It has been more that two hundred and twenty five years since the nation was declared independent and almost four hundred years since the first English settlement was founded. Here in this century politicians, activists, the media and normal citizens cry out for a separation of church and state. Although we may see this as the same cry that the first pilgrim that settled here had, it is different. But first one must understand that we as Americans almost did not exist. Knowing that Columbus had discovered a New World, the Spanish did not fully take advantage of the land. Only through the early descriptive writings of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583, did interest first surface about the New Found Land.1 Upon his return to England, he published a small pamphlet that bean interest in the Americas.
In 1534 King Henry VIII formed what is known as the Church of England. It had been established as a national church, one controlled by Englishman and free from the Pope and Roman Catholicism. What King Henry had envisioned was a church that all of England could gather in this bringing religious unity to his land. What he did not see through the brake from Rome was not far enough. Unlike today where we see people saying that the church has no place in state affairs, the people of England were crying that the state has no place in the church. Many people had hoped to recover what William Bradford described as Christianities "primitive order, liberate and bewtie".2 The Puritans and the Pilgrims alike want the ritualistic order of service, with their pre-made forms of prayer and pageantry. They were saying that such things as crosses and stained glass windows were wrong because they made the eye wonder away from God's word as it was spoken.
Being a people that firmly believed that Bible was the revealed word of God, the Pilgrims and Puritans could not condone the Church of England. They believed that the word of God should rule the lives of men and women not King or Popes, not even bishops of the Church.