Transcript Popular Religion in 17th Century New England

“Worlds of wonder, days of
Judgment”
Beliefs and Practices in 17th Century New England
David D. Hall, Bartlett
Research Professor, Harvard
Divinity School.
Popular Religion
• Supernatural
• Sybolism of church and sacraments
• Ritual enclosing of sickness, death, and
moral disobedience
• Self-perception of “sinner”
• Surveillance of a judging God
Puritan Society on the Cusp
• Rejection of Catholicism and acceptance of the authority of
ministers and magistrates.
• Common people continued to accept superstitions that did not
directly conflict with Xianity; indeed, they saw these
phenomenon as evidence of God and Satan at work in the
world.
• It’s a world both shaped by the inductive practices of the
Protestant Reformation and the slow but “steady dissolution
of traditional society.”
• A few may not have practiced religion faithfully, but they
gave no evidence of rejecting its claims—note to Crowther,
you silly atheist, you would have been alone!
• Religion for these folk was “a loosely bound set of symbols
and motifs that gave significance to the rites of passage and
life crisis, that infused everyday life with the presence of the
supernatural.” (Hall, 18)
Literacy
• Mixture of sacred and profane literature—Bible and school
books versus bawdy ballads.
• All, not just ministers and magistrates, had the right to read
the Bible.
• “To read or hear the Bible was to become directly into
contact with the Holy Spirit. Scripture had no history, its
pages knew no taint of time. Its message was as new, its
power as immediate, as when Christ had preached in
Galilee.” (24)
• Through faith, people could understand the Bible, and it was
“completely” true.
• Still, printed concordances, incorporating scripture into
poetry and song, and lifting verses out of context meant that
the Bible was mediated to fit the Puritan world view.
• Printers paradox: “The interplay of clergy, printers, and
readers worked in complex ways to heighten clerical
authority and to make it vulnerable to challenges from
beneath.” (31)
World of Wonders
• Thaumaturgy: people saw “wonders” in nature, in
unexplained occurrences, in good fortune, and in
tragedy.
• Mixing of meteorology, astrology, natural history,
and apocalypticism.
• Biblical tales of mystery, popular folk tales of the
supernatural, and experiential testimony of wonders
combined to produce reinforcement of all manner of
signs and wonders.
• Motif: the godly, if they did God’s will, would
survive all of the travail of this world—especially the
work of Satan and his minions.
The New Testament
• And these signs shall follow them that
believe; In my name shall they cast out
devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
They shall take up serpents; and if they
drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt
them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and
they shall recover. (Mark 16:17-18)
The “Church” as place and community
• Because of the unique rituals that occurred in the church building, puritans
conceived that the church was wholly different than the world.
• Place of testimony to the ongoing, and often successful, battle with sin.
• Unworthy of salvation, deserving of damnation, but thanks be to God for the
evidence of election.
• Meeting place of the ideal, the imagined faith, and one’s own experience.
• “These stolid farmers and their families interpreted the world in ways that softened
the strict separation of the elect from the reprobate. Only when some crisis or life
passage broke up the rhythm of their situation—an earthquake, say, or marriage, or
sudden death—did the sermons of the ministers and the rhetoric of the chapbooks
[small, devotional materials] become forcibly significant.” (193)
• Puritans valued the sacred community of the church. They established requirements
for membership, which included demonstrations of piety. At the same time, they
yearned to keep kin within the fold—hence, the half-way covenant, modifications of
the meaning of baptism, and a lack of participation in the Eucharist. Cleary, over
time, to be in the church was not to be apart from the world.
• “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your
mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of
God.” Romans 12:2.
• Although much evidence of impious and backslidden behavior remains, most bought
into the concept of the Puritan faith, even if they chose not to live up to its ideals.
Ritual
• Fast days and other rituals allowed the faithful to act out their
sense of danger followed by the assurance of salvation:
“always the purpose of ritual was to enact a reversal, as in
turning sickness into health, providing passage out of danger,
or making visible the hidden. Ritual was a formalized
procedure, a patterned means of connecting the natural and
social worlds to supernatural power.” (168)
• “In general, fast days and thanksgiving reaffirmed the myth
that also sustained wonders and church covenants, that God
protected people who obeyed moral rules of ‘Christian’
community.” (170)
• Confession of sin in ritual formed reaffirmed the notion that
sin would be discovered.
• Death rituals, including the rhetoric of funeral sermons,.
Eulogies, and epitaphs, reinforced basic beliefs about good,
evil, God, judgment, the resurrection, etc.
• Ritual provided a check against disorder and chaos; it also
justified the social order.