Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and a City on a Hill

by Michael P. Winship

Puritans did not find a life free from tyranny in the New World-they created it there. Massachusetts emerged a republic as they hammered out a vision of popular participation and limited government in church and state, spurred by Plymouth Pilgrims. Godly Republicanism underscores how pathbreaking yet rooted in puritanism's history the project was.

Michael Winship takes us first to England, where he uncovers the roots of the puritans' republican ideals in the aspirations and struggles of Elizabethan Presbyterians. Faced with the twin tyrannies of Catholicism and the crown, Presbyterians turned to the ancient New Testament churches for guidance. What they discovered there-whether it existed or not-was a republican structure that suggested better models for governing than monarchy.

The puritans took their ideals to Massachusetts, but they did not forge their godly republic alone. In this book, for the first time, the separatists' contentious, creative interaction with the puritans is given its due. Winship looks at the emergence of separatism and puritanism from shared origins in Elizabethan England, considers their split, and narrates the story of their reunion in Massachusetts. Out of the encounter between the separatist Plymouth Pilgrims and the puritans of Massachusetts Bay arose Massachusetts Congregationalism.

Genres: History

350 pages, Hardcover

First published April 16, 2012

About the author

A specialist in the history of religion in colonial America, Michael Winship is professor of history at the University of Georgia, where he holds the E. Merton Coulter Chair.

Michael Winship's most recent book is Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and Massachusetts' City on a Hill (Harvard UP, 2012), a Choice Academic Title of the Year for 2012. Previous books include Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlightenment (Johns Hopkins UP, 1996), Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641 (Princeton UP, 2002), The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided (UP of Kansas, 2005) and, with Edward J. Larson, The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison (Random House, 2005.) Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America is forthcoming with Yale University Press.

Recent articles include ''Freeborn (Puritan) Englishmen and Slavish Subjection: Popish Tyranny and Puritan Constitutionalism, c.1570-1606,'' English Historical Review 124 (2009), 1050-1074; ''Algernon Sidney's Calvinist Republicanism,'' Journal of British Studies 49 (2010), 753-773; ''Defining Puritanism in Restoration England: Richard Baxter and Others Respond to A Friendly Debate,'' Historical Journal 54 (2011), 689-715; "Straining the Bonds of Puritanism: English Presbyterians and Massachusetts Congregationalists Debate Ecclesiology, 1636–40," in Crawford Gribben, Scott Spurlock, eds. Puritans and Catholics in the Trans-Atlantic World 1600-1800 (Palgrave, 2015), pp. 89-111. A chapter on New England religion from the 1680s-1730s, "Congregationalist Hegemony in New England, from the 1680s to the 1730s," is in the Cambridge History of Religions in America, vol I (New York, 2012), and a chapter on the various early forms of English church establishments in the Americas, '' British America to 1662." is in the Oxford History of Anglicanism, vol. I (Oxford, 2017).

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was much more fun than I expected a book about the similarities and differences between Puritans and Separatists to be. Winship has a certain wry sense of humor, and there are actually some funny parts. Basically, I've been waiting for this book. I always thought that it was kind of silly to act like the Plymouth Separatists and the Mass Bay Puritans had nothing to do with each other, when they clearly are like cousins, if not siblings. Plus acting like they are distinct means that you basically cut the Plymouth people out of the story of Massachusetts. They come first, and then immediately become irrelevant. This is the first book I've read that actually explains the generation or two before 1620 back in England and why there was a split between Separatists and Puritans in the first place. Then Winship makes an argument about how the Plymouth people matter to the later religious history of Massachusetts. It is kind of complicated and runs through Salem. Basically, if you are really fascinated by the history of Massachusetts, or you are a big time Plymouth booster and you want them to be more important, this book is for you.
Plus, like I said - funny. This was one of my favorite parts: "Edward Winslow brought the news of this stormy meeting back to Plymouth in the spring of 1625. The settlers did not notice his arrival, for they were busy sending John Oldham through a "bumme-guard," two parallel lines of men who whacked Oldham's bottom with the stocks of their muskets...Winslow encouraged the bumme-guard on before sharing news."
Ha! Bumme-guard.

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quality yarn with analytical portions integrated effectively. Michael Winship argues that the Puritans implemented a form of religious republicanism in Massachusetts Bay, as part of their attempt to reform British society and root out the "Antichrist." Winship gives greater attention than past historians have to the Pilgrims, who may have been separatists, but were also interested in Christian republicanism. The author argues that, once Massachusetts became a royal colony with religious toleration, the Puritans' descendants remained concerned with forming a godly society. This vision of (Protestant) Christian reform fueled colonial anxieties about the French, the Native Americans, and ultimately King George III's government. I am uneasy about some implications of Winship's argument, which point toward a religious explanation for the roots of American democratic republicanism. There is plenty of evidence that the Founders acted on political, not religious, motives, even as the average colonist sometimes framed the Revolutionary War in religious terms. Perhaps it's best to say that Winship proves that Puritan republicanism was one strand among many that fed into the United States's eventual creation.

Some of the material rehashes Stephen Foster's "The Long Argument" and Harry Stout's "The New England Soul" more than I'd like, but it's an informative book. Winship discusses historiography, but sequesters a lot of the really convoluted scholarly debates in his footnotes. The focus is on telling a good story. Which Winship does.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Polemical, but good. I'm sure people familiar with this would have TONS to say in response.