The 17th Century: Puritans, Pilgrims and Escapism

The 17th Century: Puritans, Pilgrims and Escapism

Why is it that so much of the Puritanism and religious absolutism came out... of the 17th century? 

If the 16th century was the moment of shock, the dawning realization that the old world had collapsed, then the 17th century was a stubborn, desperate attempt to pretend that collapse hadn’t happened. It was the century of denial. Denial is the stage of grief that occurs after the initial shock has worn off. One may psychologically cope with the loss by denying it has occurred altogether. 

The trauma of the previous century,the world of fractured Christendom, scientific upheaval, and global expansion, was too much for many to bear. And so the 1600s became a battleground not just of swords and guns, but of worldviews. This was a time when society, like a grieving person refusing to believe their loved one is gone, tried to resurrect the past or freeze time where it had last made sense. Welcome to the Denial Century. The 17th century saw the Western world peeking through the cracks, and society responded by shoving as much of the old worldview as possible.

This is the century where people started realizing the universe might be cold, indifferent, and much bigger than we thought... so they doubled down on absolutism. People knew they couldn't explain thunder without science anymore, but believe God definitely gave divine right to the King of France. This was the century that gave birth to the idea of the divine right of kings. During the 17th century, the concept of the divine right of kings became a cornerstone of political thought and monarchical governance across much of Europe. This doctrine held that monarchs derived their authority directly from God, not from any earthly authority, such as a parliament or the people. Rooted in medieval theology, the divine right theory was both a spiritual and political justification for absolute rule. It became a powerful tool used by monarchs to solidify their authority, suppress dissent, and centralize power. According to this doctrine, the king was God’s appointed representative on Earth and was accountable only to God. As such, rebellion against the king was not just a political crime but a sin against divine order. You can see how this doctrine was developed during the modern age, since during this time people in Europe underwent massive transformations: the Reformation, the rise of centralized states, the printing press, growing literacy, and the beginnings of secular political thought. In this context, the divine right theory was sharpened and weaponized as a response to the growing threats to monarchical power...threats that modernity itself was producing. Modernity has introduced new political philosophies questioning hierarchical power. These ideas, still in their infancy in the 17th century, implied that people had the right to challenge unjust rulers. Divine right was used to head off these ideas before they could gain traction. The printing press and growing literacy rates enabled public opinion to emerge as a political force. Monarchs began to see the value in controlling the narrative of their legitimacy. The divine right of kings was broadcast in sermons, official literature, court rituals, and even art and architecture.

The most iconic embodiment of divine right monarchy was Louis XIV or the "Sun King" of France. His famous assertion, “I am the state”, captured the essence of absolutist rule. Though this exact phrase may have not been from him, it reflected the monarch's belief that all state power rested in his power. Louis XIV, influenced by his court theologian Bossuet, claimed that his authority was sanctioned by God and used his power to centralize power in the monarchy, weakening the influence of nobles, suppress religious dissent, especially through the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which had granted toleration to French Protestants, and control the nobility through court rituals at Versailles, keeping them politically passive while reinforcing his image as divinely appointed.

As Europe transitioned from feudal societies to more centralized, bureaucratic states, kings wanted to undermine the traditional powers of the nobility, the church, and regional parliaments. By claiming that their power came from God, monarchs like Louis XIV could assert authority over all aspects of government and culture without needing consent from any sort of people. Royal bureaucracies expanded under this justification, often staffed by loyal professionals rather than hereditary elites. 

Galileo was being told to shut up and look through his telescope quietly. You had witch hunts rage on even harder in some places, even as people were beginning to understand physics. Isaac Newton was literally figuring out gravity while Puritans were sailing to the New World to avoid dancing.  Society and the state were essentially arguing that we’re not modern. No way. Not us. We still bleed people to cure illness and believe bad weather means someone’s a witch. We are NORMAL. Even in science and philosophy, thinkers like Thomas Hobbes responded to uncertainty by trying to prove a strong government could anchor society.  The world was unraveling, but people couldn’t yet accept it. And so they tried, violently, fearfully, zealously to drag it back. It was a century of spiritual counterrevolutions, of religious totalitarianism, of moral absolutism, and of retreat.

This is not a coincidence and it's not random that both the Puritans and the Amish trace their spiritual and cultural roots to the 17th century. These groups weren’t just religious movements; they were rejections. Rejections of pluralism, of religious relativism, of expanding scientific worldviews, of creeping modernity. They represented an emotional, theological refusal to accept that the medieval Christian world that is unified, certain, hierarchical...was dead.

