Hartford Puritanism: Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God

Statues of Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone grace downtown Hartford, Connecticut, but few residents are aware of the distinctive version of Puritanism that these founding ministers of Hartford\u27s First Church carried into the Connecticut wilderness (or indeed that the city takes its name from Stone\u27s English birthplace). Shaped by interpretations of the writings of Saint Augustine largely developed during the ministers\u27 years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Hartford\u27s church order diverged in significant ways from its counterpart in the churches of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Hartford Puritanism argues for a new paradigm of New England Puritanism. Hartford\u27s founding ministers, Baird Tipson shows, both fully embraced - and even harshened - Calvin\u27s double predestination. Tipson explores the contributions of the lesser-known William Perkins, Alexander Richardson, and John Rogers to Thomas Hooker\u27s thought and practice: the art and content of his preaching, as well as his determination to define and impose a distinctive notion of conversion on his hearers. The book draws heavily on Samuel Stone\u27s The Whole Body of Divinity, a comprehensive exposition of his thought and the first systematic theology written in the American colonies. Virtually unknown today, The Whole Body of Divinity not only provides the indispensable intellectual context for the religious development of early Connecticut but also offers a more comprehensive description of the Puritanism of early New England than any other document. [From the Publisher]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1079/thumbnail.jp

Hartford Puritanism: Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God

Statues of Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone grace downtown Hartford, Connecticut, but few residents are aware of the distinctive version of Puritanism that these founding ministers of Hartford\u27s First Church carried into the Connecticut wilderness (or indeed that the city takes its name from Stone\u27s English birthplace). Shaped by interpretations of the writings of Saint Augustine largely developed during the ministers\u27 years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Hartford\u27s church order diverged in significant ways from its counterpart in the churches of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Hartford Puritanism argues for a new paradigm of New England Puritanism. Hartford\u27s founding ministers, Baird Tipson shows, both fully embraced - and even harshened - Calvin\u27s double predestination. Tipson explores the contributions of the lesser-known William Perkins, Alexander Richardson, and John Rogers to Thomas Hooker\u27s thought and practice: the art and content of his preaching, as well as his determination to define and impose a distinctive notion of conversion on his hearers. The book draws heavily on Samuel Stone\u27s The Whole Body of Divinity, a comprehensive exposition of his thought and the first systematic theology written in the American colonies. Virtually unknown today, The Whole Body of Divinity not only provides the indispensable intellectual context for the religious development of early Connecticut but also offers a more comprehensive description of the Puritanism of early New England than any other document. [From the Publisher]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1079/thumbnail.jp

American Self-Fashioning in Helen Foster Snow's My China Years.

In My China Years: A Memoir, Helen Foster Snow draws upon her Puritan roots in fashioning an American self that affirms the power of an individual exemplary life, the ability to exercise free will amid struggle, an optimism borne of hope, and a way to represent failure and success. Self-fashioning, which Stephen Greenblatt attributes to the rise of an autonomous self in early modern Europe, is shaped by Snow as a distinctly American identity based on a secular Puritanism she found more congenial than the Puritanism of her ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic. The many resemblances noted by Snow between the Chinese Communist Army and seventeenth-century English Puritanism led her to interrogate Puritanism, both in its traditional form and its secularised variant. What emerges in the pages of My China Years is an attempt to fashion an American self by negotiating an old Puritanism with the new by way of a triangulation with China

The Application of Puritanism in American Early Literature

Puritanism is an important cornerstone of American society and culture, and it has exerted a very important influence on the economy, politics, religion and social life of American society. It has a profound influence on the American people’s thoughts and culture from all aspects, and has laid the keynote of American society and American spirit, and shaped the American people’s character of hard work, thrift, piety sobriety. Early American literary works were also influenced by Puritanism, showing the characteristics of simplicity, directness and freshness. This paper discusses the cause and connotation of Puritanism, as well as its influence on the American character. Based on this, this passage takes the Autobiography of Franklin and the Declaration of Independence as examples to analyze the specific application of Puritanism in early American literary works

A Christian Interpretation of Sex

There is a sharp discrepancy between profession and practice in the sex life of the American people. It is commonly said that the philosophy of sexual conduct which has been traditionally held up to the public has been strongly determined by Puritanism. Neither Puritanism nor traditional morals are popular any more.. Especially the “Puritanism” and the morals connected with sexual behavior

Summer Sunlight and A Blackness Ten Times Black: Nathaniel Hawthorne\u27s Problem of Sin

Nathaniel Hawthorne has typically been understood as an anti-Puritan. However, much of his work suggests that he was not rejecting Puritanism. Rather, Hawthorne was using narrative to deconstruct the doctrinal dichotomies of Puritanism and Unitarianism, which were prevalent during his lifetime

The Influence of Puritanism on the Sin and Punishment in The Scarlet Letter

“The Scarlet Letter”, written by 19th century American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, tells the story of the triangle love affairs of heroine Hester Prynne, her husband Roger Chillingworth, and her lover Arthur Dimmesdale.” This paper attempts to interpret The Scarlet Letter from the aspects of sin and punishment. It discusses how Hawthorne arranges the fate of each character and the influence of Puritanism on people's thoughts and life. Under the influence of Puritanism, the three characters pay a heavy price for their sins and receive emotional and moral punishment, and finally each has a different way to get salvation of the soul. Keywords: “The Scarlet Letter”,; Puritanism; Sin and Punishment; Salvation

From Physical to Spiritual Errand: The Immigrant Experience in John Winthrop, William Bradford, and Samuel Danforth

The paper analyzes early colonial representations of the New World, connected with immigration of the first- and second-generation religious dissenters in what was to become America. Taking into account the well-documented influence of Puritans on American identity (often noticed by scholars since Tocqueville), the paper elaborates on the Puritans’ and Pilgrims’ mindsets as they arrived in the New World, connected not only with their religious beliefs but most of all with a practical need to organize themselves effectively. Be it in John Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity,” William Bradford’s “Of Plymouth Plantation” or Samuel Danforth’s “New England’s Errand into the Wilderness,” the authors of these works clearly show how the Pilgrims and Puritans had to confront the experience of emigration/immigration and construct not only new ways of social organization but also new identity. The paper focuses on the immigrants’ perception of the New World, their own role and challenges they were faced with, and their thinking about the society they came from and were about to construct. It deals with their process of adjusting to the surroundings and discussing values they decided to promote for the sake of communal survival in the adverse conditions of the New World

“DEMISTIFIYING” PURITANISM IN ISLAMIC LAWS

This paper aims to evaluate puritanism in formulating Islamic laws through the lens of prophetic social science approach. The prophetic social science approach, as an Indonesian historian Kuntowijoyo argues, offers a new perspective in understanding the position of religion in society. It calls for theoanthropocentric, in contrast to theocentric, approach to study religion, thus suggesting a contextualized interpretation of religion. This approach is essential in formulating Islamic laws, while reserving also as a criticism to theocentricism that leads to Islamic puritanism. This article will contribute to the discussion on Islamic legal paradigm as epistemic field as to which theoanthropocentrical reserves as analytical tool to demystify puritanism in formulating Islamic law. In so doing, the article offers to essential elements of formulating Islamic laws: the transformation from theocentric to theoanthropocentric approach and the contextualization of Islamic laws