Puritan values
Stern religious principles
Puritan values are the moral principles associated with the Puritans, the strict Protestant reformers of 16th- and 17th-century England and colonial New England.
The phrase typically evokes emphasis on hard work, self-discipline, frugality, sexual restraint, and suspicion of pleasure.
In modern use, it's often critical—suggesting excessive moralizing or prudishness: Her Puritan values made her uncomfortable at the party.
Americans invoke Puritan values when discussing the country's cultural inheritance, whether admiringly (work ethic, civic duty) or disparagingly (repression, judgmentalism).
- ProtestantismReformation-era Christian movement
- CalvinismPredestinarian Protestant theology
- Protestant ethicLabor-as-virtue belief system
- faithTrust without proof
- disciplineTrained self-control or specialty
simplicity · plain dress · piety · modesty · devotion · temperance · humility · predestination · chastity · work ethic · hard work · moral fiber · stewardship · scripture · fire and brimstone · frugality · covenant · austerity
- New EnglandMaine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut
- CalvinismCalvinism, TULIP, predestination, total depravity, John Calvin
Puritan valueshedonism
Pursuit of gratification
permissiveness · libertinism · licentiousness · moral relativism · sexual liberation
Puritan valuesEpicureanism
Philosophy valuing serene pleasure
paganism · secular humanism · atheism · Renaissance humanism
Puritan valuesjoie de vivre
Exuberant enjoyment of existence
la dolce vita · bohemianism · carpe diem · pleasure principle
Puritan, puritan, puritanical, puritanism, pure, purity, purify, purification, purifier