Colonial Puritans?
I mean, one can’t drive through New England and find “First Puritan Church” on every street corner, can they?
Did their religion just get phased out as more and more colonists arrived with their own religious ideas? Or did it go through a series of progressive changes until we got left with [insert modern denomination here]?
—Until we got left with … Fundamentalist Christian.
I live in the center of Colonial Puritan past presence. And it is still alive - to some degree - with the fundamentalist churches around these parts. Not to the extent it was of course, they’re not burning witches and crushing people with large stones anymore. Here is a good reference for seeing what a 21st Century Puritan looks like and believes.
BTW, the guy at the linked thread is in Kansas…and may be a couple sandwiches short of a picnic 
The Congregationalists are the institutional descendants of the Colonial Puritans and Separatists, although I doubt a time traveler from the 17th century would find that they have a lot in common.
The Puritans were an offshoot of the Church of England (which was itself an offshoot of Roman Catholicism). The American Puritans left England during a period of official intolerance, while many others stayed. The Puritans in England came out of hiding (so to speak) when William and Mary took power and eased the restrictions.
The Puritans were heavily influenced by Calvin, and as the Puritans in America were joined by others, American religious thought began to change, culminating in the Great Awakenings of the 1700s. Methodist, Wesleyan, Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran, Dutch Reformed, and many other churches sprang up in America, and all were influenced by some critical features of Puritan thought: the supremacy of exhortation and study over ritual and common prayer, the holiness of the sabbath (and its celebration on Sunday), and the emphasis of predestination over free will. (Many of the above churches were already influenced by Puritans in England, earlier and in different ways).
While much of this has passed (most churches are uncomfortable with the strictness of Puritan worship), some churches have a greater Puritan lineage than others. Congregationalist churches are organizationally descended from the old Puritan churches, but that’s more of a church government thing – they are very different, doctrinally. The Presbyterian Church was founded as the Church of Scotland by John Knox, himself a Puritan, but again, the Prebyterians have strayed far from their roots. Certain “Primitive Baptist” churches are more adherent to Puritan ways than any other modern church.
Most of this stuff comes from memory and major cherry-picking from a variety of web sites, but if anyone wants cites I’ll do my best.
The Congregationalists (now part of the United Church of Christ) are descenents of Puritans, but so, in fact, are the Unitarians.
This seems strange because both those denominations are known for liberalism, but they both did branch from New England Puritans.
I think you may be hearing from a number of Kansas Dopers for that insinuation.
He has an MA in math; you can’t be a dimwit and do that. When someone says they’re fundamentalist, I don’t assume they’re stupid…I merely think they are incorrect on that issue.