The Puritans, for instance, weren’t simply trying to “purify” the Church of England. They were trying to claw the world back to a place of clarity and moral order. Their rigid social structures, apocalyptic tone, and exile to the New World were less about exploration and more about escape. Escape from modernity, from corruption, from ambiguity. The Amish, too, arose from Anabaptist roots during this era. Their rejection of technology, central government, and modern fashion wasn’t just aesthetic but it was theological denial, a literal walking away from the world as it was becoming. 

And then there’s Guy Fawkes, whose 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament wasn’t just terrorism but it was a fanatical attempt to roll the clock back, to erase the Reformation, and restore a Catholic monarchy. Fawkes didn’t just want power, he wanted to undo an entire century of ideological change. He wanted a divine right of kings. A pope backed world. A system where truth and power were one and the same. The bomb wasn’t just aimed at politicians... it was aimed at modernity itself. 

This denial wasn’t limited to religious movements. The Thirty Years’ War was one of the deadliest conflicts in European history and it was a massive, collective refusal to accept that religious unity was gone. Millions died so rulers could enforce theological conformity that was already slipping through their fingers. 

You can even see the contrast between the stages of grief when you see the colonization of the Americas in the 17th century compared to the colonization of the Americas in the 16th century. The 16th century colonization by Spain was driven largely by shock: a burst of energy fueled by discovery, gold, and conquest. The Spanish colonization of the 16th century was violent, and rooted in the shock of discovery. With Columbus's voyages triggering the Age of Exploration, Spain raced across the Atlantic not just for territory, but for gold, glory, and God. The conquest of the Aztecs by Hernán Cortés and the Incas by Francisco Pizarro were driven by the astonishment that entire empires existed across the ocean that are rich, organized, and ripe for plunder. This wave of colonization was characterized by aggressive conquest and extraction and awe and ambition toward the unknown. It was fueled by shock, a visceral response to finding a New World that radically altered Europe's understanding of the globe. 

The 17th century English colonization, on the other hand, especially the settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth, was shaped not by shock, but by denial. Rather than expanding boldly into a new world with open eyes, many English settlers were escaping a collapsing old one. And in this light, English colonization becomes less about building a new world than recreating an imagined past. By the time the English started serious colonization efforts in the early 17th century, the tone had changed. The psychological stage had shifted from the shock of discovery to the denial of a crumbling world. England was not yet a major imperial power. At home, it was consumed by religious conflict, economic hardship, and political instability. So when the English sailed west, they were not just seeking wealth. They were seeking escape from religious division, from social decay, and from modernity. 

Founded in 1607, Jamestown was England's first permanent colony. While its motives were more commercial than spiritual, the mindset behind its founding still fits the 17th century denial framework. The Virginia Company and the settlers were trying to recreate the old world order in the New World. The colony was structured with class hierarchies, titled leaders, and gentlemen who expected deference and leisure. The settlers weren’t prepared for the harsh realities of wilderness survival, because they were not truly pioneering, rather they were trying to replant English society on foreign soil. Even in the face of starvation, disease, and conflict with Native peoples, the colonists clung to their class distinctions and assumptions of superiority which were behaviors born from a refusal to accept that this was not England. Jamestown wasn’t built for a new world, it was built as an outpost of denial, a fantasy of continuity in a world that was slipping away.

If Jamestown was an economic and social replica of Old England, Plymouth was a spiritual retreat from it. The Pilgrims who arrived in 1620 were not adventurers, they were exiles, driven by a desire to escape a religious landscape that no longer made sense to them. But this wasn’t just separatism. It was escapism. The Pilgrims didn’t come to create something radically new, they came to preserve something old, a vision of pure, unified Christianity that they believed had already died in England. Their colony was intentionally austere, hierarchical, and theocratic. They rejected pluralism, ambiguity, and the cultural drift of modern England. The Pilgrims weren’t expanding modernity, they were fleeing from it, trying to build a miniature, isolated world where the 16th century rupture could be spiritually reversed. That’s not progress: that’s denial. That’s grief.

The English colonization of the 17th century both Jamestown and Plymouth was not simply a response to Spain’s successes. It was an emotional response to the spiritual and cultural unraveling of Europe itself. Rather than confronting the ambiguity, pluralism, and uncertainty of the modern world, the colonists tried to build walled gardens, both literal and theological, where the past could live on. Their ships did not just carry people. They carried grief, fear, and a deep refusal to accept that history was moving on without them. And in doing so, they turned colonization into not just an act of expansion but an act of denial.

