Learning Family Life From the Puritans

Tomorrow, we will be discussing the Christian home. I think J.I. Packer's insights into the typical Puritan home are enlightening. It's easy to be so embedded into the 21st century West, that we assume our "normal" has always been the "normal." I think Packer shows us that our normal is a "new normal" (which in the end is probably abnormal). Here is what Packer says about Puritan home life:

The Puritans crusaded for a high view of the family, proclaiming it both as the basic unit of society, and a little church in itself, with the husband as its pastor and the wife as his assistant, subordinate, indeed, in the chain of command, but a key figure in the ongoing pastoral process, nonetheless. As head of the family, the husband must be treated with respect. It was the husband’s responsibility to channel the family into religion, to take them to church on the Lord’s day, to oversee the sanctifying of that entire day in the home, to catechize the children, to teach them in the faith, to examine the whole family after the sermon, to see how much had been retained and understood, to fill in any gaps in understanding that might remain, to lead the family in worship daily, ideally, twice a day, and to set an example of sober godliness at all times and in all matters. The Puritans accounted religion as an engagement to duty, and that the best Christians should be the best husbands, the best wives, the best children...that the doctrine of God might be adorned and not blasphemed by the way we live. And so Puritan teachers thought humane family life in which Christian love and joy would find full and free expression could not be achieved until this ordered pattern of Paul’s regular authority, structure and daily routine had been firmly established.

One of the notable things said here is that Puritan fathers examined their "whole family" after the sermon, to see how much had been retained and understood,in order "to fill in any gaps in understanding that might remain." In other words, the family worshiped together. There was no concept of a "children's church." The notion that a family would be entirely separated the most sacred hours of the week would have been off the charts for a Puritan. Maybe we could learn from them, in this regard.