Friday, April 19, 2019

Puritans / Pilgrims on "Easter"

"Easter was not popular with the Puritans or the Pilgrim settlers in America.

Neither Puritans or Pilgrims had use for ceremonies associated with religious festivals invented in either pagan history, or reinvented by Roman Catholicism.
In actuality, here in the America’s only after the bloodshed Civil War did Easterbegin again” to be accepted. As Walsh states in his “Holy Time and Sacred Space in Puritan New England” (Walsh, American Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 1980), pp. 79-95)
The New England [Pilgrims] like Reformed Protestants everywhere, rejected traditional Roman Catholic and Anglican beliefs and practices that organized time around consecrated churches, railed-off altars, holy shrines, miraculous wells, and that supposed the flow of time to be an irregular succession of holy days and sacred seasons. The Reformers argued, what was intended as a crutch for others had become a cast for Christians who willingly accepted the obligation of constant worship. They for whom all days are holy can have no holidays.” (See, for example, The Sermons of John Calvin Upon the Fifth Book of Moses called Deuteronomie, trans. Arthur Golding (London: H. Middleton, 1583)."
APM
Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered,
and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.
Acts 17:3