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In other words, salvation led Puritans not to a private practice of Christian spirituality but to a public expression that made itself felt in the law of the land. They often noted God was a God of order, and Puritan social order placed the husband above the wife, the pastor over the church, and the governor over the people. When the Massachusetts government charged Anne Hutchinson with sedition, they accused her of breaking the fifth commandment, playing the part rather of "a Husband than a Wife, and a preacher than a Hearer; and a Magistrate than a Subject."

Letter of the Law
So what did Puritan law in seventeenth-century America look like? Regarding marriage, the law forbade spouses to live apart for any length of time—Massachusetts required that if a man arriving there left his wife in England, she must sail with the next ship. If she did not, the courts enforced his return. Massachusetts law also forbade spouses from striking each other and imposed stiff fines on abusive husbands. Adultery was a capital offense, though most offenders suffered only whippings, brandings, wearing the letter "A," and standing at the gallows with their rope about their neck in a kind of symbolic execution.

As both the physical and spiritual guardians of their children, parents in Puritan New England carried a heavy responsibility. When they were derelict, the law stepped in. Massachusetts and Connecticut both held that if children became "rude, stubborn, and unruly," the state could take them away from their families and "place them with some masters for years, boys till they come to twenty-one, and girls eighteen years of age." Intent that children might find their "calling" in life, Puritan law required that children learn the catechism. And the Massachusetts court established "reading schools" for children because it was "one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures."

While Puritans did not, on the whole, own slaves, they did often buy "indentured" servants, or people willing to work without pay, on average, seven years to pay back their debts. If a servant stole from his master, the courts punished him severely, most often lengthening his servitude by many years. In one case, the judge sentenced servant Henry Stevens to 21 years in service to the master he stole from. In addition, the courts often doubled or tripled the amount servants had to pay. If a servant tried to run away, the law in Massachusetts allowed the magistrate to "presse men and boats … at the publick charge to pursue such persons by Sea or Land and bring them back by force of Arms."

Are They Really Comparable?
All of this might serve to perpetuate the image of the dour, repressive Puritan that secularists are so fond of portraying. With the separation of church and state firmly fixed in the modern American psyche, the nation has completely abandoned the Puritan experiment to establish God's kingdom on earth. But is it really fair to equate Puritan models of church and state with Islamic sharia?

The New Catholic Encyclopedia describes Islam as a "lay theocracy." The description is apt, for while the state and mosque may be separate institutions, both answer to the supreme law laid down in the Qur'an. The case could be made that Puritan New England operated in a similar fashion, fastening all juridical decisions to biblical injunctions. The Encyclopedia's description of sharia's purpose might apply in both cases: "In its broadest sense, the law encompasses articles of belief, regulating man's relation to God (religion), as well as rights and obligations regulating man's relation to his fellow man (law)."

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January (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48