The Problem of Inequality for Puritans

It’s that time of year when New England muscles into the spotlight, showing off Patriots and scarlet maples, clear skies and Salem-witch shenanigans.

But showing off–and the way that exacerbates anxieties of economic inequality—is not the New England way, at least not from the region’s seventeenth-century colonial beginnings. It should be said straightaway that the builders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were for inequality. The settlers we call New England Puritans assumed and approved distinctions between those of higher and lower condition, flowing from one’s family, work, manners, education, and property.  After all, the opening gambit of John Winthrop’s well known “A Model of Christian Charity,” an address most familiar for calling the colony to be “as a city on a hill,” affirms that “in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in submission.”