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A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England by David D. Hall
This work is an account of the aspirations and accomplishments of the people who founded the New England colonies, comparing the reforms they enacted with those attempted in England during the period of the English Revolution. The author, a historian looks afresh at how the colonists set up churches, civil governments, and methods for distributing land. Bringing with them a deep fear of arbitrary, unlimited authority grounded in either church or state, these settlers based their churches on the participation of laypeople and insisted on consent as a premise of all civil governance. Encouraging broad participation and relying on the vigorous use of petitioning, they also transformed civil and criminal law and the workings of courts. The outcome was a civil society far less authoritarian and hierarchical than was customary in their age, indeed, a society so advanced that a few dared to describe it as "democratical." They were well ahead of their time in doing so. As Puritans, the colonists also hoped to exemplify a social ethics of equity, peace, and the common good. In a case study of a single town, the author follows a minister as he encourages the townspeople to live up to these high standards in their politics. This is a book that challenges us to discard long standing stereotypes of the Puritans as temperamentally authoritarian and their leadership as despotic. The author demonstrates exactly the opposite. Here, we watch the colonists as they insist on aligning institutions and social practice with equity and liberty. This re-evaluation of the earliest moments of New England's history, reveals the colonists to be the most effective and daring reformers of their day.
Call Number: F 7 .H227 2011
ISBN: 0679441174
Publication Date: 2011-04-26
Pilgrims: New World Settlers & the Call of Home by Susan Hardman Moore
This book uncovers what might seem to be a dark side of the American dream: the New World from the viewpoint of those who decided not to stay. At the core of the volume are the life histories of people who left New England during the British Civil Wars and Interregnum, 1640-1660. More than a third of the ministers who had stirred up emigration from England deserted their flocks to return home. The colonists' stories challenge our perceptions of early settlement and the religious ideal of New England as a "City on a Hill." America was a stage in their journey, not an end in itself.-publisher's description.
Call Number: F 7 .H36 2007
ISBN: 030016405X
Publication Date: 2008-02-05
The American Intellectual Tradition by David A. Hollinger; Charles Capper
"This is a wonderfully rich collection of primary source readings, intelligently selected and usefully organized. This updated edition is indispensable for undergraduate courses in American intellectual or cultural history, a stimulating supplement to any undergraduate course about the United States, and required reading for graduate students."--Dorothy Ross, Johns Hopkins University."This sourcebook continues to serve as the cornerstone of my teaching in American thought for undergraduates and graduate students alike. The American intellectual Tradition provides a comprehensive survey ranging from the Puritan theology to postmodern critical theory."--James T. Kloppenberg, Harvard University.Revised and updated, the sixth edition of this now standard two-volume anthology brings together some of the most historically significant writings in American intellectual history. Uniquely comprehensive, The American Intellectual Tradition includes classic works in philosophy, religion, social theory, political thought, economics, psychology, and cultural and literary criticism. Organized chronologically into thematic sections, the two volumes trace the evolution of American intellectual writing and thinking from its origins in Puritan beliefs to the most recent essays on diversity and postmodernity. Pedagogical features include introductions and headnotes to the selections, updated bibliographic material throughout, and detailed chronologies at the end of each book. Addressing such highly contested subjects as race, class, gender, aesthetics, political religion, and the role of the United States in the world, The American Intellectual Tradition, Sixth Edition, is invaluable for undergraduate courses in intellectual history. It is also an excellent supplement for graduate seminars and classes in American history, American studies, and American literature.Volumes I and II now offer new selections from Charles Chauncy, Lester Frank Ward, Joseph Wood Krutch, David Lilienthal, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Peter Drucker, Ayn Rand, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Harold John Ockenga, C. Wright Mills, Harold Cruse, John Rawls, Catherine MacKinnon, Sam Harris, and Stewart Brand. The sixth edition also offers updated and expanded commentary and citations in the introductions and headnotes. --Book Jacket.
