Were the Puritans for a State Church?

Question

In a book titled America's Providential History it states on page 84 that

The major Puritan weakness was their holding to the idea of a State Church. They saw nothing wrong with a National church.

But it doesn't give any evidence. I personally don't think that they would want a State Church, since they knew that England's church had started out good and eventually became rotten (in their minds). Is there any evidence out there that supports this idea?

Answer 1

Yes, Puritans supported a state church.

• Ministers' salaries were paid by taxes levied on all residents of the colonies. Colonial meetinghouses, also built at the taxpayers' expense, were used for both town business and religious worship.
• Participation in political life was dependent on one's religious background, as voting rights were restricted to members of the church. Note that "church membership" is even stricter than being a Puritan: one had to be a member of the "elect" who could testify to their personal experience of God.
• Dissenters such as Quakers were banished from Puritan colonies and on occasion executed.

A good source generally on Puritan culture is David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed. Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution has a brief but good discussion of the development of disestablishment sentiment in the years before the Revolution.