“Was Bradford’s account a morality tale for future generations?”
Bradford wrote, Of Plymouth Plantation, to describe the Puritans escape for religious freedom from the Anglican Church. During the Puritans journey to America, they encounter many challenges and hardships that most people would conclude as problems from life. Bradford is adamant that these hardships are from God, and they should accept these challenges and continue trusting God. Bradford preached this as a way that alluded to these problems being pre-destined.
The early Puritan belief was that God has no love in him, no grace, mercy or patience, because God is looking for perfection. The Puritans believed that God is angry at you for being an imperfect, if you continue to live in rebellion against God, you will be thrown into the depths of hell to burn eternally. There is one way to salvation, that is God will deliver you through threats of punishment. If you then step out of God’s alignment, you are then forsaken from God. There is still a problem, people are still imperfect, so because of our imperfect nature we will be tempted by greed and sin. These temptations are too much for us too handle and we will indeed, be subject and cave into our sinful nature. When we sin against God, he will send a tragedy and we will realize that we need God and be humbled. The early puritan belief was that one had to live a perfect life, in order to please God and make it into heaven.
Bradford’s book is full of the early Puritan teachings, and Of Plymouth Plantation was, no doubt supposed to be a book that would continue the legacy of these teachings. The Puritan belief’s were very extreme. These are the type of teachings that make people scoff at Christianity. There was no actual consideration for humanity, the early Puritan belief relied on fear. Fear that God would destroy our lives if we did not live according to his will. This is not helpful to anyone, being constantly afraid that God will condemn us to hell if we disobey his teachings. In this belief system there is no hope for humans anyway, because we are bound to succumb to our earthly nature. If anything, I can only imagine that this would make future generations rebel even more because they have no hope.
Hannah Ludwig 