Separatist Religious Beliefs
William Bradford’s journal of early Plymouth begins with his account of the religious controversies that divided English society in the 16th and early 17th century and influenced the formation of Separatist groups:
“…Mr. Foxe recordeth, how besides those worthy martyrs and confessors which were burned in Queen Mary’s days and otherwise tormented[,] “many (both students, and others) fled out of the land….And became several congregations: at Wesel, Frankfort, Basel, Emden, Markpurge, Strasbourg, and Geneva, etc.” Amongst whom….began that bitter war of contention, and persecution about the ceremonies, and service-book, and other popish and antichristian stuff….Which the better part sought (according to the purity of the gospel) to root out, and utterly to abandon. And the other part (under veiled pretences) for their own ends, and advancements, sought as stiffly, to continue, maintain, and defend…”
– William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation
The Separatists who formed the nucleus of Plymouth Colony’s settlement believed that the Church of England was corrupted by worldly practices and unduly hierarchical, and they had to leave the church or risk their own salvation.
The Separatists were Calvinist, accepting that man’s nature was depraved and reliant solely on God’s grace for salvation. They rejected the standards and practices required of English churchgoers by the Book of Common Prayer and looked to the Scriptures as the source of authority over church tradition and accepted practice. They considered the idea of a national church to contradict the character of the early Christian church as described in the Bible. Rather than trying to reform the established church from within, they chose to worship in independent, self-governing congregations.
The Pilgrim Separatists were drawn from communities of dissenters in several different parts of England, including the Scrooby-Gainsborough area, East Anglia, London, Sandwich, and Kent. According to the eminent Pilgrim scholar Dr. Jeremy Bangs,
“What united them in their decision to leave England for a place where they could worship God the way they thought most consistent with scriptural revelation was the conviction that to fail to act on what they know to be the truth was to invite God’s punishment for conscious sin.”
– Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, Strangers and Pilgrims Travellers and Sojourners: Leiden and the Foundations of Plymouth Plantation
(General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2009), 48.
What was the difference between “Pilgrims” and “Puritans”?
How different were the “Pilgrims” at Plymouth from the reform-minded “Puritans” who settled at Massachusetts Bay Colony beginning in 1630? According to historian Francis J. Bremer, the Plymouth Separatists are best understood as “puritans” themselves, believers who were
“….part of a broad movement to reform the Protestant Church of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Within this movement there were many variations and the Plymouth congregation differed from others in that movement on various matters. But what united them with fellow puritans was far more important than what divided them…”
– Francis J. Bremer, One Small Candle: The Plymouth Puritans and the Beginning of English New England
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2020)