There was not too much room for religious disagreement in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Puritans defended their dogma with uncommon fury. Their devotion to principle was God’s work; to ignore God’s work was unfathomable.

Although they founded their own colony so they could have religious freedom, the Puritans did not believe in religious toleration for others. Disagreements about religion led to the founding of other colonies in New England. Minister Roger Williams thought the Puritans should split entirely from the Church of England.

The Puritans were seeking freedom, but they didn’t understand the idea of toleration. They came to America to find religious freedom—but only for themselves. They had little tolerance or even respect for the Pequot Indians, who lived in nearby Connecticut and Rhode Island. They called them heathens.

The Puritans thought that the Church of England had not done enough to purify itself of Catholic influences. Two specific disagreements were over church hierarchy and the nature of the worship service. They belived the Church of England’s services were like Catholic masses and therefore too ritualistic.

The moral and religious earnestness that was characteristic of Puritans was combined with the doctrine of predestination inherited from Calvinism to produce a “covenant theology,” a sense of themselves as the elect chosen by God to live godly lives both as individuals and as a community.

Known as “separatists,” these Puritans left their homeland and in 1609 moved to Leiden, Holland, where they hoped to worship freely, without harassment from church authorities. Some members of the Leiden church returned to England, and on Aug. 5, 1620, they sailed for America on the ship the Mayflower.

Puritans vs Quakers The difference between Puritans and Quakers is that the Puritans believed that they needed to be taught by the church ministers and followed baptism whereas the Quakers did not believe in sacrament and had their own acceptable rules to be followed.

The rigid, sterile Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a deep fear of Quakers, citing dissent, heresy and work of the devil as reasons to persecute, imprison, and even kill Quakers arriving in their Puritan colony.

Although the word is often applied loosely, “Puritan” refers to two distinct groups: “separating” Puritans, such as the Plymouth colonists (PILGRIMS), who believed that the Church of England was corrupt and that true Christians must separate themselves from it; and non-separating Puritans, such as the colonists who …