Call Number: E 169.1 .A47218 2011
ISBN: 0195392930
Publication Date: 2010-10-19
The Religious History of America by Edwin S. Gaustad; Leigh Schmidt
In this book, Leigh Schmidt teams up with Edwin Gaustad to produce a fully revised, updated, and expanded version of a modern classic. First published in 1966, The religious history of America made the religious dimensions of our common history readily accessible. This edition expands its scope, increasing the emphasis on pluralism, religious practices, and spiritual seeking, as well as the direct connection of religion to social and political struggle. The authors have replaced the five distinct ages of Gaustad's previous editions with a more explicit emphasis on specific historical markers, carrying the multifaceted story of religion in the United States into the twenty-first century. This edition is extensively illustrated and has a new emphasis on African-American and Native American religious life and Eastern religions.
Call Number: BR 515 .G3 2002
ISBN: 9780060630577
Publication Date: 2004-07-06
The Puritan Experiment: New England Society From Bradford to Edwards by Francis J. Bremer
This revised and updated edition of an out-of-print classic once again makes the broad background of Puritanism accessible to students and general readers. Based on a chronology that begins with the Act of Supremacy in 1534 and ends with Jonathan Edwards's death in 1758, Francis J. Bremer's interpretive synthesis of the causes and contexts of the Puritan movement integrates analyses of the religious, political, sociological, economic, and cultural changes wrought by the movement in both Old and New England. From meeting house architecture to Salem witch trials, from relations with Native Americans to the founding of the nation's first colleges, he details with style and grace'a living system of faith'that not only had profound significance for tens of thousands of Englishmen and Americans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but also affected the course of history in the New World.
ISBN: 9781611680867
Publication Date: 2013-01-08
The Long Argument by Stephen Foster
In this wide-ranging study Stephen Foster explores Puritanism in England and America from its roots in the Elizabethan era to the end of the seventeenth century. Focusing on Puritanism as a cultural and political phenomenon as well as a religious movement, Foster addresses parallel developments on both sides of the Atlantic and firmly embeds New England Puritanism within its English context. He provides not only an elaborate critque of current interpretations of Puritan ideology but also an original and insightful portrayal of its dynamism.According to Foster, Puritanism represented a loose and incomplete alliance of progressive Protestants, lay and clerical, aristocratic and humble, who never decided whether they were the vanguard or the remnant. Indeed, in Foster's analysis, changes in New England Puritanism after the first decades of settlement did not indicate secularization and decline but instead were part of a pattern of change, conflict, and accomodation that had begun in England. He views the Puritans'own claims of declension as partisan propositions in an internal controversy as old as the Puritan movement itself. The result of these stresses and adaptations, he argues, was continued vitality in American Puritanism during the second half of the seventeenth century.Foster draws insights from a broad range of souces in England and America, including sermons, diaries, spiritual autobiographies, and colony, town, and court records. Moreover, his presentation of the history of the English and American Puritan movements in tandem brings out the fatal flaws of the former as well as the modest but essential strengths of the latter.
ISBN: 9781469600475
Publication Date: 2012-12-01
The Protestant Interest by Thomas S. Kidd
During the early 18th century, New England witnessed the end of Puritanism and the emergence of a revivalist movement that culminated in the evangelical awakenings of the 1740s. This text shows how New Englanders abandoned their hostility towards Britain, instead viewing it as the chosen leader in the fight against Catholicism.
ISBN: 9780300128406
Publication Date: 2008-10-01
A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England by David D. Hall
In this revelatory account of the people who founded the New England colonies, historian David D. Hall compares the reforms they enacted with those attempted in England during the period of the English Revolution. Bringing with them a deep fear of arbitrary, unlimited authority, these settlers based their churches on the participation of laypeople and insisted on "consent" as a premise of all civil governance. Puritans also transformed civil and criminal law and the workings of courts with the intention of establishing equity. In this political and social history of the five New England colonies provides a reevaluation of the earliest moments of New England's history, revealing the colonists to be the most effective and daring reformers of their day.
ISBN: 9780807837115
Publication Date: 2012-08-01
Jonathan Edwards and the Church by Rhys S. Bezzant
This text seeks to shed new light on the development of the ecclesiology of Jonathan Edwards from the writings of his youth until his Stockbridge treatises, setting this within the context of Reformation and Puritan debates, and his experience of the revivals during his Northampton ministry.
ISBN: 9780199890316
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
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