Christian Influence in Massachusetts Bay Colony Self Governance

CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE IN MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY SELF-GOVERNANCE
Student’s Name
Subject
January 12th, 2018
From the circumstances that conditioned the practicality of the American Puritans’ approach to their religious doctrine, the most important was that they were residents of the colony. No matter how urgent the imperatives of their Christian doctrine were, they were not dogmatic; the colonists could not afford to build their political institutions on its basis alone. A few decades earlier, their Geneva co-religionists in this respect were guided only by individual aspirations and dogma. However, already at the initial stage of the New England existence, signs of its colonial status are seen that will decisively predetermine the entire development of American political thought in the era of the Revolution and will contribute to the formation of our public institutions under the signs of moderation, compromise, and traditionalism
From this colonial position ensued, First, the generally accepted belief that there are certain limits that legislators are not free to transgress (in other words, it was constitutionalism), and Secondly, the idea that the most natural and correct way of forming civilians institutions – reliance on custom and tradition, and not on legislative or administrative decrees. Civil systems are, to a much higher degree, the consequences of the circumstances in which the Puritans of New England were located, rather than the fruits of the speculative…