In this presentation, historian Patrick Oliveira focuses on two starkly competing models of the Puritans and the Anglicans: the Virginia Colony and the Plymouth Colony. Although Jamestown is often characterized as a non-religious colony, he states that this is not at all accurate. It was religious and had explicitly Christian motives from the very beginning. Click here for a 48-minute lecture posted on February 12, 2026 by WagnerPatrick.

Oliveira (above, left) states that the colonists naively envisioned Indians converting to Christianity relatively quickly and forming a harmonious community with the English. Though Pocahantas converted and joined John Rolf in England, this is not what happened with most of the Powhatans in Virginia.

Puritans shared much in common including a broadly similar theology. The difference was that the pilgrims were separatists. The Massachusetts Bay Charter given by the King said that converting the natives to Christianity was the colony’s primary purpose.

The Puritans argued that it was essential to defend the kingdom of Christ in America from the heathen, who they viewed as servants of the devil. And so, when they slaughtered the Pequots at Mystic, they proclaimed that it was God who was fighting for them, and they justified their severity by appeal to the Old Testament and by common practices in European warfare.