Describe the main religiouse views and social values of Massachusetts Bay Puritans?

Question

and explain why Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson posed real threats to that colony. Im literly dying from this question, whoever can help me out with this, ill give 10 points and a huge thank you.

Answer 1

The Puritans who settled the Massachusetts Bay colony were really big on conformity--the irony of this is that, back in England, THEY were the NONCONFORIMISTS.

Religiously, they followed a form of Calvinism that held that some were predestined to go to heaven and others were predestined to go to hell. No one could change this--you could be the kindest, most generous, and moral individual in town and, if you weren't one of the folks God chose to go to heaven (often called the "elect"), too bad, you were going to hell anyway. On the other hand, you could be a drunkard, a pervert, and any other sort of low-life you can think of, and if you were one of the elect, guess what--your ticket was punched and you'd get to heaven no matter what.

Now, this theology was in part a reaction to other religions that claimed that good works, not grace, or good works along with grace, would get one to heaven. Luther first posited that no one gets to heaven but by the grace of God, and then Calvin took the idea and extended it.

By the time of the Puritans, they'd refined the idea somewhat to say that no one could be absolutely sure he or she was one of the elect unless God sent him or her a sign that they were part of the "in crowd," to borrow an expression from my youth.

So, people tended to live morally upright lives because they were all waiting for a message from God that their eternal destiny was not hellfire.

The reason people like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were so unpopular that they were literally run out of the settlement was because they had the unmitigated gall to think for themselves, rather than just calmly accepting whatever a minister said as the truth. Rather, they turned over things in their minds and came to different conclusions, thereby upsetting the status quo. Anne Hutchinson was doubly vilified, because she was a woman who dared to think for herself. Roger Williams, in the colony he founded, struck an early blow for religious tolerance, virtually unheard of at the time.

Read about these people. I think I'd have liked to have known them.

Answer 2

http://www.mytermpapers.com
You got to submitt a term paper of your own to Join, great resource for ideas.

Answer 3

Do your own research and homework.