A Jornal of a Fue Days at York : The Great Awakening on the Northern New England Frontier

During the early 1740s, New England communities along the northern frontier witnessed a series of religious revivals that were part of a transatlantic movement known as the Great Awakening. Promoted by touring evangelists such as George Whitefield and lesser known local clergyman, the revivals dominated the daily activities of ordinary men and women. Published here for the first time, Jornal of a fue Days at York, 1741, presents a vivid portrayal of the local dynamics of the Awakening in Maine and New Hampshire. The author of the \u27Jornal, an anonymous Boston merchant, chronicled nightly prayer meetings, conversations with pious local residents, and powerful sermon performances by visiting preachers over a two-week period in the fall of 1741. The Jornal demonstrates how the York revival attracted dozens of visitors from neighboring towns and forged an elite network of evangelical ministers, merchants, and magistrates that stretched from Boston to the coastal villages of Maine. Douglas Winiarski is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Richmond and the author of several articles on religion in early America. This essay is part of a larger study that explores the transformation of New England Congregationalism in the eighteenth century

New Perspectives on the Northampton Communion Controversy IV: Experience Mayhew’s Dissertation on Edwards’s \u3cem\u3eHumble Inquiry\u3c/em\u3e

This fourth installment in a series exploring newly discovered manuscripts relating to the “Qualifications Controversy” that drove Edwards from his Northampton pastorate presents an unpublished oppositional dissertation by Experience Mayhew, a prominent eighteenth-century Indian missionary from Martha’s Vineyard. Next to Solomon Stoddard, Mayhew was Edwards’s most important theological target during the conflict. Where Edwards pressed toward precision in defining the qualifications for admission to the Lord’s Supper, Mayhew remained convinced that the standards for membership in New England’s Congregational churches should encompass a broad range of knowledge and experience. His rejoinder to Edwards’s Humble Inquiry provides a rare opportunity to assess the ecclesiastical conflict as it reverberated outward from Northampton and the Connecticut Valley

The Newbury Prayer Bill Hoax: Devotion and Deception in New England\u27s Era of Great Awakenings

[...] [T]he “Tappin manuscript,” as I refer to it in the essay that follows, presents an intriguing puzzle. If Christopher Toppan did not compose the unusual prayer request, then who did? When? Why? Solving the riddle of the Tappin manuscript leads us into the troubled final years of one of New England’s most pugnacious ministers and the evangelical underworld of the Great Awakening that he had come to despise

New Perspectives on the Northampton Communion Controversy I: David Hall\u27s Diary and Letter to Edward Billing

Jonathan Edwards’ fateful decision to repudiate the church admission practices of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, provoked a bitter dispute with his parishioners that led to his dismissal in 1750. Scholars have long debated the meaning of this crucial turning point in Edwards’ pastoral career. For early biographers, the Northampton communion controversy served as an index of eighteenth-century religious decline. More recent studies situate Edwards’ dismissal within a series of local quarrels over his salary, the “Bad Book” affair, conflicts with the Williams family, and the paternity case of Elisha Hawley. This essay is the first a series that reexamines the tangled religious context of the communion controversy through newly discovered historical documents. The first installment explores the conflict from the perspective of David Hall, a little-known clergyman from central Massachusetts who participated in the dismissal proceedings

New Perspectives on the Northampton Communion Controversy III: Count Vavasor\u27s Tirade and the Second Council, 1751

Jonathan Edwards’ fateful decision to repudiate the church admission practices of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, provoked a bitter dispute with his parishioners that led to his dismissal in 1750. Scholars have long debated the meaning of this crucial turning point in Edwards’ pastoral career. For early biographers, the Northampton communion controversy served as an index of eighteenth-century religious decline. More recent studies situate Edwards’ dismissal within a series of local quarrels over his salary, the “Bad Book” affair, conflicts with the Williams family, and the paternity case of Elisha Hawley. This essay is the first a series that reexamines the tangled religious context of the communion controversy through newly discovered historical documents. This is the third installment

New Perspectives on the Northampton Communion Controversy II: Relations, Professions, and Experiences, 1748-1760

