The church members were the only ones allowed to vote on town issues and they were believed to be spared from damnation by God. Being able to attend church was considered a privilege, but attending Puritan church was hours of tedious praying and singing. The services were strict and disciplined, almost as if it was a punishment. Everyone is attendance had to be able to read obviously, so education was a staple of early American Puritan life. The Puritans formed schools and colleges to teach religion and reading. The entire existence of life for them was to be the perfect Puritan. The unrelenting pressure of Puritan life did provide for quite a few challenges in its first 100 years.
My feeling of Puritanism would be to say, Puritan life was in essence living under an angry parent who nit picks your entire life. Looking back it's amazing that there weren't more challenges to the Puritan religion being that if you were "damned" under predestination and not allowed in church, then why would you care to still try and lead the perfect life? This could be part of the problem that the Puritan Movement faced, not too mention the fact that the rich religious people were getting wealthier while the poor got poorer under Puritanism. One of the biggest failures of Puritanism would have to be Oliver Cromwell and his influence on Puritan culture in America. From other studies I have done before I know of Cromwell being an incredible military leader in England before coming to America. His strong military background would naturally have lead to a lot of his decisions he made for how the Puritan government would be run. Cromwell was a firm believer in the idea of a theocracy where the religious officials controlled voting and government operations. The "elect" were able to vote and make changes while all the rest had very little say if any at all. This notion did not sit well with many of the Puritans for the fact that it too closely resembled the same government they fled from in coming to America.
