USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -They held many of the same Puritan Calvinist religious beliefs but, unlike most other Puritans, they maintained that their congregations should separate from the English state church, which led to them being labeled Separatists (the word “Pilgrims” was not used to refer to them until several centuries later).

Detailed explanation-2: -’Pilgrim’ became (by the early 1800s at least) the popular term applied to all the Mayflower passengers-and even to other people arriving in Plymouth in those early years-so that the English people who settled Plymouth in the 1620s are generally called the Pilgrims.

Detailed explanation-3: -They were English Puritans who had left England years earlier to live in Leiden because of religious differences with the Church of England. Unlike other Puritans who wanted to reform the Church of England, they wanted to separate from it, so they were called Separatists.

Detailed explanation-4: -Then as now, a pilgrim denoted someone who traveled to a shrine or holy place as a devotee (or, as some sources have noted, as penance). The Plymouth Pilgrims came to the New World because they were fleeing religious persecution-not journeying to a holy place but from an unacceptable situation.

Detailed explanation-5: -Puritans and Separatists Others were called “Separatist” because they wanted to become completely separate from the official Church of England. The Pilgrims were “Separatists, ” and they were often punished severely for this.