would not have traveled far and would have inhabited the New England states, which are all Blue.

Unlike the evangelicals who arose from the Great Awakening of the 18th century, to be a Puritan minister, you were required to be educated. Well educated for many of them. Cambridge and Oxford educated for some. They also staunchly believed in universal literacy so that everyone in the community could read and understand the bible. They created the first university in America, Harvard, primarily for the education of the ministry. It's' named after....you guessed it....a Puritan minister who bequeathed the fledgling university his personal library of over 300 books. That's a lot of books by anyone's standards in 1636. That was also Puritanism's undoing.

All that focus on education was Pandora's box. It didn't take long for Puritanism to cool into a more benign form, Congregationalists. Even Universalists. It seems fundy religion and a focus on education cannot coexist. They're mutually exclusive. Thus, you get the New England of today. The most educated region of America and the least religious. And that's why my adopted region is Blue from the Champlain Valley to the coast of Maine. From Long Island Sound to the Canadian border.

"Fantasyland: How American Went haywire", by Kurt Andersen, traces the craziness that is American through five centuries.

i think it’s part of human nature. the unevolved part of our brain that is still looking for the big chimp leader. we got to b human by being more brutal than the other apes.
it’s hardly uniquely american.

It evolved from the same Reformation stew of ideas, but without the focus on an educated ministry and a literate congregation like Puritans, Presbyterians and others. Education led those to solidify into more benign forms of religion, Congregationalists, Universalist, Presbyterians, etc. One can be a nominal member of those, not believe much of the woo, and no one cares since your educated minister probably doesn't believe the totality of it themselves. Do the same in Evangelical circles and you're a damn heretic bound for hell!!

Evangelicals actually believe all the crap. All of it. They also don't value education generally since they rightly view it as a danger to the cult. What frightens them is the honest search for facts and ideas which leads to questions. Dangerous questions. Can't have that!. And like Muslim fundys, they would happily destroy the world to make it Evangelical, i.e., Dominionists. Or happily watch the world burn so they can go to heaven while everyone else roasts in hell. The core of doomsday, death cult belief, American style.

In my mind, the "Great Awakenings" of the 18th and 19th centuries are the worst things that ever happened to America. They launched the Evilgelical movement in the US and we've been a hotbed of that stupidity ever since.

England sent its criminals to Australia and its religious fanatics to America, and Australia got the better deal.

When we were in Australia in 2008, my husband and I learned a truism that has stuck with us ever since: America got the Puritans, and Australia got the criminals. Australia got the better deal.

Puritan was a term coined for "the most protestant of protestants." eg. anti-Catholic.

The Plymouth Rock posse came from Leiden aboard a Dutch ship. the Mayflower, and they are frequently depicted in Dutch clothing -- black frocks, square buckles, etc.

History can inform and aid our understanding of the present but only if we are really interested in researching history. Starting with bias and conclusions OTOH leads nowhere. Borden ignores that the Plymouth Puritans believed in the spiritual equality of men and women and:

“were much more tolerant than people think, particularly for their time,” he says. “They did not require people in the Plymouth Colony to follow Calvinist beliefs. This led to a conscious construction of a society with separation of church and state.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-pilgrims-before-plymouth-111851259/