: The Church of Ireland since the Reformation (1995)

Alan Ford