Topic: What is Puritanism? (Definition of Puritanism)
The Puritan movement was a Protestant movement that originated in England. Basically, England has been a Roman Catholic country for a long time.
However, during the reign of King Henry VIII of England, he was caught up in marriage issues to have a son to continue his lineage and money issues, so he established the Anglican Church.
So the Church of England began in England and was succeeded by Edward VI, the son of King Henry VIII.
However, because Edward VI died after only a few years, Edward's half-sister, Mary I, who was a Roman Catholic, became Queen.
By the way, this Queen Mary's mother Catherine, the first wife of Henry VIII, was a Roman Catholic, and she was ostracized by Henry VIII because she could not bear a son.
Afterwards, Henry VIII divorced Queen Mary's mother Catherine, married Anne Boleyn, who was Queen Mary's mother's maid, and gave birth to a girl named Elizabeth.
After Henry VIII's death, Mary who became queen captured and killed more than 300 English Protestant clergy who had sympathized to dethrone her mother.
At that time, some of those clergy dramatically escaped and went to Geneva, where Calvin was carrying out religious reforms.
Mary ruled England for about five years, during which time reformist clergy, who had seen Calvin's religious reforms in Geneva having tangible results, returned to England again when Elizabeth became queen after Mary's death.
The Church of England, which began under Henry VIII, tried to break away from the influence of Roman Catholicism and to create a new Protestant church, but returned to Catholicism when Mary, a Catholic, became queen.
So, the reformers who returned to England appealed to Queen Elizabeth to turn the Church of England back toward Protestantism and tried to make England a proper Protestant country.
In particular, the role models of those clergy were Geneva and Reformer Calvin.
However, from Queen Elizabeth's perspective, England was divided into Catholics and Protestants, and if these more radical groups led the church as they wanted, a civil war was in the stiation that would break out in England.
So while Queen Elizabeth supported neutrality and strengthened Anglicanism with her equitable policy, she took a middle ground, excluding either the extreme Catholics or the radical Protestant reformers who returned from Geneva.
At that time, some of the radical reformers returning from Geneva advocated for further removal of the remnants of Catholicism that now remained within the Church of England.
At that time, people in the Anglican Church sarcastically criticized these radical people, saying, “They pretend to be extremely clean.”
“They tell me to clean it all the time!” They reportedly called these people Puritans.
So, the word that these people sarcastically called Puritans, or “cleaning people,” which comes from the English verb Purify, meaning “to clean,” or people who pretend to be very clean, is now called Puritans.
In the end, after Elizabeth died, a king named James I ascended to the throne.
This man grew up as a Presbyterian in Scotland and became the king of Scotland and England.
An attempt was made to reform the England church back toward the Puritans, but ultimately failed due to subsequent historical circumstances, and some of the Puritans fled to the United States.
So, we refer to those who started the reformation in England, those who sought to reform the Church of England in a more Calvinistic way and were pushed out of the political and religious competition in England, and those who failed in England and then went to the United States to try to realize that dream again.
They are called Puritans.
Puritans are basically Calvinists, and it can be said that the people who tried to implement Calvinism in England were Puritans.