Does Protestantism still share some of the same beliefs as Puritanism? What are these shared beliefs?
Puritanism is a subgenre of Protestantism. What Protestants (including Puritans) had in common was a belief in sola fide (only by faith) sola gracia (only by grace) sola scriptura (the scriptures alone) What this meant is that people could be saved by having faith in the grace/mercy of God (not by works), and that the principles we live by are found only in the Bible (not in the traditions of the church) Throughout the history of Protestantism, there have been groups which focused on particular areas of faith, and so stood out because of that. The Puritans believed in absolute simplicity of life (hence their name), so they disagreed with some of the things that the established English church had maintained from its Roman Catholic heritage (eg candles, liturgy, holy days). But theologically, they were not much different from Baptists or other fundamentalists. It wasn’t that they were killjoys (although some small groups of them took things to extremes). They loved music and literature.
