美国清教徒讲座文本.docx

1、美国清教徒讲座文本. BackgroundWhat is Puritanism?14至16世纪，西欧社会从中世纪向近代过渡，当时西欧所发生的社会变动主要表现在三方面：第一，经济上，随着生产力的发展与技术的进步，新兴的资本主义萌芽破土成长，封建生产方式开始瓦解；第二，政治上，资产阶级与新贵族开始形成，反对封建贵族的特权与分裂割据。英、法两国的封建君主在与资产阶级、新贵族联盟的基础上建立了政治集权的“新君主制”。他们加强政治集权，推行重商主义，奖励文化创造，有力促进了民族国家的发展。但在意大利、德意志还存在着分裂割据，迫切需要政治统一；第三，思想文化领域出现了新兴资产阶级反封建、反神权的文艺复兴运

2、动。人文主义者批判中世纪教会的蒙昧、禁欲说教与封建的等级权制度，鼓吹个人的自由、平等与欲望，提倡竞争进取精神与科学求知的理论，极大地推动了人们的思想解放与观念更新，构成了对天主教神权的巨大冲击。在这样的社会背景下，16世纪西欧的宗教改革都把矛头对准罗马教会对欧洲的大一统神权统治，要求通过改革建立适应于民族国家发展的“民族教会”或适应于资产阶级兴起需要的“廉价教会”。Those early settlers who came to the New World seeking purity in worship are today regularly characterized as stern,

3、 colorless, humorless and certainly sexless people. In short, puritanical.The commonly-held dark side, the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans: witch-hunts, elitism, intolerance, narrow-minded zealotry; McCarthyism.Both Pilgrims and Puritans have served as part of a rationale for national progress and

4、 cultural identity. It is estimated that, between the years 1629 and 1640, about 80,000 Puritans fled from England because of religious persecution. About 21,000 of them came to Massachusetts Bay Colony (the others went to Ireland, the Netherlands and the West Indies). The roots of Puritanism are to

5、 be found in the beginnings of the English Reformation. The process through which Puritanism developed had been initiated in the 1530s, when King Henry VIII refused papal authority and transformed the Church of Rome into a state Church of England. But the Church of England retained much of the ritua

6、l of Roman Catholicism and seemed, to many dissenters, to be insufficiently reformed.Puritans were generally members of the Church of England who believed the Church of England was insufficiently Reformed and who therefore opposed royal church policy under Elizabeth I of England, James I of England,

7、 and Charles I of England. Begun in the late sixteenth century as a protest against the direction the Church of England was taking, they wanted to purify the theology, liturgy(礼拜仪式), and ecclesiastical（基督教的） structures of the church. All purifications were based on the Bible, the final authority for

8、 belief and conduct. It was in the Bible, and in their religion which was based on their interpretation of the Bible, that they sought the spiritual answers to questions raised by their daily lives.Why Escaping England?Since there was little separation of church and state in those days, they were pe

9、rsecuted in all aspects of their lives - not just their religious lives. In England, they were a persecuted minority.The events of 1629 convinced many Puritans that King Charles was an ardent foe of further church reforms. Since King Charles was only 29 years old in 1629, they were thus faced with t

10、he prospect of countless decades without reforms and with their proposals being suppressed. Given this situation, some Puritans began considering founding their own colony where they could worship in a fully reformed church, far from the prying eyes of King Charles and the bishops. Great MigrationPa

11、rticularly in the years after 1630, Puritans left for New England, supporting the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other settlements. The large-scale Puritan emigration to New England ended in 1642 with the start of the English Civil War when King Charles I effectively shut off emigratio

12、n to the colonies.Most Puritans who migrated to North America came in the decade 1630-1642 in what is known as the Great Migration.The Pilgrims (1620) Most Puritans were non-separating Puritans, meaning they did not advocate setting up separate congregations distinct from the Church of England; a sm

13、all minority of Puritans were separating Puritans who advocated setting up congregations outside the Church. One Separatist group, the Pilgrims, left for New England on board the Mayflower established the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Non-separating Puritans played leading roles in establishing the Massa

14、chusetts Bay Colony in 1629 and the Connecticut Colony in 1636. The Colony of Rhode Island was established by settlers expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because of their unorthodox religious opinions. Who are Colonial American Puritans?Puritans were basically middle class and fairly well-ed

15、ucated. The Puritan attack on the established church gained popular strength, especially in East Anglia and among the lawyers and merchants of London. The movement found wide support among these new professional classes, in part because it was congenial to their growing discontent with mercantile ec

