Are the Puritans offshoot of the Thanksgiving pilgrims?

[TaiKamiya720]

Since today is Thanksgiving, I've been wondering whether the Thanksgiving pilgrims who fled England to sail to Massachusetts, were the offspring of the Puritans.

From what I know so far, both pilgrims and Puritans fled England because they were persecuted in England by its state church, the Church of England. The Puritans, and those who we would later call pilgrims, were persecuted because they believed that the Church of England was not reformed enough and still had a lot of Catholic traits. They sailed to Massachusetts so they (the pilgrims and Puritans) can freely practice their Purtian beliefs without persecution.They gave thanks to God for giving them a bountiful land where they can freely practice their religion.

However, what most people don't know is that they came to America for religious freedom, but only for themselves. This is why the Puritans persecuted Anabaptists, witches, and Catholics and banned Christmas celebrations. The Puritan colonies in Massachusetts were pretty much a theocracy.

Did the Thanksgiving Pilgrims really held to Puritan beliefs and gave offspring to those Massachusetts colonies?

A Calvinist or Presbyterian who knows about this would be very useful to answer this and give some details.

 

[ViaCrucis]

The pilgrims were mostly Puritans, yes; though there were Separatists among them. But the Puritans were the ones with the power, and Separatists who didn't follow the party line didn't fare well there, for example Roger Williams who ended up being expelled and founding the colony of Providence in Rhode Island.

The Puritans were theocratic despots. Yes, it is true enough that their views were unwelcome by the official Church of England because they wanted the Church of England to become a thoroughly Reformed church; which is why they found refuge in the Netherlands, a bastion of Calvinism. They then went to America and founded their own colony there in which they instituted their own theocratic rules and regulations, and ruled rather tyrannically. "Religious freedom for me, but not for thee"

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Radagast]

.

 

[FireDragon76]

As VC pointed out, the CoE was not as strictly Reformed as continental churches. The rulers just used Reformed ideas as a pretext for upholding political separation from Rome, but they were mostly disinterested in being overly severe when it came to changing doctrine and morals. The Anglican 39 Articles are intentionally ambiguous, and a compromise to try to make everyone happy (it didn't work, and a civil war followed some time later)

Puritans in the US burnt themselves out with their religious zeal and experiential religion, and due to the difficulties that Puritans placed on church membership (one had to be able to testify to being "born again" to be a full member of the church). Eventually Puritanism as a separate religious ideology died in the US, but it survived in England, in a moderated form, as a party in the state church, and in a more severe form, in separatist, Baptist churches. Elements of Puritanism were absorbed into what became known as "American Evangelicalism": the sense of exceptionalism and the focus on moralism.

Modern day descendants of the Puritans in America are the United Church of Christ, a liberal mainline Protestant denomination. They have a broad, liberal, liturgical kind of Christianity now days that isn't all that Calvinist as it once was, and is influenced more by generic mainline Protestant theology.

 

[Radagast]

Modern day descendants of the Puritans in America are the United Church of Christ, a liberal mainline Protestant denomination.

Kind of.

Historically, the Puritans formed Congregationalist churches, and most of the Congregationalist churches eventually merged into the UCC.

Along the way, though, all kinds of other groups separated from the main Congregationalist stream, including some who became Baptists, and a huge number who became Presbyterian. At the more liberal end of the spectrum, some became Unitarian.