John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress

Context

The English Civil War, a series of three armed conflicts (1641–1651), pitted not only Cavaliers (supporters of the king) against Roundheads (supporters of Parliament), or believers in absolutist monarchy by divine right against those who championed some form of constitutional government, it also pitted the official Anglican religious settlement against the religion of the Puritans (Protestants who preferred a more rigorous and Bible-centered faith). Nonconformists, or Dissenters, as Puritans who rejected the Anglican Church were known, formed the backbone of the parliamentary armies led by Oliver Cromwell, which eventually overthrew the monarchy. During the Commonwealth (1649–1660), while first Cromwell and then his son presided over the government, Dissenters were free to practice their religion as they chose.

Shortly after Cromwell’s death, England welcomed back Charles II (r. 1660–1685) and, with him, a renewed Anglican settlement. The Restoration government moved quickly and severely against Dissenters, demanding full allegiance to the Church of England, or the Anglican Church. Official Anglicanism had wealth, resources, facilities, and educated clergy. Dissenting churches made do without any of these advantages, and the costs of resistance were high enough that most Dissenters were drawn from the uneducated and poor working classes. Some became involved in political schemes to overthrow Charles or, later, his brother James II (r. 1685–1688). Eventually Dissenters would play a prominent role in ousting the Catholic James for the Protestant Mary and her Dutch Protestant husband William in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Other Dissenters would leave England for places of refuge such as the New World (as the Pilgrims had done before the English Civil War). But most remained at home and avoided politics as best they could, worshiping according to their beliefs and living with the consequences.

John Bunyan participated personally in all the great happenings of his time. Although he was not yet a committed Puritan, as a teenager he served in the Parliamentary army toward the end of the English Civil War. Later, during the Commonwealth, he experienced his conversion, and used the freedom of that era to become a Dissenting preacher. Like many other Noncomformists, he experienced persecution under the Restoration government. Bunyan himself spent more than twelve years in jail for preaching without a license. He died just before England’s Glorious Revolution allowed some measure of freedom to those who shared his religious beliefs. Yet the ideas about faith he taught in Pilgrim’s Progress, along with the general English experience on Nonconformity, would contribute toward shaping English views about freedom, government, and the intersection of church and state, not only in Britain but in the United States as well.