What is the difference between a separatist and a reformer

The newly created Church of England was similar to Catholicism in every way, except instead of the Pope carrying divine authority, it was the British Crown. One group of farmers in Northern England, known disparagingly as the Separatists, began to worship in secret, knowing full well that it was treasonous.

Pilgrim leader William Bradford, later the Governor of Plymouth Colony, reads the Mayflower Compact on board the Mayflower off the coast of what became known as Massachusetts.

Pilgrim leader William Bradford aboard the Mayflower. The Separatists first fled to the Netherlands, a wealthy maritime superpower that was far more religiously diverse and tolerant. They decided that the only way to live as true English Christians was to separate even further and establish their own colony in the New World.

Not all of the Separatists could make the cross-Atlantic journey, including their spiritual leader, Reverend John Robinson. Writing years later in Of Plymouth Plantation , William Bradford recounted the tearful farewell at the docks in Delftshaven, where a ship would take the Separatists to meet the Mayflower in London. Roughly half of the passengers on the Mayflower died that first winter from starvation, exposure and disease.

With the help of the native Wampanoag people, the Pilgrims learned to fish and farm their new lands, resulting in the famous feast of Thanksgiving attended by natives and new arrivals in The Puritans were members of a religious reform movement that arose within the Church of England in the late 16th century.

So who, then, were the Puritans? While the Separatists believed that the only way to live according to Biblical precepts was to leave the Church of England entirely, the Puritans thought they could reform the church from within. The biggest difference between the Separatists and the Puritans is that the Puritans believed they could live out the congregational way in their local churches without abandoning the larger Church of England.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, Baptists found the religious freedom they sought, at the beginning in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, but then elsewhere. Their ranks were enlarged by converts from Congregationalism, but also from other Nonconformist sects. In addition, they embraced the movement of religious revival during the Second Great Awakening, and found an enthusiastic mass of converts as they spread down the Appalachians into the South and West.

Baptists played a crucial role in influencing the framers of the Constitution to insure freedom of religion and conscience in the new Republic, and to promote the idea of a "wall of separation" between church and state. The highly autonomous nature of a Baptist congregation, recognizing no higher "worldly" authority over the religious beliefs and practices of its members, proved to be a good fit in many ways with the democratic, populist character of America.

It also appealed to African Americans, who could found their own churches with little religious interference from others.

William H. Mark R. Bell, Apocalypse How? Baptist Origins Question. Bibliography William H. Bill J. About the Author. Mary, a Catholic whose first husband had been the King of France, was implicated in conspiracies against Elizabeth's continued Protestant rule.

Brewster's mentor, the secretary of state, became a scapegoat in the aftermath of Mary's beheading. Brewster himself survived the crisis, but he was driven from the glittering court in London, his dreams of worldly success dashed.

His disillusionment with the politics of court and church may have led him in a radical direction—he fatefully joined the congregation of All Saints Church in Babworth, a few miles down the road from Scrooby. There the small band of worshipers likely heard the minister, Richard Clyfton, extolling St. Paul's advice, from Second Corinthians, , to cast off the wicked ways of the world: "Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean. Separatists wanted a better way, a more direct religious experience, with no intermediaries between them and God as revealed in the Bible.

They disdained bishops and archbishops for their worldliness and corruption and wanted to replace them with a democratic structure led by lay and clerical elders and teachers of their own choosing.

They opposed any vestige of Catholic ritual, from the sign of the cross to priests decked out in vestments. They even regarded the exchanging of wedding rings as a profane practice. A young orphan, William Bradford, was also drawn into the Separatist orbit during the country's religious turmoil.

Bradford, who in later life would become the second governor of Plymouth Colony, met William Brewster around , when Brewster was about 37 and Bradford 12 or The older man became the orphan's mentor, tutoring him in Latin, Greek and religion. Together they would travel the seven miles from Scrooby to Babworth to hear Richard Clyfton preach his seditious ideas—how everyone, not just priests, had a right to discuss and interpret the Bible; how parishioners should take an active part in services; how anyone could depart from the official Book of Common Prayer and speak directly to God.

