Notes on the Great Migration and the New England Way

Four Things to Remember About the Great Migration

• The migration involved about $20{,}000$ English Puritans leaving England in the $1630s$ and settling first in Massachusetts, then moving to Connecticut and New Hampshire. Historians refer to this as the Great Migration.
• First key point: their goal was to establish a "city on a hill" — colonies that God would approve of and smile on. In other words, God-pleasing colonies.
• Second key point: their leader was John Winthrop, a wealthy Puritan lawyer who served as governor of Massachusetts for a period.
• Third key point: life was difficult at first due to cold New England weather, disease, and exposure; conditions were hard, though not as brutal as in Virginia.
• Fourth key point: they achieved competency, meaning they established a solid middle class, acquired land, and improved their standard of living.
• Summary takeaway: the Great Migration shaped early New England society by combining religious aims with practical social mobility, setting the stage for a distinctive regional system.

The New England Way: Four Components

• The Puritans in America created a religious system known as the New England Way in their colonies (Massachusetts, later Connecticut, New Hampshire).
• The four components (ingredients) of the New England Way are:

1) Congregationalism

• Meaning: each individual church congregation ran its own affairs.
• There was no centralized headquarters bossing around every congregation.
• Examples invoked in the lecture: the Nacogdoches Puritan Church runs its own affairs; the Luckin Puritan Church runs its own affairs; similarly, the Diebold, Lufkin, and Nachdoches congregations would handle their own decisions.
• Significance: local church autonomy within a common Puritan framework.

2) Voluntary Membership

• Membership was voluntary, in contrast to the English act of uniformity that forced Anglicans to join the church.
• Puritans did not want to force anyone to join their churches.
• The joining process consisted of
  • The four parts of the process ($4$ parts):
  • Background check (talk to friends and neighbors about motivations).
  • Testimony: the applicant would stand before the congregation and recount their spiritual journey.
  • Questions: the congregation could ask questions after the testimony.
  • Congregational vote: the church would vote on whether to admit the person.
• Variability: some congregations were very strict, others more lenient in applying the process.
• Connection to the Anglican context: voluntary membership contrasts with the English requirement that English subjects be members of the Anglican Church.
• Practical note: joining a Puritan church was analogous to joining a fraternity/sorority in structure, but with a spiritual vetting process.

3) Mutual Assistance

• Core idea: Puritans believed it was hard to be a Christian and that the community should watch out for one another.
• They did not believe in privacy or minding one’s own business; rather, one person’s conduct was everyone’s business because it affected the community’s spiritual health.
• Example scenario from the lecture:
  • If Porter (a fictional church member) is cheating on her husband, a fellow member would intervene rather than ignore it.
  • The involved parties would bring the issue to the preacher and the whole congregation so that Porter could be guided back to the path of Christian living.
  • The ethical motivation is love and concern for Porter’s salvation and community wellbeing, not gossip.
• Outcome: the goal is mutual accountability to keep the community on the straight and narrow toward Jesus and salvation.

4) Church Government Cooperation

• Puritans did not support a separation of church and state; church and government were expected to cooperate.
• Mechanisms of cooperation:
  • Voting and holding political office were restricted to male church members.
  • The government maintained laws against heresy, i.e., violations of the New England Way.
• Result: a system where civil and religious authorities reinforced one another to maintain religious conformity.
• Note: by law, Anglican church membership still existed technically, but the Puritans lived largely under their own religious framework due to distance from England.

Early Dissent and Trouble Makers

• From the outset, some Puritans resisted the New England Way and became famous early troublemakers.
• Two notable figures:

Roger Williams

• Arrival: Puritan preacher who appeared in Massachusetts around 1631 (date approximate in the lecture).
• Beliefs that caused trouble:
  • Break with the Anglican Church: Williams argued Puritans should sever ties with the Church of England and “go to hell” to remain independent from Anglican authority.
  • Separation of church and government: Williams argued that church and state should be separate.
• Consequences: Williams was arrested, found guilty of heresy, and expelled from Massachusetts.
• Afterward: he founded Rhode Island as a new colony.
• Rhode Island characteristics:
  • Religious toleration: all Christians and Jews were welcome to worship.
  • Separation of church and government: no institutional church-state fusion.
• Significance: Rhode Island established an early model of religious liberty and church-state separation in English North America.

Anne Hutchinson

• Arrival: Puritan woman who arrived in Massachusetts in the mid-1630s and eventually had around 15 children.
• Beliefs that caused trouble: antinomianism, the belief that individuals could determine their relationship with God directly, without a preacher or church mediation, through prayer and Bible reading.
• Consequences: Hutchinson was arrested and tried for heresy; she defended herself in the transcripts of her trial, acknowledged belief in antinomianism, and was expelled from Massachusetts.
• Fate: she and many of her family were killed by Native Americans after leaving Massachusetts (latter part of her story presented in the lecture).
• Significance: Hutchinson's case highlighted tensions around individual religious experience versus communal religious authority in Puritan New England.

Contextual notes and reflections

• The Puritans in New England operated under the belief that their religious system would lead to a God-approved society, hence the term "city on a hill."
• New England life involved significant hardship, but over time the colonies built a solid middle class and established property ownership, contributing to the sense of competency.
• Although by law there were Anglicans in the region, the distance from England allowed Puritans to exercise substantial religious and civic autonomy within their communities.
• The New England Way integrated church and civil governance, shaping early American discussions of religion, liberty, authority, and governance.
• Ethical and philosophical implications:
  • The balance between religious conformity and individual conscience: dissenters like Williams and Hutchinson challenged the tight integration of church and state.
  • Religious toleration vs. religious uniformity: Rhode Island's approach contrasted with the broader Puritan approach in Massachusetts and neighboring colonies.
  • The role of community enforcement in religious life: the mutual surveillance and corrective actions reflect a powerful communal policing mechanism, with significant consequences for personal freedom.

Connections to broader themes

• The Great Migration and the New England Way illustrate how religious motives can drive migration, governance, and social organization.
• The experiences with Williams and Hutchinson foreshadow later American debates over church-state separation and religious liberty.
• The emergence of a solid middle class in New England contributed to broader economic and social development in colonial America.

Quick reference to key terms and people

• City on a hill: biblical ideal of a society that God would approve and bless.
• John Winthrop: governor and leader of the Puritans in Massachusetts.
• New England Way: Puritan religious system in New England colonies.
• Congregationalism: each church governs itself; no central authority.
• Voluntary membership: joining a Puritan church was optional and involved a multi-step process.
• Four-part joining process: background check, testimony, questions, congregational vote.
• Mutual assistance: communal accountability for spiritual wellbeing.
• Church-government cooperation: political rights reserved for male church members; laws against heresy.
• Roger Williams: founder of Rhode Island; separation from Anglican Church; separation of church and state; religious toleration.
• Anne Hutchinson: proponent of antinomianism; tried for heresy; expelled; killed in New York.
• Competency: Puritan term for achieving a solid middle-class status and land ownership.