Thrilled to finally see "The Ballad of Anne Bunnell: Troubled Families in the Shaker West, 1805-1825" in print!
Read MoreReview of Hancock's Convulsed States
Earlier this year, I reviewed Jonathan Todd Hancock’s fascinating new book on the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811, Convulsed States: Earthquakes, Prophecy, and the Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021). A great read—essential scholarship for historians of religion in the early American republic. Here’s my review in the Journal of Church and State 64 (2022): 354–356.
Death by Pancakes on C-SPAN
This week, C-SPAN’s American History TV channel will rebroadcast “Death by Pancakes & Other Incidents in the History of New Light Evangelicalism,” a public lecture I presented online for the Newberry Library last May.
Here’s the official blurb from the original Newberry event:
In this illustrated lecture, historian Douglas Winiarski will explore the varied ways in which the people called “New Lights”—progenitors of today’s evangelical Protestants—resolved perplexing mind-body problems associated with their transformative conversion experiences. Winiarski will use engaging stories featuring an eclectic cast of religious radicals—hailing from New England and Maritime Canada to the trans-Appalachian west—to reveal how the transatlantic evangelical awakening of the 18th century fueled controversies over marriage, the family, sexuality, and the body.
And the full C-SPAN schedule:
Saturday, August 28: 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, August 29: 4:00 a.m. (for early risers!)
Sunday, September 5: 3:59 p.m. (sharp!)
Monday, September 6: 3:59 a.m. (seriously?)
Following the last airing, C-SPAN will archive the program on their free video library. It’s also available on the Newberry Library website.
Enjoy!
Ben Franklin's World Turns 300!
Congratulations to Liz Covart, creator of Ben Franklin’s World! The landmark early American history podcast sponsored by the Omohundro Institute launched its 300th episode last month. Liz recently asked past contributors to reflect on the following question: “What is the one aspect of early American history you wish people better understood? And why?”
Here’s my contribution, which comes at the very end of a fascinating lineup of short statements by nearly three dozen early American historians:
Here’s one thing I wish people better understood about early American history: religion was a difference-maker.
What do I mean by this? Two things. First, religion mattered to all people in #vast early America. Whether free or indentured Euro-Americans, enslaved African Americans, or sovereign Native Americans—religious institutions, beliefs, and practices, shaped their worldviews, work routines, interpersonal relations, politics, laws, economic practices, and private writings.
But more than that, religion was a difference-maker in that it also differentiated people from one another. Early American religions created divisions, clarified racial categories, fragmented communities, fomented violence, galvanized warfare.
We talked about the centrifugal pull of early American evangelicalism in Episode 182. My book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light, was published on Inauguration Day in 2017. Since then, I think we’ve learned a lot about the powerful ways religion divides people. Historians of religion in early America have an important role to play in reminding all of us of the potentials and dangers of such difference-making cultural practices.
Congratulations on the 300th episode of Ben Franklin’s World! Can’t wait to see what’s ahead!
New England’s Hidden Histories: A Roundtable Discussion
I recently had a chance to talk about one of my favorite digital history initiatives, New England’s Hidden Histories.
Read MoreReview of Grasso's Skepticism and American Faith
Christopher Grasso’s elegant new monograph, Skepticism and Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), is a towering achievement—a sweeping historical narrative told through a fascinating cast of characters. A must read for anyone interested in the religious history of the early American republic! Check out my review in Early American Literature 55 (2020): 273–276.
Joseph Brown’s Adventures with the Jerks
I was recently invited to contribute a blog post for a roundtable discussion of religion in The Panorama, the online forum of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. In “Joseph Brown’s Adventures with the Jerks,” I reflect briefly on my recent work on the history of the jerking exercise and consider the “tangled legacy” of American evangelicalism, “settler colonialism, Native American dispossession, and the expansion of slavery.”
Hope you’ll consider checking it out and sharing your reactions on the SHEAR website.
Col. Joseph Brown (1772–1868), n.d., photographic print. Source: Picture Collection, ca. 1800–1970, Box 2, Folder 35, THS 193, Tennessee Historical Society, Nashville. Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives.
