The puritan dilemma the story of john winthrop ebook

Places Massachusetts. Times Colonial period, ca. Edition Notes Includes bibliographical references p. Genre Biography. Classifications Dewey Decimal Class W79 M66 , F W79M66 Community Reviews 0 Feedback? Loading Related Books. August 20, Edited by ImportBot. August 19, February 14, December 1, Edited by Tom Morris. December 9, Browse all BookRags Study Guides. All rights reserved. Toggle navigation. Sign Up. Sign In. View the Study Pack. View the Lesson Plans.

Plot Summary. Chapter 1, The Taming of the Heart. Chapter 2, Evil and Declining Times. Chapter 3, A Shelter and a Hiding Place. Chapter 4, The Way to a New England. Chapter 5, Survival. Chapter 6, A Special Commission. Chapter 7, A Due Form of Government. Chapter 8, Leniency Rebuked. Chapter 9, Separatism Unleashed. Chapter 10, Seventeenth-Century Nihilism.

Feb 18, Michael Canoeist rated it really liked it. The Puritan Dilemma was: how to live in the world while trying to live up to the ideals they found in the Bible. That conflict presented a constant stream of issues to understand and resolve, including whether to leave England and abandon the church they sought to purify; how to set up a new world in Massachusetts; and, not least, how to cope with Anne Hutchinson!

John Winthrop's thoughtfulness and decency propelled him, mostly against his wishes, into the leadership of the group of Puritans who The Puritan Dilemma was: how to live in the world while trying to live up to the ideals they found in the Bible. John Winthrop's thoughtfulness and decency propelled him, mostly against his wishes, into the leadership of the group of Puritans who were creating and seeking a royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was elected governor of the colony numerous times, and also voted out a few times, too.

The Puritans' efforts to shape their colony mirror so many of the larger national issues that were to arise years later, some of which continue to this day. I was reminded of some things I had forgotten, and learned many new things including what a loon Roger Williams was from this year-old book, parts of which I subjected my family to hearing read aloud.

We learn of some very fine men in the right place at the right time, including John Cotton and Nathaniel Ward. Ward, after the colony had been operating a couple years, wrote up the Puritans' general code and, though not a big fan of popular democracy, insisted that citizens of the colony "not be denyed their proper and lawfull liberties. Though this code had some strict punishments, author Edmund Morgan also notes its protections for animals, servants, children and women. And for those cast out of a church -- while that might seem one of the highest offenses a Puritan could commit, no citizen of the Colony could for that reason lose any aspect of his citizenship and its rights, according to the code.

When we pass a New England village green, and look at one of those peaceful, white clapboard Congregational churches, it can be hard to imagine it once holding a congregation of rabid, intolerant Puritans. And for a good reason. As Morgan reminds us, that stereotyped impression of these early American settlers is far from an accurate depiction.

View 2 comments. May 18, Rachel rated it it was amazing. This book is outdated in the sense that Morgan approaches his topic differently than how we would today. Still, the book is very readable and gives one a very clear sense of why the Puritans were moving to New England and what the role of Winthrop, who was governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony off and on for many years, was in Massachusetts life.

Especially, Edmund simply and matter-of-factly explains the political and theological disputes and schisms that roiled England and New Englan This book is outdated in the sense that Morgan approaches his topic differently than how we would today.

Especially, Edmund simply and matter-of-factly explains the political and theological disputes and schisms that roiled England and New England in the s. Why are these developments of interest to us today? They are relevant because we still agonize about local and centralized forms of government, democratic and paternalistic forms of governance, strict and flexible laws, tolerance and intolerance of those with different beliefs.

We have these debates not only in national and local elections or in different religious institutions but also in all realms of life--our schools and universities, our workplaces, our political and social organizations outside of the electoral process, and so on.

Feb 09, Tim rated it really liked it. An interesting look at the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the remarkable character who lead it for most of its first couple decades. They were amazing in some respects, misguided in others, b An interesting look at the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the remarkable character who lead it for most of its first couple decades.

They were amazing in some respects, misguided in others, but they got New England going, along with Harvard, Yale and a powerful commitment to literacy and education. They also started representative government in the New World, at least in the northern British colonies, and they had a leader of rare abilities in Winthrop. This was a nice easy read from the historian who was effectively the czar of Puritan history during the s.

It's a biography of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, but Edmund Morgan uses the life of Winthrop to ask larger questions about the leadership of Massachusetts Bay and the decisions they faced. The greatest question, which Morgan calls the "Puritan Dilemma," was one regarding the extent to which quasi-theocratic authorities must retreat from the world in order t This was a nice easy read from the historian who was effectively the czar of Puritan history during the s.

The greatest question, which Morgan calls the "Puritan Dilemma," was one regarding the extent to which quasi-theocratic authorities must retreat from the world in order to create their "city upon a hill.

The greatest challenge that John Winthrop faced was that of "separatism. Not so, although there was a strong impulse within congregational churches to separate from the Church of England's structure. He was more than willing to admit that the Church faced major issues, but he found it more useful to confront these issues through reform and gradual transformation than through secession. Some other interesting things that I learned in this book: - Most colonial charters gave a specific location for the seat of the colonial company to meet--the Massachusetts Bay Colony's did not, and Puritans basically turned Massachusetts into a self-governing structure by moving the seat across the Atlantic, unlike virtually every other English colony.

It is no wonder that Winthrop and other administrators in Massachusetts felt threatened by her but also, she should have never been exiled--although I would never agree with her politico-religious views, her intellectual strength leaves much to be admired.

