Changing attitudes in New England

Introduction

Cotton Mather's name remains inextricably linked with Puritan New England, but, as most scholars of New England culture recognize, today the associations are often negative. Immediately after his death Mather's posthumous reputation could not have been cultivated more piously, but by the nineteenth century his negative stereotype was firmly entrenched in historical memory. He was mourned with extravagancies almost unprecedented in Boston's history: an immense funeral procession, four published eulogies, and a mass-produced mezzotint portrait. His son, Samuel, published an understandably reverent biography in 1729, a volume sold by subscription to several hundred subscribers in New England and abroad. However, over time Cotton Mather became most commonly recognized as a participant in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692, an unfortunate involvement that caused many nineteenth-century religious liberals, intellectuals, and authors to excoriate him as the archetypal Puritan misogynist, the defender of an outmoded and hateful theology, and a second-rate scholar. This stigma has followed Mather into twentieth-century historiography (Gabrielle, Pp. 123-154).

For many twentieth-century historians, Cotton Mather's life marked the terminus for the story of Puritan ascendancy in New England, and Mather himself became a synecdoche for Puritan “declension.” David Levin observed that even when Perry Miller and Samuel Eliot Morison were "rehabilitating" the Puritans from the prejudice of nineteenth-century historiography, Cotton Mather was still regarded "as expendable." Mather's life and subsequent cultural reputation have largely been framed in a narrative of failure, implying that his chief significance lies in marking the end of something—Puritan hegemony and bigotry, or the stubborn impediment to emerging American democratic liberalism.

Discussion

When we hear the Puritans mentioned today, images of witch trials, punishment in the stocks, and scarlet letters probably come to mind. We use the adjective ``puritanical'' to describe a rigid, overly strict attitude. To really understand the New England Christmas controversy, though, we will need to look beyond our modern stereotypes and learn more about the Puritans, their convictions, and the times in which they lived.

The Puritan movement began in sixteenth-century England as an effort to reform the Church of England. Through the courageous efforts of people like William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale, the Bible was becoming more widelyavailable in English [1], and greater biblical literacy led many to the conclusion that centuries of Roman Catholic tradition had moved the Church far away from scriptural principles. Taking inspiration from John Calvin's reforms in Geneva, the Puritans hoped to reconstruct the Church, and ultimately all of society, according to a biblical model. The Puritans were never able to fully implement their program, either in England or America, but their movement did lead eventually to the formation of a number of different Christian denominations; in fact (Gabrielle, Pp. 123-154), much of American evangelical Protestantism, including the WCG, can trace its lineage to one part or another of the Puritan movement.

The Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1630 saw in their new home a wonderful opportunity to carry out the Puritan program. They viewed themselves as a modern nation ...