16、onomic restraints.The majority of the Puritans were from the middle class of English society. They were educated-two thirds of the adult males could sign their own names-and most of them could afford to pay their own passage. They were usually (about 60 percent) skilled craftsmen or tradesmen. They

17、tended to migrate in families. More than 40 percent were adult men and women over the age of 25 and about half of them were children under the age of 16. Very few were elderly and very few were servants. With the Puritans, the nuclear family was very important and the extended family not as importan

18、t as in other groups. 家庭结构的影响Therefore, we dont see them migrating in clans as, for example, the Scotch- Irish did. Two FiguresJohn Winthrop (1587/8-1649), Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who led the Puritans in the Great Migration, beginning in 1630.Puritan John Winthrop, a lawyer, sailed

19、 for New England in 1630 along with 700 colonists on board eleven ships known collectively as the Winthrop Fleet. During the crossing, he called on his fellow settlers to make their new colony a City upon a Hill (a reference to Matthew 5:14-16), meaning that they would be a model to all the nations

20、of Europe as to what a properly reformed Christian commonwealth should look like. John Winthrop (1588-1649) said, We shall be as a city upon a hill. He believed that Divine Providence had given Puritans the freedom to determine their destiny, but that the eyes of the world would be upon them. The Pu

21、ritans sought to form a distinct kind of human being and citizen, based on the Bible as a sacred text revealed to human beings by God. Life, liberty, and property are gifts from God to be used for the common good. The individual had a duty to serve others and the community as a whole, through Christ

22、ian charity. All human beings are equalequally subject to the ordinances of God. But the unequal distribution of power and goods is simply a fact of life to be accepted. The economic, social, and political inequality or hierarchy that is evident throughout the world is permanent and has a purpose.Lo

23、ve your neighbors as yourself, and do unto others as you would have them do to you. With faith in Christ, people can exercise such virtues as love, mercy, temperance, patience, and obedience; find the spiritual strength to resist temptations, and stand up to evil. New England theological controversi

24、es, 1632-1642 The Roger Williams controversyAs noted earlier, the vast majority of Puritans who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were non-separating Puritans. This meant that, while they deeply abhorred many of the practices of the Church of England, they refused to separate from the Church o

25、f England because they placed an extremely high value on the doctrine of the unity of the Church. Engraving of a statue of Roger Williams (1603-1683), Puritan minister who was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 for his extremist views and who advocated religious liberty. Williams fou

26、nded the city of Providence, Rhode Island.Roger Williams, a Separating Puritan minister, arrived in Boston in 1631. Williams actions so outraged the Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony that they expelled him from the colony. In 1636, the exiled Williams founded the city of Providence, Rh

27、ode Island. Williams was one of the first Puritans to advocate separation of church and state and Rhode Island was one of the first places in the Christian world to recognize freedom of religion. Basic BeliefsThe idea of personal Biblical interpretation, while central to Puritan beliefs was shared w

28、ith most Protestants in general. Puritans sought both individual and corporate conformity to the teaching of the Bible, with moral purity pursued both down to the smallest detail as well as ecclesiastical purity to the highest level. They believed that man existed for the glory of God; that his firs

29、t concern in life was to do Gods will and so to receive future happiness. The Puritans wanted to establish the highest standard of how human beings should act.1. The Puritan goal was to complete what Englands Reformation began: to finish reshaping Anglican worship, to introduce effective church disc

30、ipline into Anglican parishes, to establish righteousness in the political, domestic, and socio-economic fields, and to convert all Englishmen to a vigorous evangelical faith. Through the preaching and teaching of the gospel, and the sanctifying of all arts, sciences, and skills, England was to beco

31、me a land of saints, a model and paragon of corporate godliness, and as such a means of blessing to the world. In thought and outlook they were radically God-centered. Their appreciation of Gods sovereign majesty was profound, and their reverence in handling his written word was deep and constant. T

32、hey applied their understanding of the mind of God to every branch of life, seeing the church, the family, the state, the arts and sciences, the world of commerce and industry as so many spheres in which God must be served and honored. Knowing God, the Puritans also knew man. They saw him as in origin a noble being, made in Gods image to rule Gods earth, but now tragically brutalized by sin. 2. Total Depravity - through Adam and Eves fall, every person is born sinful - concept of Original Sin. 3. Backsliding: The belief that saved believers, those with visible signs of grace, can fal