I’m single and live alone. Not having someone to watch my cat when I have to leave for up to a week is a problem.

😂

For their time, they actually weren't. They were much more progressive than their contemporaries in many ways. They weren't as cute and humble as the Quakers, a very small group, but compared to the Catholic or Anglican churches at the time, they were pretty chill. As Calvinists they believed in the democratization of religion and did away with the belief that you were closer to God through being born into a certain church hierarchy. As such they believed everyone should be taught to read and write so they could understand the bible, and that one was predestined for heaven so long as they led a good life. They also got rid of silly bullshit like the ornateness of the Catholic church. They believed in reinvesting money in their community rather than blowing off wealth on luxury items for personal enjoyment. These ideas arguably led to the fact America was never as hellbent on rigid class structure as Europe was in the 1600-1800s, and why many poor or middle class Americans were able to obtain an education long before this was possible in Europe. And while many of them had slaves, many of them like Judge Samuel Sewell also condemned slavery so much that it was probably some part of the reason slavery never took off in the north as much as it did in the south. Today Congregationalists and Unitarians, two of the most liberal Christian denominations in the country, are the direct descendants of the Puritan church in New England. Puritanism was more than just the Salem Witch Trials and Anne Hutchinson (which were obviously bad, but they aren't representative of the entire people in the MBC). Here's another good video from another historian on their history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Er7-VjX72w

And it was the 1600s, atrocities were taking place literally everywhere in the world by pretty much every group that had any power. It was a lot worse back in England under the rule of the Anglican church and king. Even today, atrocities are committed by Americans all the time, but anyone looking back 400 years later and acting like all Americans in 2023 were evil and corrupt would be seriously lacking in nuance and context.

No that was not why they fled. People don't really know much about actual Puritan history; they've just picked up all the misconceptions from modern day stories like the Crucible. They left England because they were loosely the various religious leaders that didn't want to conform to Anglican traditions that they felt were outdated and useless, like wearing ornate vestments to deliver sermons and doing the holy cross. Over here they did some tyrannical stuff which is famous, but they weren't a monolith or super organized identity and obviously things in every community were different. They didn't even call themselves Puritans; that name was given to them later in the 18th century. Here's a video discussing the circumstances of why they left England from an actual historian. And I'm not a conservative, I'm very liberal, I can just handle history without lashing out with misconceptions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPLP1T1RA_A&t=948s

We know. They also basically laid the foundation for everything that is today unique to New England, including being among the first in the world to establish mandated public education, which included girls. Historically, they're interesting and important to understanding how we got here.

To whoever downvoted, no this is not proselytizing and I’m not even a Christian. I just thought it was an interesting piece of New England history. Re-contextualizing, it still kind of works today if you remove the whole religious aspect. New Englanders are still privileged in many ways compared to the rest of the world, and it's good to remember that with privilege comes a duty to do good and be good humans. That's why I liked the quote.