New England's Puritans were not the dour, witch-hunting kill-joys of American myth and legend. They were in many ways typical Elizabethan English men and women who enjoyed good ale and good company, and who also held their religious beliefs with deep personal intensity. Early on they flourished in New England, buoyed by the conviction that they were chosen by God to play a central role in the unfolding of human history. This confidence did not endear them to their critics, then or now. When smallpox epidemics decimated the local Native American population, Puritan settlers accepted the tragedy as a sign that God was watching out for them alone.
Churches and church leaders played an important role in shaping New England society, but they had no direct political power. In Puritan theology, church and state had separate roles and responsibilities; magistrates and ministers worked together to make sure that godly standards prevailed. This meant that everyone in the Massachusetts Bay colony, whether a Puritan or not, had to attend church and obey the laws of the Commonwealth.
Today, this requirement looks like intolerance of the worst kind — though they were religious dissenters in England, the New England Puritans refused to allow anyone else the same freedom. But the truth is that no one anywhere in Europe believed that religion should be a personal choice: the church was an arm of the government, and rulers always decided how their people would worship. The Puritan Commonwealth, the city on a hill, was also something more than a New World colony. It was a "holy experiment", a place where a dedicated band of believers would show the world what Jesus Christ really intended.
This Information is from the resources of the Congregational Library on Boston’s Beacon Hill. www.congregationallibrary.org