Wayward Puritans

To Erikson, the Puritan ethos was based on a simpler and more direct way of seeing and experiencing one's relationship with God. This world view "suggested revival more than reform" (46), although there were elements of reform involved. The Puritan ethos saw the Church as an institution which was an obstacle to be changed if the individual ever hoped to have a direct experience of God. According to this ethos, the Puritan

longed for an intimate experience of grace . . . and . . . he felt frustrated in this design by the strict formalities of the Church. . . . The Puritan wanted to restore the Church to the simplicity it had known in the days of the Apostles, . . . [to] the primitive core of Christianity (47).

However, as stripped down to its most simple center as the Puritan ethos might have been, some authority was needed to replace the Church. That authority was the Bible itself, upon which the Puritan ethos was based. The Puritans "regarded the Bible as a complete guide to Christian living, a digest of all the statutes and regulations necessary for human government" (47).

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mmunity to exist---it enables the powers-that-be in a community to say who is an accepted and approved member of the community, according to his or her behavior, and who is unaccepted and disapproved by the community. Without a definition of deviance and a concept of criminal behavior backed by the law and the courts, the community will not be clearly enough defined to have its own identity. The study of Puritan "crime waves" is a study in the sociology of deviance because it shows how important the process and ritual of deviance is to society in general, and to Puritan society specifically. "Crime waves" occurred in Puritan society when the leaders of that society felt the need "to clarify their position in the world as a whole,to redefine the boundaries which set New England apart as a new experiment in living" (67). Crime rates tell about the incidence of crime in a community, and also about the level of vigilance in a community with respect to perceiving and reporting crime. The Puritans employed means of "crime" reporting which encouraged neighbors and even family members to report one another to the authorities. This was not merely a matter of keeping order in society. To the Puritans, all social activity was related direct
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