What is a Puritan?
First we must define what we mean by “puritan.” You must quickly lose the idea that Puritan means morose, sour, legalists who were always trying to prevent people from doing things. This view comes from later American history and people such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, who were glad to be living under liberal Unitarianism in New England and regarded the old Puritanism of their forefathers as a repressive, false religion. So, Puritanism is usually a term of contempt. Even today we hear people speaking of, for instance, anti-smoking advocates as the “new Puritans.” This is totally inaccurate and unfair to the original Puritans. Furthermore, the term was a term of abuse even when it was invented in England. The term was invented to describe those who, generally speaking, believed that the Reformation in England had not gone far enough, and needed to be continued until a new, biblically-based church could be achieved. So, in very broad terms, Puritans were the English equivalent of the contine
