Individual and Community in Early Colonial New England
The New England colonies, largely settled by Puritans and other English Protestant "protesters," created a structure in which the subjugation of the individual to the community was a key characteristic. Gary Nash (2000) commented that the Puritans who settled this region were deeply disturbed by the growing emphasis on individualism that had emerged in England. Individualism as a mode of behavior was regarded as threatening to the concept of community -- of people bound together by obligations and responsibilities. The Puritans and other groups that engaged in the risky and uncertain colonization of the New England region regarded this emphasis on individualism as nothing more than a frightening vision of anti-community (Nash, 2000).
The communities of early colonial New England were covenanted communities based on mutual consent (Norton, Katzman, Escott, Chudacoff, Paterson, and Tuttle (1990). The notion of the covenant reflected the belief that the individual was subordinate to the community, just as a wife and children were subordinate to the authority of the patriarch within the family unit. Church and state were intertwined throughout the early New England colonies and little dissent was permitted. Consequently, as Norton, et al, (1990) have pointed out, individual freedom was subordinate to the group and the ability of an individual to chart his or her own course in life was limited.
John Winthrop, who served as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for nine years, authored a sermon titled "A Modell of Christian Charity" in which the basic principles of the Covenant were delineated. Specifically, Winthrop (2003, 1) described the community to be created by the Puritans would be constructed to do God's work in the world, simultaneously recognizing that all men have need of one another and must be "all knit more nearly together in the Bond of brotherly affe...