Modern Puritan 

      In both an olden and modern tongue, a Puritan is someone who is strict in ways of doing things. The Puritans in the olden days were very strict about behavior because they were based on a theocracy. The bible was the law back then, and if you disobeyed the bible, you disobeyed the law. In the same way, some countries today use the system the Puritans used. In Iran for example, the law there is the same as the laws of their God. So in a way, Puritan society still exists today, but not in the way most people depict it to be. Also, the Vatican is a form of theocracy similar to the Puritans. The pope is in charge of the area and basically commands the rest of the Christians according to the teachings of God. If a problem is serious enough to make it to the pope, he will decide what to do to resolve the conflict. The Puritans had a kind of court like this as shown in The Crucible when the accused came before judge Danforth (as stupid, blind, and again stupid in my opinion) he made a judgement to resolve the problem. The result of his judgements were usually death or prison. However, the pope can't make such    decisions to sentence death as it is not his portion to judge a person's life in that manner, but in God's hands. I believe that the idea of Puritanism will continue in decades and even centuries to come because the laws that the believers' form of instruction (bible for instance) come in is basically the same as the laws of the country. You cannot kill according to the ten commandments, and in the U.S., murder is a crime.