American history: protestants and puritans; the first colonies
Protestantism is one of the four major divisions within Christianity, together with the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, and the Anglican Church traditions. The term is most closely tied to those groups that separated from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Protestants refer to specific Protestant groupings of churches that share in common foundational doctrines and the name of their groups as "denominations". They are differently named parts of the whole "church"; Protestants reject the Catholic doctrine that it is the one true church. Though "the New England Way" evolved into a relatively minor system of organizing religious experience within the broader American scene, its central themes recur in the related religious communities of Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and a whole range of evangelical Protestants. The word "Puritan" was originally an alternate term for "Cathar" and was a pejorative term used to characterize them as extremists similar to the Cathari of France. Although the Puritans were under the influence of radicals critical of Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva, they seldom cooperated with Presbyterians in England. Instead, many advocated for separation from all other Christians, in favor of gathered churches under autonomous Puritan control.Puritanism, however, had a more significant persistence in American life than as the religion of black-frocked caricatures. It survived, perhaps most conspicuously, in the transmuted secular form of self-reliance and political localism that became, by the Age of Enlightenment, virtually the definition of Americanism. And in its bequest of intellectual and moral rigor to the New England mind, it established what was arguably the central strand of American cultural life until the twentieth century. Puritanism in thе English colonies Virginia A decade before the landing of the Mayflower (1620) in Massachusetts, a strong Puritan influence was established in Virginia. Leaders of the Virginia who settled Jamestown in 1607 believed that they had a covenant with God, and they carefully read the message of their successes and failures. A typical Puritan vision was held by the Virginia settler Sir Thomas Dale. Other colonies Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven were not the only variations on the main theme of realizing the holy commonwealth in America. Roger Williams and the other founders of Rhode Island must also be regarded as Puritans with the “one principle, that every one should have liberty to worship God according to the light of their consciences.” William Penn’s “holy experiment” in Pennsylvania represented the Quaker variation of the Puritan experiment. When Penn became owner of this vast tract of land, he saw it as a mandate from God to form an ideal commonwealth. In New Jersey, Puritans from the New Haven colony who were dissatisfied with the Half-Way Convenant sought to reestablish the pristine Puritan community at Newark. Maryland, which had been established under Roman Catholic auspices, soon had a strong Puritan majority among its settlers. Indeed, there was no colony in which Puritan influence was not strong, and one estimate identifies 85 percent of the churches in the original 13 colonies as Puritan in spirit.
American flag and other official symbols of the country
The flag of the United States of America (the American flag) consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing fifty small, white stars. The fifty stars on the flag represent the 50 U.S. states and the 13 stripes represent the original thirteen colonies that rebelled against the British monarchy and became the first states in the Union. Nicknames for the flag include the Stars and Stripes, Old Glory, and The Star-Spangled Banner (also the name of the national anthem). There are many symbols that represent the United States of America. Some of the most popular ones are the Stars and Stripes (the US flag), the Great Seal of the USA, the bald eagle (our national bird), the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the US Capitol, the White House, Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty (a gift from France), the Gateway Arch (in St. Louis, Missouri), Mount Rushmore (carved on a mountain in South Dakota), the Alamo, The Star Spangled Banner (the national anthem of the USA), The Pledge of Allegiance, Yankee Doodle , Uncle Sam (a cartoon figure designed by Thomas Nast), the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, Gettysburg, Monticello, Mount Vernon, the Golden Gate Bridge, the World War 2 Memorial, and many other
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