Puritans and Pietists were aiming at similar ends: the spread of a living, active Christian faith based on the Word of the Lord as expressed in the Scriptures; and the reformation of this world in the light of God's Word. The ways in which they became involved with the political conflicts of their times have much to do with certain differing features of the sociopolitical landscapes in which Puritans and Pietists sought to establish God's Kingdom on Earth. In this and the following chapter we shall examine those aspects of the contexts of the three movements which together help to explain why similar religious movements should make such different political contributions. It will then be possible to examine more closely the divergent patterns of development of the movements, showing how in each case Puritans and Pietists faced varying obstacles to achievement of their religious aims and developed different strategies of political action, attitude, and alliance.

Common to each of the three cases was the incipient trend towards absolutist rule: the attempts being made by rulers to centralise power, to reduce the role of the Estates in the tradition of the late mediaeval Ständestaat. This trend was not a later invention of systematising historians, unnoticed by contemporaries. As certain members of the English Parliament put it in the 1604 Apology of the Commons, expressing their disquiets in the light of continental European developments: