Puritanism. Of all the religious movements that helped shape early American culture, none was more important than Puritanism. Yet, for all its recognized importance, the term is notoriously difficult to define. Originally the term appeared in sixteenth-century England as a pejorative one aimed at those reformers who wanted to “purify” the Church of England in more Reformed Protestant ways. In time the term encompassed a great plurality of groups and points of view who shared only a common opposition