Puritanism began as a religious reform movement within the Church of England and spread to the northern English colonies in the early and middle seventeenth century. In recent years the term has often been used simply as a pejorative to designate anyone who is prudish, unemotional or intolerant. However, strains of Puritanism persisted even in the last half of the twentieth century.

Early American puritans hoped to establish a city of God that would fuse the political and religious community into a theocracy. Although less prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s, this changed in the 1970s with the development of organizations such as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition. These groups pursued avowedly Christian agendas and became influential in politics, especially at the level of congressional and senatorial primaries. A second element in Puritanism was the castigation of sensual pleasures. While the 1960s marked a substantial change in social conventions, it continued to be the case that prostitution was only legal in certain parts of Nevada, recreational drug use was severely punished and references to sex on radio and television were highly constricted. A less famous aspect of Puritanism was its emphasis on public sermons as a means of excoriating the sins of the community. These often strayed from traditional Biblical topics and became detailed critiques of the political system and the personal responsibility of those within it. This use of the sermon was employed by both ends of the political spectrum, from Martin Luther King, Jr.

challenging segregation to conservative television evangelists attacking the moral decay of the country and its leaders.