Religious dissenters from England who wanted to purify, rather than separate from, what they viewed as the corrupted, state supported Anglican church, or Church of England. By and large, the Puritans were nonseparatists,and some of them banded together to form a utopian community of believers in America. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was to be a model society that would show how godly societies and churches were to be properly organized. See separatists.