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The idea of covenant was at the heart of early New England society. In this singular book David Weir explores the origins and development of covenant thought in America by analyzing the town and church documents written and signed by seventeenth-century New Englanders. Unmatched in the breadth of its scope, this study takes into account all of the surviving covenants in all of the New England colonies. Weir's comprehensive survey of seventeenth-century covenants leads to a more complex picture of early New England than what emerges from looking at only a few famous civil covenants like the Mayflower Compact. His work shows covenant theology being transformed into a covenantal vision for society but also reveals the stress and strains on church-state relationships that eventually led to more secularized colonial governments in eighteenth-century New England. He concludes that New England colonial society was much more "English" and much less "American" than has often been thought, and that the New England colonies substantially mirrored religious and social change in Old England.
An Alternate Selection of the History Book Club In 1695, John Miller, a clergyman traveling through New York, found it appalling that so many couples lived together without ever being married and that no one viewed "ante-nuptial fornication" as anything scandalous or sinful. Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister in South Carolina in 1766, described the region as a "stage of debauchery" in which polygamy was "very common," "concubinage general," and "bastardy no disrepute." These depictions of colonial North America's sexual culture sharply contradict the stereotype of Puritanical abstinence that persists in the popular imagination. In Sexual Revolution in Early America, Richard Godbeer boldly overturns conventional wisdom about the sexual values and customs of colonial Americans. His eye-opening historical account spans two centuries and most of British North America, from New England to the Caribbean, exploring the social, political, and legal dynamics that shaped a diverse sexual culture. Drawing on exhaustive research into diaries, letters, and other private papers, as well as legal records and official documents, Godbeer's absorbing narrative uncovers a persistent struggle between the moral authorities and the widespread expression of popular customs and individual urges. Godbeer begins with a discussion of the complex attitude that the Puritans had toward sexuality. For example, although believing that sex could be morally corrupting, they also considered it to be such an essential element of a healthy marriage that they excommunicated those who denied "conjugal fellowship" to their spouses. He next examines the ways in which race and class affected the debate about sexual mores, from anxieties about Anglo-Indian sexual relations to the sense of sexual entitlement that planters held over their African slaves. He concludes by detailing the fundamental shift in sexual culture during the eighteenth century towards the acceptance of a more individualistic concept of sexual desire and fulfillment. Today's moral critics, in their attempts to convince Americans of the social and spiritual consequences of unregulated sexual behavior, often harken back to a more innocent age; as this groundbreaking work makes clear, America's sexual culture has always been rich, vibrant, and contentious.
This book is intended for all those with an interest in New England Puritanism, American evangelicalism, the history of revivalism, or the history of pastoral ministry.
Forsaking their lives in Rutland Vermont, Nathan Perry and his young family journeyed to the Genesee River in far western New York, the heart of the Great Western Wilderness, beyond the limits of civilized America. By autumn 1790, they had built a primitive cabin, their new home surrounded by a vast primeval forest populated by thousands of truculent Seneca natives who resented their presence. So began the Nathan Perry family’s many long years as trailblazing frontiersmen in the wilds of western New York and later in Ohio, where they “went native,” befriending their tribal neighbors, adopting their habits out of convenience and necessity. As the 18th century wound down, Nathan Perry found himself at the tense interface of two cultures, one ascendant and the other in steep decline, in a time fraught with racial tension and rapid change. Respected by both white settlers and the native tribes, Nathan Perry witnessed and influenced western New York’s transformation from wilderness to settlement in remarkably few decades. It easily be mistaken for fiction, but the Nathan Perry family’s amazing true story is one of adventurism, fortitude, and endurance under challenging, changing circumstances. A family history—particularly one going back centuries—faces the difficult task of telling the stories of people who are now largely unknowable. This book focuses primarily on Nathan Perry Sr. and his family. Who were they really? What were they like? Kind or callous? Good natured or sullen? Outgoing or aloof? We cannot know. But we can draw inferences by learning more about what these long-gone people experienced. By examining shreds of evidence from aged records and linking them with the sweep of history, the dead gradually come into focus.
