The Influence of Puritans on the Attitudes of America America has been playing an important role in our world since World War II. Although its history is only about three hundred years long, it still has great effects on many aspects on other countries. Unlike most other people, America is primarily a nation of immigrants. Their ancestors emigrated from many parts of the globe. This greatly influenced the ideas and values on which American are based. One group of the most influential immigrants is Puritans. Puritanism was an important factor in the course of forming of American culture and American spirit. Some Puritan beliefs have deeply influenced the attitudes of Americans towards work and success. Its attitude towards the Bible has also deeply influenced the forming of characters of American education.
(Ⅰ)Puritans influenced the attitudes of Americans towards work.
In Puritan beliefs, the value of work is of great importance, and Puritans appreciate it not only for the economic benefits but also the rewards the work brings were regarded as signs of God’s love. It is true that Americans as a whole work hard. Work is everything for them. In American’s eyes, working hard is the important way to success. However, as the time goes by, something has changed. Though
self-discipline, thrift are the core view of Puritans, Americans tend to spend more time to relax themselves to relieve the large pressure their work has brought. They spend more time and money in traveling, camping, hunting, watching sports, going to movies, watching television and reading newspapers and magazines than any other people in the world.
(Ⅱ)Puritans influenced the attitudes of Americans towards success.
In 17th century, a group of people thought that the Church of England was too Catholic and they wanted to purify the Church. However their beliefs were heretical to the Church of England, so they had to leave there because they were religiously persecuted. In 1620, one hundred and two people reached North America and began new life there from then on. They hoped to build a city upon a community, which was equal free, and without persecution. Puritans, as immigrants, there was the determination of the immigrant to gain in the new world what had been denied to him in the old, and the part of his children an urge to throw off the immigrant onus by still more success and still more rise in a fluid, classless society. Brothers did not compete within the family for the favor of the parents as in Europe, but strove for success in the outer world, along paths of their own choosing. The English anthropologist, Geoffrey Gorer, sees the whole situation in Freudian terms. Europe is the father rejected by every immigrant who turned his back on his own culture in order to make a new life in America. The immigrant's struggle for success never ends, because there is no limit to the possible goal. The second generation child, in turn, rejects the alien parents because they cannot measure up to American standards. The only way he can soften the blow is to achieve a still greater success. All over America the lawyers, doctors, professors and politicians with Italian, Irish, German or Polish names testify to the urgency of this drive. Not to strive, not to take advantage of the opportunities in such a world, not to succeed where success was so available －these things
naturally became a sort of crime against the state. To develop the resources of a new country required energetic people, bent upon using their energies －not only for the rewards that would result to themselves, but even more important, to the community. So material success in the United States is not looked upon as selfishness. Its results are seen to have communal value.
(Ⅲ) Puritans influenced the attitudes of Americans towards education.
Puritans believe in the merits of education. They hold that all men should read Bible and they should change the world by knowledge. Americans values education a lot, American governments
invest a large amount money on education. American education is regarded as the best in the whole world, without any doubt, the Puritans play an important role in it.
America is an immigrated country, so people’s values are diverse, which makes this nation have many unique features. As for Puritans, its immigration culture has shaped the country’s developments as well as people’s values.。
