The Puritan Dilemma
In The Puritan Dilemma we discover Edmund S. Morgan's views of what Puritanism is and how John Winthrop dealt with the dilemma of being a puritan. After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1942, Edmond S. Morgan taught at the University of Chicago (1945-46) and at Brown (1946-55) before becoming professor of history at Yale (1955). An expert on American colonial history, Morgan writes in a way that appeals to the general reading public while maintaining high scholarly standards. His many books include The Puritan Family, The Stamp Act Crisis, with his wife Helen, The Puritan Dilemma and biographies of Ezra Stiles and Roger Williams. Morgan's work, The Puritan Dilemma, fits into his body of works based on the common thread of history that many of his works shared. Morgan traces how John Winthrop struggled with the dilemma, first internally, as he dealt wit
The purpose of New England was to show the world a community where the laws of God were followed by church and state--as nearly as fallible human beings could follow them. Puritans on the other hand only favored those who practiced in the Puritan faith. Enjoying life was seen as being greedy as you are there to live your life in service of god. The question of how the colony was to be governed was greatly influenced by the Puritan concept of the "covenant" with God. It seems to have been important to Winthrop and his fellow Puritans that they had the approval of the King and that though they were distancing themselves from the Church of England, they were not actually in turn renouncing it. The separatism which was occurring among the church was based on the idea that one's faith in god did not have to be ordained in such a way as to force another's belief onto your own. Three major themes of The Puritan Dilemma are a series of challenges that stem from the Puritan dilemma itself, which Winthrop describes as, "the paradox that required a man to live in the world without being of it. Rules were made as such that every member of the colony were to follow those rules. Life was such that everyone followed the Puritan customs which insured that life could not be enjoyed to its fullest. These themes include the question of how the colony was to be governed, the separatism that was occurring within the church, and the belief that since God has predetermined who is to be saved one's behavior here on Earth does not matter. Outsiders were not welcome among the colonists. Life among the Puritans was governed strictly. The above mentioned notions led to the fanaticism that plagued the city atop the hill. h the question of whether traveling to the New World represented a selfish form of "separatism", the desire to separate himself from an impure England, or whether, as he eventually determined, it offered a unique opportunity to set an example for all men by establishing a purer Christian community in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
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