While the Counter-Reformation on the continent continued until the 19th century, the growth of a Puritan party dedicated to further Protestant reform polarized the Elizabethan Age, although it was not until the Civil War of the 1640s that England underwent religious strife comparable to that which its neighbours had suffered some generations before. Nonconforming Protestants along with the Protestant refugees from continental Europe were the primary founders of the United States of America. In the middle 17th century, Pietism became an important influence in Lutheranism.