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标题：“What Small Thing is it that Remains to Keep Us Apart?”: New England Congregational Thought on the Need for Continued Parish Reform in England, 1640-1650
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作者：Jenny Claire Smith
期刊名称：Journal of Classroom Research in Literacy
出版年度：2015
卷号：3
期号：1
语种：English
出版社：OISE / University of Toronto
摘要：The study of Puritan resistance to the Church of England during the reign of the hierarchical episcopacy in the early seventeenth century has been well documented in extant research. Comparatively less attention, however, has been devoted to understanding what encouraged sustained Puritan resistance to English parish churches even after the overthrow of episcopacy and subsequent Puritan rise to power in England in the 1640s. This essay examines the perspective of Puritan Congregationalists who migrated to New England in the 1630s and chose to remain there even after events in England turned in their favor upon the abolition of episcopacy in the following decade. It explores what hindrances New England Puritans perceived as present in English parish churches that prevented them from becoming acceptably reformed churches. It argues that elements such as growing Presbyterian influence, fluid boundaries regarding both membership and the nature of the visible church, nonexistence of church covenants, and increasing disunity and sectionalism collectively influenced New England Puritan Congregationalists’ decision to remain in New England where they could construct their own acceptably reformed local churches, free from the ecclesiastical errors they found prevalent in the parish churches across the Atlantic. Such analysis demonstrates that not least among the reasons for sustained New England Puritan rejection of England as a viable ecclesiastical environment remained the desire for continued parish reform in the mid-seventeenth century.