Pious Persuasions : Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England

by Seeman, Erik R.

• ISBN13: 9780801862083
• ISBN10: 0801862086
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-12-01
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

Congregational ministers in early New England worked hard to advance the cause of orthodox religion among the region's laypeople, but the people's willingness to voice differences with their ministers persisted. By the time of the Revolutionary War, New Englanders had established a strong tradition of independent-mindedness, shaped in part by the previous century's struggles over piety and religious practice. In Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England, historian Erik R. Seeman explores both Congregational doctrine and laypeople's practices throughout the 1700s. Seeman looks at the piety of ordinary folk, including a Boston housewright; the interplay of magic and religious culture; the changing experience of women; and the persistence of revivalism. His findings supply a fresh perspective on the Great Awakening of the 1740s, which appears not as a historical turning point but rather as one of four major revivals that fostered communal piety. Seeman further examines how pastors and parishioners negotiated their increasingly contentious religious culture when participating in highly charged events: deathbed scenes, rituals of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and religious revivals. Incorporating the widest ranging examination to date of contemporary lay sources -- letters, diaries, conversion narratives, and published poems and broadsides -- Pious Persuasions is a significant work for Early Americanists, social historians, and students of American religion.

Author Biography

Erik R. Seeman is an assistant professor of history at State University of New York at Buffalo.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction: Lay-Clergy Interactions in Colonial New England	3	(12)
The Spiritual Labor of John Barnard A Boston Housewright Constructs His Piety	15	(29)
``She Died Like Good Old Jacob'' Deathbed Scenes and Attitudes toward Death	44	(35)
The Performance of Piety Religious Rituals and Their Contested Meanings	79	(37)
Alternative Practices Magic, Heterodoxy, and the Margins of Religious Culture	116	(31)
Earthquakes and Great Awakenings The Continuity of Revivalism	147	(33)
The Piety of Experience Richardson Religion, Politics, and Gender	180	(31)
Conclusion: Religious Culture and the Origins of the American Revolution	204	(7)
Notes	211	(38)
Note on Primary Sources	249	(8)
Index	257