The Wordy Shipmates

A group of religious reformers led by John Winthrop who wanted to purify the Church of England from within rather than separate from the church like their “Pilgrim” countrymen. Both groups—the separatist Mayflower “Pilgrims” and the non-separatist Arbella Puritans—share the title “Puritan” because of their reformist agendas. The term itself was derogatory and created by critics of the intended religious reform.

Christianity, most notably the Bible, ruled the Puritan world. Religious disputes, rather than harmony, characterized their colonial societies in North America. The most famous Puritans in American history supposedly landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and launched a witch hunt in Salem in 1692. Between those 17th-century bookends, Puritans settled other towns and created other congregations throughout New England before their practices fell out of fashion around the turn of the 18th century.

Modern Americans invoke the term “Puritan” to mean austere, conservative, and boring. Historical Puritans, Vowell concedes, did display some of these characteristics by modern standards, but the shorthand term distorts the complexity of the Puritan worldview and society. The author stresses their vast literary culture to stress that they were “fascinating, sometimes brilliant, judgmental killjoys” (22).