In calmer times, these assaults on convention might have passed with little notice. But these were edgy days in England. Two years later, decades of Catholic maneuvering and subversion had culminated in the Gunpowder Plot, when mercenary Guy Fawkes and a group of Catholic conspirators came very close to blowing up Parliament and with them the Protestant king. Against this turmoil, the Separatists were eyed with suspicion and more.

Anything smacking of subversion, whether Catholic or Protestant, provoked the ire of the state. He meant it. In , the Church introduced canons that enforced a sort of spiritual test aimed at flushing out nonconformists. Among other things, the canons declared that anyone rejecting the practices of the established church excommunicated themselves and that all clergymen had to accept and publicly acknowledge the royal supremacy and the authority of the Prayer Book.

It also reaffirmed the use of church vestments and the sign of the cross in baptism. Ninety clergymen who refused to embrace the new canons were expelled from the Church of England. Brewster and his fellow Separatists now knew how dangerous it had become to worship in public; from then on, they would hold only secret services in private houses, such as Brewster's residence, Scrooby Manor. His connections helped to prevent his immediate arrest. Brewster and other future Pilgrims would also meet quietly with a second congregation of Separatists on Sundays in Old Hall, a timbered black-and-white structure in Gainsborough.

Here under hand-hewn rafters, they would listen to a Separatist preacher, John Smyth, who, like Richard Clyfton before him, argued that congregations should be allowed to pick and ordain their own clergy and worship should not be confined only to prescribed forms sanctioned by the Church of England.

Allan leads me upstairs to the tower roof, where the entire town lay spread at our feet. So what they were doing here was completely illegal. They were holding their own services. They were discussing the Bible, a big no-no. But they had the courage to stand up and be counted. By , however, it had become clear that these clandestine congregations would have to leave the country if they wanted to survive. The Separatists began planning an escape to the Netherlands, a country that Brewster had known from his younger, more carefree days.

For his beliefs, William Brewster was summoned to appear before his local ecclesiastical court at the end of that year for being "disobedient in matters of Religion. Brewster did not appear in court or pay the fine. But immigrating to Amsterdam was not so easy: under a statute passed in the reign of Richard II, no one could leave England without a license, something Brewster, Bradford and many other Separatists knew they would never be granted.

So they tried to slip out of the country unnoticed. They had arranged for a ship to meet them at Scotia Creek, where its muddy brown waters spool toward the North Sea, but the captain betrayed them to the authorities, who clapped them in irons. They were taken back to Boston in small open boats. On the way, the local catchpole officers, as the police were known, "rifled and ransacked them, searching to their shirts for money, yea even the women further than became modesty," William Bradford recalled.

According to Bradford, they were bundled into the town center where they were made into "a spectacle and wonder to the multitude which came flocking on all sides to behold them.

After their arrest, the would-be escapees were brought before magistrates. Legend has it that they were held in the cells at Boston's Guildhall, a 14th-century building near the harbor. The cells are still here: claustrophobic, cage-like structures with heavy iron bars. American tourists, I am told, like to sit inside them and imagine their forebears imprisoned as martyrs.

But historian Malcolm Dolby doubts the story. So you are not talking about anything other than one-person cells. If they were held under any sort of arrest, it must have been house arrest against a bond, or something of that nature," he explains. But I don't think it happened. Bradford, however, described that after "a month's imprisonment," most of the congregation were released on bail and allowed to return to their homes.

Some families had nowhere to go. In anticipation of their flight to the Netherlands, they had given up their houses and sold their worldly goods and were now dependent on friends or neighbors for charity. Some rejoined village life.

If Brewster continued his rebellious ways, he faced prison, and possibly torture, as did his fellow Separatists. So in the spring of , they organized a second attempt to flee the country, this time from Killingholme Creek, about 60 miles up the Lincolnshire coast from the site of the first, failed escape bid.

The women and children traveled separately by boat from Scrooby down the River Trent to the upper estuary of the River Humber. Brewster and the rest of the male members of the congregation traveled overland.

They were to rendezvous at Killingholme Creek, where a Dutch ship, contracted out of Hull, would be waiting. Things went wrong again. Women and children arrived a day early.