Most Christians today do not realize that at one time it was apparently a common practice to refer to members of the Lord's church as Puritans. In fact, most of us have the understanding that the Puritans of our early history who immigrated to the New England colonies were Calvinists in their beliefs. These had been "Dissenters" in England. This meant that these had opposed the Anglican Church or Church of England and suffered persecution and death at the hands of the authorities there. This persecution was the impetus for their coming here. Now while this is true for a significant number of these people called Puritans, it was not true that all those known as Puritans were of this Calvinist group. A more accurate term that is historically correct is to call them Dissenters.

Looking into the history of the "Dissenters" in England in the 1600's we quickly can see that there were a number of groups who were stereotypically termed Puritans. The majority of these were those opposed to the movement within the Church of England, known as Anglicans, who wanted the Church of England to simply be an English Catholic Church. This party came into power after Oliver Cromwell died. The Anglicans and their supporters restored the monarchy and the Church of England as the state church. They then began to oppress those who had formerly opposed them under Cromwell. Those they opposed were called "Dissenters," because they dissented against the "Catholic" practices and beliefs of the Church of England. In their dissent, the Puritans had advocated no pagan holidays, such as Easter and Christmas. They also did not believe in state paid clergy or the special religious costumes worn by priests. They opposed the use of musical instruments in worship, and stripped churches of stained glass windows, choirs, candles and candelabras, incense burning and usually infant baptism. Their call to only go by the Scriptures, and deny creeds of men, really proved their austerity and they became universally known as not just Dissenters, but now became Puritans.

Now it is easy to see from their beliefs that even those of the Puritans who were Calvinists, shared this desire to "purify the church" or in some way get back to the New Testament church. Lumped together, stereotypically, were other religious groups, like Anabaptists, early Baptists, various reform groups, and I am convinced of this, were many Christians also fleeing persecution in merry old England. So, the first "Pilgrims" who came to this country had a large contingent of members of the Lord's church among them, but the secular history books have mostly ignored the differences among the various people that became only known as Puritans.