The second installment of a five-part series presenting documents relating to the “Qualifications Controversy” that led to Edwards’ dismissal at Northampton, this article presents a series of “relations,” or lay spiritual autobiographies presented for church membership. These relations come from other Massachusetts churches, many of whose pastors were aligned with Edwards, and yet reveal some significant differences from the form and content that Edwards came to advocate for such relations

Gendered Relations in Haverhill, Massachusetts, 1719-1742

The two autobiographical narratives- so similar in content, structure, and physical appearance-raise intriguing questions regarding the degree to which Puritan gender norms shaped the religious experiences of laymen and laywomen in early New England. Historians remain divided in their analyses of this issue. Two decades ago Charles Cohen posited a spiritual equality in Reformed theology that rendered androgynous the language that laymen and laywomen deployed in the oral church admission testimonies recorded by Cambridge, Massachusetts, minister Thomas Shepard during the seventeenth century. Elizabeth Reis recently challenged Cohen\u27s argument by highlighting the subtle but significant ways in which women internalized Puritan preaching on the doctrine of original sin.6 Similarly, Barbara Epstein and Susan Juster have traced the emergence of two distinct models of conversion early in the nineteenth century, although they disagree on the social consequences of these divergent narrative structures. Both maintain that the Great Awakening revivals of the 1740s had a leveling effect on church admission narratives. Relations from the mid-eighteenth century were remarkably similar, according to Epstein, and they reflected what Juster has called the rough equality of the sexes within the evangelical community. To date, however, no study explores the gendered conventions of the relation of faith genre during the critical decades between the founding era of New England Puritanism and the rise of eighteenth-century evangelicalism. The essay that follows fills an important chronological gap in this interpretive controversy by examining 235 relations from John Brown\u27s pastorate (1719-1742)

The Education of Joseph Prince: Reading Adolescent Culture in Eighteenth-Century New England

Among the earliest extant manuscripts composed by a New England adolescent, Prince\u27s commonplace book both confirms and modifies existing studies of the transition from childhood to adulthood in early America. Unlike the night-walking youths who appear in revisionist scholarship, Prince never was haled before the Plymouth County court to answer charges of frolicking with his cronies. Instead, this dutiful scion of a wealthy and politically powerful southeastern Massachusetts clan spent most of his free time perusing the books in his father\u27s extensive library. Yet the very act of reading held subversive potential. While his parents sought to hone his religious sensibilities and prepare him for a career as a gentleman planter and civil magistrate, Prince devoted a considerable amount of time to reading books that his elders may well have convidered frivolous-and in a few cases, illicit. These included sensational accounts of portentous celestial wonders, arcane astrological treatises, and bawdy jestbooks containing salacious epigrams. Chronicling the education of an early-eighteenth-century farm boy, Prince\u27s commonplace book simultaneously illustrates the process though which adults in provincial New England attempted to socialize their children and discloses the subtly rebellious acts of reading though which young people resisted such efforts

“A Jornal Of A Fue Days At York”: The Great Awakening on the Northern New England Frontier

During the early 1740s, New England communities along the northern frontier witnessed a series of religious revivals that were part of a transatlantic movement known as the Great Awakening. Promoted by touring evangelists such as George Whitefield and lesser known local clergyman, the revivals dominated the daily activities of ordinary men and women. Published here for the first time, “A Jornal of afue Days at York, 1741,” presents a vivid portrayal of the local dynamics of the Awakening in Maine and New Hampshire. The author of the “Jornal,” an anonymous Boston merchant, chronicled nightly prayer meetings, conversations with pious local residents, and powerful sermon performances by visiting preachers over a two-week period in the fall of 1741. The “Jornal” demonstrates how the York revival attracted dozens of visitors from neighboring towns and forged an elite network of evangelical ministers, merchants, and magistrates that stretched from Boston to the coastal villages of Maine. Douglas Winiarski is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Richmond and the author of several articles on religion in early America. This essay is part of a larger study that explores the transformation of New England Congregationalism in the eighteenth century