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Puritans were some of the first colonists to settle on the soil of North America. They came seeking an escape from the persecution from England. They were chased out and they were refused the right to practice their religion. And in America, they found that privilege. They may have faced a lot of hardships and death, but they were able to practice their beliefs freely and without discrimination. The Puritans were a very sturdy group of people. They had strong beliefs in hard work and blessings. They believed in predestination and that God had already chose who he was going to save. The Puritans strict lifestyle “was combined with the doctrine of predestination”, and this led their “covenant theology”, which can still be seen in American Society today. We see this in the way that the rich are worshipped in a way. They are seen as more than someone who has less. The Puritans thought that they were the only people who God was going to save. They believed that anyone who did not keep their covenants with him was going to be damned to hell. The Puritans also believed that the strong and wealthy were the most loved. As such, the wealthy had the most control over the community as a whole. These Puritans established “the civil commonwealth” as the “framework” for the church. This meant that only the rich and popular could “vote and rule”. A person's wealth equated the amount that God loved them.
The Puritans believed that hard work was the work of God. These people believed that “honorable work” was a way to honor God and to worship him. They believed that “There was no distinction between secular and sacred work.” Hard work was seen as righteous and anything less was sinful. Because hard work was so largely seen as holy, they similarly believed that alcohol and premarital sex was a sin. They equated alcohol to laziness and sex to sin. They saw “Idleness” as a sin and that the only way to honor God was through “diligence”. If a person did not strictly follow the beliefs he or she would be cast out or, in extreme cases, executed.
In today’s society, we still see these effects. We see the work-hard-reward-large mentality in many situations. We also are able to see the-- although diminishing--trend of slut-shaming and “keeping one’s purity”. In a case study between Canadians and Americans, anagrams were shown to both parties. The Americans seemed to solve the anagrams with the thought of salvation. When “Primed” with salvation, the Americans were more prone to solving the anagrams, whereas the Canadians saw no effect from such keyphrases. Americans as a whole and individually are driven towards hard work and worldly rewards. These Puritanistic values are not confined to “evangelical churches” and “classic novels”, yet are instead ingrained in the DNA and thought processes of our American society and very well may be forever.
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