When you think about Puritanism, you must begin by getting rid of the slang term 'Puritanism' as applied to Victorian religious hypocrisy. This does not apply to seventeenth-century Puritanism.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You know the puritan ethic that started out four centuries ago in this country, needless to say - at least for the moment - a thing of the past - from what I can tell.
A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.
No group of people has been more unjustly maligned in the twentieth century than the Puritans. As a result, we approach the Puritans with an enormous baggage of culturally ingrained prejudice.
American society is still puritanical.
But we're still in somewhat a Puritanical society in a lot of ways.
Historically the Puritans left England to escape religious persecution, and they promptly turned around and started persecuting the people they didn't agree with - the scarlet letter A, and the stocks and the dunking board came from that. That puritanism is still there.
There is more criticism of puritanism, and more distance from Christian morality, than there has been before.
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
Personally I'm not a feminist, as I can't stand puritans.
Puritanism was a youthful, vigorous movement.