An introduction to the diverse lives of the Puritan founders by a leading expert
During the late 1770s, Boston's townspeople were struggling to rebuild a community devastated by British occupation, the ensuing siege by the Continental Army, and the Revolutionary war years. After the British attacked Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, Boston's population plummeted from 15,000 civilians to less than 3,000, property was destroyed and plundered, and the economy was on the verge of collapse. How the once thriving colonial seaport and its demoralized inhabitants recovered in the wake of such demographic, physical, and economic ruin is the subject of this compelling and well-researched work. Drawing on extensive primary sources, including ward tax assessors' Taking Books, church records, census records, birth and marriage records, newspaper accounts, and town directories, Jacqueline Barbara Carr brings to life Boston's remarkable rebirth as a flourishing cosmopolitan city at the dawn of the nineteenth century. She examines this watershed period in the city's social and cultural history from the perspective of the town's ordinary men and women, both white and African American, re-creating the determined community of laborers, artisans, tradesmen, mechanics, and seamen who demonstrated an incredible perseverance in reshaping their shattered town and lives. Filled with fascinating and dramatic stories of hardship, conflict, continuity, and change, the engaging narrative describes how Boston rebounded in less than twenty-five years through the efforts of inhabitants who survived the ordeal of the siege, those who fled British occupation and returned after the war, and the influx of citizens from many different places seeking new opportunities in the growing city. Carr explores the complex forces that drove Boston's transformation, taking into consideration such topics as the built environment and the town's neighborhoods, the impact of town government on peoples' lives, the day-to-day trials of restoring and managing the community, the effect of the postwar economy on work and daily life, and forms of leisure and theater entertainment.
This treatise documents the claim that, for Puritan men and women alike, the ideals of selfhood were conveyed by female images. It argues that these images taught self-control, shaped pious ideals and established the standards against which the moral character of real women was measured.
Congregationalist ministers Charles Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew were among the most influential social and religious thinkers in Boston in the mid-eighteenth century. This 1987 study argues that Chauncy and Mayhew produced a complex but coherent body of ideas and that these ideas were organized closely and self-consciously around the principle of 'balance'. Writings on society and government are treated alongside theological works, rather than separate from them, and each man's corpus is placed against the background of English ideas as well as within the context of intellectual and social life in Boston. Investigation of the ideas of Chauncy and Mayhew in this way leads to the conclusion that although the two men believed that a cosmic principle of 'balance' organized social and religious life, they believed as well that full philosophical comprehension of this principle was beyond human capability. In order to express their understanding of cosmic order, Chauncy and Mayhew appropriated the metaphor of the 'great chain of being'.
In the 1740s Jonathan Edwards emerged as the New Light proponent of the claim that the Great Awakening was, in the main, a true work of the Spirit of God. Conversely, Charles Chauncy led the Old Lights in opposition by offering criticisms of the Awakening. In this book, Robert Davis Smart examines Edwards’s defense of the revival with particular attention to Chauncy’s criticisms, which have often been acknowledged but not previously subjected to thorough analysis. He sets forth historical and contextual factors that shaped Edwards and his generation, shows how Edwards emerged as a leader of the revival from its early days, and offers an updated survey of the modern attempts to interpret the Awakening theologically, sociologically, and historically. Here is a detailed treatment of the contrasting perspectives of Edwards and Chauncy, an extensive analysis of their major works regarding the revival, an able assessment of the essential issues raised by the debate, and an evaluation of the significant contributions of these men. Table of Contents: Introduction to Edwards’s Historical Context Chapter One: Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening Chapter Two: Interpretations of the Awakening Chapter Three: The Distinguishing Marks and Some Thoughts Chapter Four: Chauncy’s Seasonable Thoughts Chapter Five: Edwards’s Final Response to Chauncy Conclusion: The Debate and Its Legacy