What happened to the Puritans? A pastor friend of mine up in Maine was visiting Boston at one point and he decided to go on one of these tours that was led through the city and he had a tour guide that was leading them through and he had a tour guide that was leading them through and he was involved with a number of people on the tour.

And as they're going along, one of the members of the tour asked the tour guide, whatever happened to the Puritans.

Well, the tour guide thought for a moment and said, you know, I'm not sure.

Maybe they all just got back into a boat and went somewhere else.

Well, that's not exactly what happened to the Puritans.

So let's think about this.

What did happen to the New England Puritans? This was an incredible group.

This is the roots of American religious history. They of course came from old England and

began settling heavily in those early decades of the 1600s.

I think at one point I remember reading that in the 1630s it was as if about every week was landing at the docks at Boston with a new load of old

England Puritans ready to settle in the new world and these are the folks that of

course give us that beginning and that foundation of Christian thought in America.

These are the folks that give us these institutions, the Harvard and Dartmouth and Yale and Brown and these are the folks that also eventually give us Jonathan Edwards and The Great Awakening.

So this is a crucial question.

What happened to them and what happened to the Puritans?

Well, one author in a book entitled Theology in America, Christian Thought,

From the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War.

His name is E. Brooks Holofield.

Holofield gives us some insight into what happened to these folks.

First of all he wants us to understand fully who the Puritans were and he says these were of

course a very credal bunch of people. They focused on the confession of faith. These were not entirely

Presbyterian, so they had some modifications in terms of church government to the Westminster standards,

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