Puritan ways in our society

One interesting fact about Nathaniel Hawthorne is that his great grad father was a judge in the Salem witch trials and cried witchery among many people. Also, his name was originally spelled hathorne and that he added the w to his name. Some people say that he did that to have the spelling of his name to match more closely to the pronunciation. Others say that he altered his last name to symbolize him breaking away from the history of past generations in his family. I found this interesting especially since one of the themes of The House of the Seven Gables is the affect of past generations on current generations.

(Nathaniel Hawthorne)

I think there are many ways that puritan times still affects our society today. In Puritan times the government was a theocracy. I think that a lot of laws they had were based upon religion. In today's society laws are not supposed to be based upon religion, but it is clear that there's a lot of things based on religion. Some of the biggest debates that happen in America are because of things that go against a religion. An example is abortion.

I personally think that in terms of religion playing a part in the government I don't know if America will ever fully get rid of that Puritan way and if it does happen it will not be happening for a long time. The reason why I say this is because our country was based off these ideas. This idea of theocracy has been embedded into the country.