The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop

John Winthrop, born 1588, entered the world as the sole heir to a country gentleman. His father, Adam Winthrop, had built up a prosperous secular estate out of the old Catholic monastery at Groton (seized by the Protestant state under Henry VIII). John Winthrop seemed to have had an unremarkable childhood, apart from some disreputable relatives who had divorced their wives or converted to Catholicism. He spent two years at Cambridge University before returning home to enter an arranged marriage with Mary Forth in 1605 at the age of 17.

At some point, Winthrop embraced the Puritan strand of Protestant Christianity. Puritanism taught that all people (including Puritans) are powerless to resist sin without God’s intervention; that salvation is preordained by God for some before their birth while everyone else is condemned to hell; and that this world is ruled by evil. However, in seeming contradiction, the Puritan also believed that he or she had a calling to renounce sin in all aspects of life, to work hard at all tasks as though salvation depended on it, and to try to reform the world into the image of the Kingdom of God. 

This