This book tells an extraordinary story of the people of early New England and their spiritual lives. It is about ordinary people—farmers, housewives, artisans, merchants, sailors, aspiring scholars—struggling to make sense of their time and place on earth. David Hall describes a world of religious consensus and resistance: a variety of conflicting beliefs and believers ranging from the committed core to outright dissenters. He reveals for the first time the many-layered complexity of colonial religious life, and the importance within it of traditions derived from those of the Old World. We see a religion of the laity that was to merge with the tide of democratic nationalism in the nineteenth century, and that remains with us today as the essence of Protestant America.
David D. Hall is John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at Harvard Divinity School.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The Uses of Literacy
2. A World of Wonders
3. The Meetinghouse
4. The Uses of Ritual
5. The Mental World of Samuel
Afterword
A Note on Book Ownership in Seventeenth-Century New England
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
What People are Saying About This
David Hall has carried the study of early New England to new levels of understanding. He shows us, as never before, how the sophisticated doctrines of the Puritan clergy meshed, clashed, and merged with the inherited attitudes and assumptions of ordinary people in their day-to-day grappling with the mysteries of their world. This is a model of historical analysis.
Edmund S. Morgan
David Hall has carried the study of early New England to new levels of understanding. He shows us, as never before, how the sophisticated doctrines of the Puritan clergy meshed, clashed, and merged with the inherited attitudes and assumptions of ordinary people in their day-to-day grappling with the mysteries of their world. This is a model of historical analysis. — Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University
Robert Middlekauff
David Hall has written a work of deep learning and great subtlety. In discussing seventeenth-century New England culture, it provides a new way of looking at religious belief Hall demonstrates that old ways simply will not do, and he redefines the character of religion and culture in New England. He has written a brilliant book, one that will stimulate its readers for many years. — Robert Middlekauff, University of California, Berkeley
Michael Kamnien
David Hall's highly innovative new work...provides close reading, profound insights, and trans-Atlantic comparisons that make this a book of very broad significance and interest. — Michael Kamnien, Cornell University