I have a very difficult time imagining a group like the Puritans or the Pilgrims emerging out of any other century and I think it's because making an entire religious movement based on bargaining or depression or shock or anger does not make a very good escapist movement. Denial is the only escapist stage of grief. It is the only stage that has the most broader appeal to it even when you are outside of it which is why it is an escape into an ideal world. A collective zeitgeist sense as in the idea of strict hierarchies, the idea of one collective pure religion, the idea of identity that came from religion, community, and divine authority, the idea that the universe was meaningful, the idea that everything had a place in a larger cosmic design. These are all ideals, but we'd all like them to be absolutely true, myself included, it is tempting to just believe in the Puritan or absolutist world that is simple and orderly, make sense it's how we view how things ought to be, but that’s not reality and reality is a lot more complicated. 

Nowhere is this collective denial more vividly embodied than in the English Civil War. Both the Royalist Cavaliers under King Charles I and the Parliamentary Roundheads, especially the Puritan factions, can be seen as participants in a deep psychological and cultural refusal to accept that the old world had changed irreversibly. The century following the Reformation was defined by an emotional and theological refusal to move forward. It was as said before the stubborn, desperate attempt to pretend that collapse hadn’t happened. And in England, that desperation erupted into civil war. Both sides of the conflict, in their own way, represented a version of denial, clinging to ideological visions of a world that was already slipping away.

King Charles I epitomized royal absolutism and the doctrine of the divine right of kings. In a world of growing literacy, early secularism, and political participation, Charles doubled down on the belief that monarchy was sacred, inviolable, and accountable only to God. His resistance to Parliament, his imposition of unpopular taxes, and his attempt to enforce religious conformity through the Anglican Church were not simply political miscalculations,  they were the actions of a man refusing to accept that the era of unquestioned kingship was fading. This absolutist posture was rooted in denial. The notion that Parliament could share or even check power was intolerable to Charles. The king sought uniformity in worship, despite the proliferation of dissenting sects and Puritan reforms. While early Enlightenment ideas questioned divine authority, Charles clung to beliefs in medieval kingship. To Charles, conceding any of this would have been to admit that the world had changed and that the monarchy must change with it. Instead, he chose war.

On the other side of the battlefield were the Puritans, radical Protestants who sought to "purify" the Church of England from within. But their mission was not merely reformist.  Puritanism was not just a religious movement; it was a theological retreat. A movement born of grief. The Puritans longed for a world of clarity, purity, and moral order, a world that was rapidly being overtaken by relativism, pluralism, and scientific discovery. Their strict social codes, emphasis on predestination, and eventual founding of colonies in the New World were acts of escape. Of denial. During the Civil War, this manifested in many ways. Many Puritan leaders envisioned a godly commonwealth governed by Biblical law, a literal attempt to roll back time to theocratic purity. Puritans smashed stained glass windows, banned theater, and outlawed dancing, not because these were trivial moral issues, but because they symbolized modernity, ambiguity, and corruption. There were even some Puritans that believed they were ushering in the end times, a spiritual final chapter that would wipe away modern confusion and restore divine order. Like the Cavaliers, the Puritans were not moving forward; they were trying to rewind history.

What makes the English Civil War so emblematic of the 17th century’s “denial stage” is that both major sides were seeking to restore a lost world, just different versions of it. The Cavaliers wanted to restore medieval monarchy and hierarchical order. The Roundheads wanted to restore a purified, pre modern religious society. Neither was grappling with the full reality of a rapidly changing Europe. In this sense, the war was not just a battle of swords or theology, but a psychological civil war, a clash between competing dreams of a world that no longer existed. This double negative speaks volumes. Both Royalists and Puritans were united in one thing: a refusal to accept that they were now part of a new world. Whether through royal absolutism or puritanical zeal, both fought to freeze time or reverse it entirely. The tragedy is that neither could succeed. Charles I lost his head. The Puritan Commonwealth collapsed into authoritarianism. And the monarchy would be restored again. And history marched on. 

The Western World wasn’t yet ready to accept the modern world. So it dug in its heels and tried to stop history itself but soon realized that while the simple life of divine rights and religious purity is nice and non challenging, let’s not get stuck in it. It may be a good memory but it is not our home, it is just a step on the journey. 

Next time, I will tackle the anger era of the 18th Century where it was becoming obvious the old way of life was fading and people were getting really, really pissed off as hell and wanted to burn it all down. 

Our stages of grief continue…