The Puritans

There is a widespread modern misconception regarding the term Puritan. Today many people believe good Puritans abstained from all sensual pleasures, and certainly before marriage. Actually, the religious denomination now known as Congregationalist acquired the label "Puritan" for reasons that had nothing to do with moral purity in the modern sense. The movement arose in seventeenth-century England with the purpose of purifying the government-sanctioned Church of England of its Catholic vestiges; hence the name "Puritan." Without letting go of the myth of the Puritans as puritanical, we cannot comprehend why John Adams and Abigail Smith caused barely a ripple when, in the fall of 1763, more than a year before they married, they took a trip together---apparently alone.