In "The Minister's Black Veil," what religion do the characters practice?

In "," the
reference to people in the town as
"Goodman" or "Goodwife" as well as the
reference to the place of worship as
the "meeting-house" help us to identify the time
period and setting of the
story, and this allows us to determine that the religion practiced by
the
people in the town was Puritanism.  

Hawthorne often writes about
the
Puritans, the group that settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the
leadership of John
Winthrop in 1639.  They are, perhaps, most famous (or
infamous) for being the group responsible
for the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.
 His identification of community members as
"Goodman" or "Goodwife" (instead
of Mr. and Mrs.) helps us to understand
that it is during this time period
that the story is set; further, the Puritans called their
places of worship
"meeting-houses" in order to differentiate them from Catholic
churches.  The
Puritans were Protestants, extreme Protestants, who felt that the Church of

England had not done enough to distance itself from what they viewed as the corruption
in the
Catholic church.  Catholic churches tended to be full of iconography,
with ornate altarpieces
and lots of religious accouterments, and so the
Puritans, in their attempt to "purify"
their churches, refused all ornament.
 Therefore, we can deduce that the community in this story
is a Puritan
one.