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Calvinism: The Influence Of Puritan Beliefs

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Calvinism: The Influence Of Puritan Beliefs
The influence of Calvinism diminished after Jonathan Edwards’s death, and afterwards America experienced this period of enlightenment subsequently forcing out all remaining Puritan views. With this new exposure to the enlightenment, America and it’s colonists begin to develop ideas largely dissenting away from traditional Puritan views on total depravity where ‘God is all, and man is nothing.’ The beliefs of ‘self-reliance’ or emergence began to trump the Puritan views and exposed all colonists in thinking for themselves, acting independently from other people, and consequently formed such ideas seen in the foundation of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson promotes to the people that they are entitled to basic natural rights and how

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