The Puritans’ Sense of Mission

The term “vocation” originated with the Puritans and carries a religious meaning. Vocation means “calling” or “summons”—that is, “God calls His chosen people to engage in a particular activity or occupation.” In the Puritan mind, one’s vocation was precisely what God had called a person to do. Fulfilling that mission was each individual’s responsibility and duty.

Puritans with strong faith, like the Jews of Israel, believed themselves to be God’s chosen people, entrusted with a special mission. They were therefore determined to press forward fearlessly, to advance courageously, and never to disgrace that mission. Their boundless source of strength came from God, enabling them to overcome any hardship. Israel, with a population of only eight million, is nonetheless a powerful country. The United States has more than seven million Jews—equivalent to having a small Israel within the nation.

The Puritans believed it was God who had “called” them to pioneer the New World. With a profound sense of mission, they set out to build enterprises on the new land. They regarded the creation of wealth as a sacred duty and viewed work itself as a joy. Guided by such ideas, the American government helped the poor and aided the rich, granting land free of charge to new immigrants and helping ordinary people to become prosperous. Puritan concepts thus gave rise to a pioneering and entrepreneurial spirit. It was precisely this spirit that enabled America to achieve extraordinary success, transforming untamed wilderness into a powerful industrial and agricultural nation.

The Emergence of a Political Tradition

Religion has been the spiritual force binding American society together. Puritanism exerted a profound influence on American politics, economics, and culture, laying the foundation for America’s mainstream culture and core values.

The spirit of contract is a defining feature of American life. The Puritans’ signing of the Mayflower Compact set an important precedent: government is established based on the consent of the governed, and the nation is ruled by law. Citizens possess the right to associate freely and to formulate just laws to govern themselves. The principles of self-government, mutual assistance, and popular sovereignty embodied in the Compact constitute the core of America’s political spirit and political tradition. More than 160 years later, the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution in Philadelphia, formally establishing the contractual relationship between the people and the state.

The Puritans’ influence on the formation of American traditions was far-reaching. As Governor William Bradford (1590–1657), the minister who led the Puritans to America, famously said: “From small beginnings greater things have been produced; as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light kindled here has shone unto many, yea, in some sort to our whole nation.” This sense of a mission to save the world was precisely what sprang from Puritanism.

With the founding of the United States, Americans came to firmly believe that their mission was to lead by example and to spread freedom and justice to the entire world.