I would recommend reading "The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop" by Edmund S. Morgan. It is a biography, but deals heavily with many of the questions you have asked. It will be the primary source I will be drawing from as I attempt to answer your questions.

That era was full of religious turmoil. Henry VIII split with the church and founded the Church of England. This caused a divide in England among those supporting the Catholic Church and those who aligned themselves with the reformation. The split even lead to King Philip of Spain starting a war with England in an attempt to bring it back to the church.

In the midst of all this division, the Puritanism movement started to gain momentum. The Puritans were protestants who did not agree with the idea of the church hierarchy that both the Catholic Church and the Church of England had in place. They also believed that the government should legislate their strict morality and were not happy that the laws of England were not strict enough on issues like, the sabbath, modesty, etc.

More importantly, they believed they felt they needed to be separate from "the world" to remain pure. They held to the ideal that if they could get to the New World and start their own society governed by their Puritan morals that they could form the perfect society. A sort of "light on a hill" where they could keep themselves pure and be a shining example for the rest of the world.

It is important to keep in mind the puritans believed in predestination, the belief that one was born either destined for heaven or hell. The idea of remaining in "the world" and trying to convert people would have seemed fruitless to them, hence the reason they wanted to separate. The feeling for the need to separate was only strengthened when the Catholic King James inherited the crown.

I hope you find my answers satisfactory. If there is anything you would like for me to elaborate on I'll be more than happy to do so!

Edit: some wording

Hi,

I would recommend Christopher Hill's "A World Turned Upside Down," which does a very good job in describing the full spectrum of religious radicalism that characterized Separatism before the English Revolution.

Something I would warn against, though, is viewing the topic as a purely "Puritan vs. Anglican" conflict. In reality, nonconformity (as it would later be called) took a lot of different forms. Puritans thought they were going to heaven at the expense of all others, Presbyterians thought that was nuts, Quakers were off in a corner sitting quietly and a lot of other folks were out in the streets screaming about the world being punished for England's manifold sins.

A very big book, Keith Thomas' "Religion and the Decline of Magic" gives a lot of really nifty examples of popular religion vs. state imposed religious practices before and after the Reformation. If you're looking for fun anecdote and strong case study information, I suggest looking in there.

Another, "Bonfires and Bells" by David Cressy really vividly portrays the ways that common folk expressed public displays of joy and sorrow through communal functions. When a community would and would not come together, what and what for constituted a good reason to come together, all these things really relate to understanding how specific communities defined religious norms.

This era is a lot of fun, but as I said, shy away from fixating on Puritans. There's a lot of information on them, but in reality they make up a very small fraction of the story.