[Billthedrill]

The Pilgrims were a humorless lot with a fondness for black...With more wit than historical accuracy, H.L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

The author might have been better served - and more credible - by simply pointing out that the Pilgrims and the Puritans weren't the same thing.

[cripplecreek]

The modern view of the puritans is pretty twisted as well. They were actually comparatively free spirits. Cotton Mather was a keen scientific observer who conducted early experiments with hybridization. He also argued in favor of variolation which was an early form of vaccination and argued that disease may not be a punishment from God.

[wideawake]

There is no hard line between Separatists (i.e. the Pilgrims) and Puritans.

It would be more accurate to say that the Separatists were a subset of the larger Puritan movement than to say that the Separatists were not Puritans.

[GeronL]

lol

dimwitted writer