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Puritan
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In the 1660s the Puritan settlements in the New World were confronted with the challenge posed by an aging first generation. Those who created the colonies were the most fervent in their religious beliefs, and as their numbers began to decline, so did the membership of churches. The demographics of the churches changed because fewer men were joining. The resulting decrease in male religious participation was a problem for the established church (that is, the colony’s official church for which people were taxed and which they were expected to attend), since men were the ones with secular power. If the men who wielded secular power in the colony were absent from the church, its legitimacy would be undermined. As early as 1660, women constituted the great majority of church members.
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Built in 1729 as a Puritan meeting house, Old South has been an important gathering place for nearly three centuries. The Old South congregation built their first wooden meeting house in 1669, but overcrowding became a problem and the congregation tore it down to build a new, more spacious brick meeting house in 1729. Members of Old South’s congregation have included African-American slave and poet Phillis Wheatley, patriot leader Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin.
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Originally used to describe a third-century sect of strictly legalistic heretics, the word "Puritan" is now applied unevenly to a number of Protestant churches from the late 16th century to the present. Puritans did not originally use the term for themselves. It was a term of abuse that first surfaced in the 1560s. "Precisemen" and "Precisions" were other early antagonistic terms for Puritans who preferred to call themselves "the godly." The word "Puritan" ... always referred to a type of religious belief, rather than a particular religious sect. To reflect that the term encompasses a variety of ecclesiastical bodies and theological positions, scholars today increasingly prefer to use the term as a common noun or adjective: "puritan" rather than "Puritan."
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The strength of Puritan character and life lay in prayer and meditation. In this practice the spirit of prayer was regarded as of first importance and the best form of prayer, for living prayer is the characteristic of genuine spirituality. Yet prayer is ... vocal and may therefore on occasions be written. Consequently in the Puritan tradition there are many written prayers and meditations which constitute an important corpus of inspiring devotional literature. Too often ex tempore prayer lacks variety, order and definiteness. The reason for this lies partly in a neglect of due preparation.
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Puritan phonographs were high-priced, often bulbous-sided floor models fitted with an odd saxophone-shaped horn that wrapped around the record-storage bin to open at the cabinet bottom, near floor level. Although touted as "The Long-Horn Sensation of the Phonograph Industry," these bulky machines produced rather anemic sound. Public reaction seems to have been lukewarm despite a determined marketing effort. A news brief in the August 15, 1919 issue of the Talking Machine World noted that one Charles Orth had placed 1,000 Puritan billboards along 175 miles of highway in Milwaukee County. Judging from the relative scarcity of Puritan products, his efforts were less than effective. In the early 1920s, Puritan machines were ... sold under several custom and department brand names, including J. L. Hudson (Detroit).
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Like some of Reformed churches on the European continent, Puritan reforms were typified by a minimum of ritual and decoration and by an unambiguous emphasis on preaching. Like the early church fathers, they eliminated the use of musical instruments in their worship services, for various theological and practical reasons. Outside of church... Puritans were quite fond of music and encouraged it in certain ways.
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Puritan