This was sort of a "aha! Boston, England is not a very recognizable town to most of us outside of England, so I had wondered how the founders of the American city selected its name. Well, as residents of Lincolnshire, they were well acquainted with Boston. When I think "Puritans," the imagery I see is more material that comes out of Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter , who wrote his work two centuries after the founding of Massachusetts Bay, or Arthur Miller The Crucible , who wrote three centuries after, then anything historically rooted.

My mind on the Puritans began to shift a bit after reading Hope Leslie: or, Early Times in the Massachusetts , which was written shortly before Hawthorne became prominent, but here Morgan has changed my mind further. While not a comprehensive treatment of the Puritans, this is a good book for getting a sense of the period at hand.

Aug 13, Ram rated it really liked it. This is essentially beach reading, if you like reading about some of our Anglo forebears who were so uptight they squeaked when they walked Truly, the Puritans were terrible nags, but at least they annoyed themselves as much as others.

Still, one can appreciate their dilemma for what it was: self-inflicted psychic torment and impossibly convoluted. Aug 27, Jonathan rated it liked it Shelves: teaching-and-grading , colonial-america. A nice little introduction to the earliest years of English settlement in Massachusetts. However, Morgan tries too hard to make the Puritans, especially John Winthrop, attractive to the modern reader.

He actually manages very well; I never expected to need to ask my students to take a more critical attitude toward the Puritans. Apr 23, Peter rated it it was amazing Shelves: american-history , american-writers , history , political-history , cultural-history , 17th-century , christianity , protestantism , early-modern-history , s. In many respects, my picture of the former is a product of the latter, and they had some important structural elements in common.

Both were institution-builders; both have had oversized impacts on the baseline of American thought and cultural life. Both projected a sort of high-mindedness they meant to catch on with a larger mass of non-intellectuals, but were motivated at least in part by the same base motives as everyone else. Neither are particularly cool to talk about these days.

I feel stuck with them, in some strange ways- I guess as a New Englander and a student of American history, culture, and institutions, I feel kinship with them. This, despite belonging to groups that can be seen as the opposite of both: the descendant of Catholic and Jewish immigrants on the one hand, and an engaged leftist scholar who places conflict, not consensus, at the center of American history on the other.

What can I say? For those unfamiliar are any still hanging around reading this? It was a reaction against both the youthful leftism many of its founders dabbled in during the s and a school of thought exemplified by Charles Beard and others who placed a populism-inflected vision of class conflict at the center of American history. So Morgan illustrates numerous conflicts that his subject, first Governor of Puritan Massachusetts John Winthrop, managed during his time.

In keeping with the Consensus school, Winthrop, who represents a future for America and the values of its founding, wins most of these conflicts, though makes the occasional tragic mis-step.

Another Consensus school flag is the use of biography another uncool thing in contemporary historiography. This emphasis on a personal character that prizes practicality and compromise over vision and consistency is very Consensus school. Winthrop was born into comfortable countryside circumstances in England in the s he died well before the Salem witch trials- he and Morgan both dodged a reputational bullet there.

The dilemma he and the Puritans were constantly faced with was how to make a good society in a world they saw as fundamentally bad. I see it as fundamentally indifferent… anyway. This was intensified by the degree of education and theological sophistication at work, to say nothing of the blank social slate with which the Puritans found themselves presented.

At every stage, Morgan shows Winthrop as being faced with a choice between retreat from and engagement with the world. At every stage, Winthrop makes the right choice. This pretty much always means engagement. The one exception was a biggie: his retreat from England to Massachusetts, where he was sorely tempted to stay and fight for Puritan values at home. But this was an out of frying pan, into the fire situation- a retreat to an even more intensive variety of engagement in problems ranging from the immediately practical food to the theological.

In Massachusetts, Winthrop depicts Morgan as a bulwark of stolid good sense, a George Washington as Washington was then conceived figure, a practical unifier who is surrounded, more than Washington was, by crazed ideologues. Winthrop recognized when to push and when to pull back- he made the Massachusetts covenant considerably more democratic involving freeman suffrage, that is, suffrage for ordinary church — which was the same as community — members than he had to according to his orders from the Massachusetts Bay Company, Morgan argues.

This is also an ingenious way to explain away what looks a lot like oppression and abuse of power on the part of Winthrop and the power structure he represented. He knew the way to go- others did not. He depicts Hutchinson and Williams as fanatics — reasonably persuasively, but fanaticism in Puritan Massachusetts sounds like speeding at the Indianapolis — whose beliefs were dangerous to the commonwealth.

Antinomianism, ala Hutchinson, was corrosive to public welfare in its dismissal of all good works and implication that law had no bearing on those imbued with the Holy Spirit. Separatism, ala Roger Williams, threatened the political unity of the commonwealth, threatening to split every congregation from every other, as exemplified by Williams eventually refusing to believe in the grace of anyone other than himself and his wife.

But still- Winthrop won, he founded the New England way of reconciling faith and world, and this was all for the best in this best of all possible Americas, Morgan heavily implies. But Morgan wielded a beautiful pen, a real sense for the storytelling behind the subject matter, and the book held my interest the way few have recently.

At this point, my review threatens to be longer than the book- this is no hefty life and times biography, this makes its point in fewer than two hundred pages. Your mileage may vary- but I still think both the Puritans and the Consensus School might have more to do with you than you might think. Dec 07, Phil added it. Mar 12, Katy rated it really liked it Shelves: philosophy-religion , politics , history. Although I have some familiarity with 18th and 19th century American history, I know very little about the very early history.

Edmund Morgan's biography of John Winthrop is a delight.