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How Can the Stories of Puritan Women Help Us Treat Others with Respect and Appreciation?

Lived Values

We can learn from Puritan women in this area because they were so good at it themselves. They had a lot to say about different Christian virtues like loving God, loving fellow Christians—even those in different denominations—and loving those outside of the church.

5 Puritan Women

Jenny-Lyn de Klerk

In 5 Puritan Women: Portraits of Faith and Love, Jenny-Lyn de Klerk shows how the lives and writings of Agnes Beaumont, Lucy Hutchinson, Mary Rich, Anne Bradstreet, and Lady Brilliana Harley encourage the beauty of holy living and provide practical wisdom for the home and the church. 

They not only had a deep biblical and theological understanding of these things, but they also connected them to their everyday life experiences, which can be really complex, complicated, and even messed up. So I think that they help us see how these big ideas work out in the real world. We can learn a lot about things like respect, appreciation, love, and kindness from these women because they not only have deep thoughts about them, but they also show us what it was like to live those things out in a real, specific life—just like our own.

Jenny-Lyn de Klerk is the author of 5 Puritan Women: Portraits of Faith and Love.



Related Articles

Women Were Puritans Too

Jenny-Lyn de Klerk

We can’t really understand Puritanism at all—that movement so concerned with genuinely loving God in their communities, churches, and families,—without understanding the part played by Puritan women.

Why We Need the Puritans

J. I. Packer

Spiritual warfare made the Puritans what they were. They accepted conflict as their calling, seeing themselves as their Lord’s soldier-pilgrims.


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