A Study Of The Transformations In John Winthrop’s Puritan Thought (1630-1649)

As the first official governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and a distinguished religious leader in establishing the early Puritan commonwealth in colonial New England, John Winthrop’s puritan thought has had an ever-lasting impact on the forming of the American mind and in the development of American intellectual history. Given his historical significance both as a political figure and a religious leader, historians and scholars have done voluminous research on his political thought. However, John Winthrop’s role as a Puritan leader has received much less attention than his role as a political leader.One of the neglected but significant aspects of Winthrop’s religious thought is, as this paper argues, the transformations in Winthrop’s Puritan thought, which could be revealed by a comparison of his merciful and loving image as expressed in his lay sermon "A Modell of Christian Charity" and his hostile and cruel attitudes toward Puritan New England women and American Indians as reflected in his journal. The underlying causes of such transformations, as this paper finds out, were deeply rooted in the cultural and social conditions in Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony.This thesis is intended to reveal the changes in John Winthrop’s Puritan thought from1630to1649as well as explore the underlying causes of the transformations in his Puritan thought. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach typical of intellectual history research, this study tries to integrate textual analysis with historical contextualization. Primary sources used in this paper include John Winthrop’s lay sermon "A Modell of Christian Charity", The Journal of John Winthrop,1630-1649and Winthrop Papers Vol. Ⅲ. Large amounts of reliable secondary sources are also used in the study.