“Seized by the Jerks” Wins Article Award!
I’m pleased to announce that my recent William and Mary Quarterly article, “Seized by the Jerks: Shakers, Spirit Possession, and the Great Revival,” has been named the Outstanding Publication Article Award for 2019 by the Communal Studies Association. Founded in 1975, the CSA sponsors a wide range of professional programs and publications designed to “encourage and facilitate the preservation, restoration, and public interpretation of America’s historic communal sites” and “provide a forum for the study of intentional communities, past and present.”
The CSA annual meeting is taking place this weekend at the spectacular Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library near Wilmington, Delaware. Yesterday, I presented “The Ballad of Anne Bunnell: Troubled Families in the Shaker West, 1805–1825,” alongside fellow Richmond-area historian Ryan Smith (Virginia Commonwealth University) , who delivered a fascinating paper on the material and spiritual dimensions of Shaker tables. Christine Heyrman served as the moderator, and, for the first time in three decades, my dad was able to attend one of my conference presentations. Very much looking forward to the awards banquet tonight!
To learn more about my work on the jerks and other somatic religious phenomena associated with the revivals in the trans-Appalachian west, check out “Seized by the Jerks,” my two-part “Shakers & Jerkers” articles, and “History of the Jerks: Bodily Exercises and the Great Revival (1803–1967),” a curated digital archive of primary texts chronicling this fascinating religious practice and its controversial role in the development of American evangelicalism.
Teaching the Jerks
I recently contributed a post to the Omohundro Institute’s Uncommon Sense blog. The short essay provides an overview of “History of the Jerks: Bodily Exercises and the Great Revival (1803–1967),” an innovative digital archive and teaching companion for my essay, “Seized by the Jerks: Shakers, Spirit Possession, and the Great Revival,” which appeared in the January 2019 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly.
Check it out!
Interview on the History News Network
Elisabeth Pearson of the History News Network invited me to share some preliminary insights from my current research on frontier revivalism, anti-Shaker violence, and the pan-Indian religious movement associated with Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet. Check it out!
George Catlin, Ten-sqúat-a-way, The Open Door, Known as The Prophet, Brother of Tecumseh, 1830, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.279.
The “Strange Work” of Caleb Callaway (Logan County, Kentucky, 1811)
In my current research, I’ve been searching for sources that reveal how and why western settlers converted to Shakerism during the years following the Great Revival (1799–1805). The Shakers kept detailed records of all sorts, but most were written by the leaders of the sect. Few rank-and-file believers described their experiences, especially during the critical early years of the Shakers’ expansion into Kentucky and Ohio. Even fewer shared those experiences with the “world’s people”—the friends, neighbors, and family members they left behind.
Shaker convert Caleb Callaway scrawled his signature on this 1829 financial agreement. Caleb Callaway, deed of gift to John C. Callaway, June 30, 1829, box 1, Shakers—South Union, Ky., Business and Legal Papers, 1769–1893, MSS 154, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Ky.
That’s what makes the following letter by Caleb Callaway (1761–1829) so valuable. Tucked away in one of the sprawling notebooks of John Dabney Shane, a nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister and amateur historian, is a brief note that Callaway penned to his brother-in-law, James French, during the summer of 1811. At the time, Callaway had been living for two years at the Gasper River (later South Union) Shaker village near Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Callaway provided a detailed exposition of the “faith and manner of life that I now live.” Like many western revivalers and recent Shaker converts, he believed he was living in an extraordinary new dispensation in which “Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world.” Interestingly, Callaway did not associate Christ’s return with the figure of Shaker founder Ann Lee. But he did presume, as did all Shakers, that Christ was not a man but rather an inward principle, an “anointing of the Holy Ghost,” available to all of the “sons of God.” For those who crucified the flesh, gloried in the celibate “cross of Christ,” forsook all “natural relations,” and devoted themselves to the communal life of the Shakers, it was possible to “live a holy life” on earth “clear from sin, from day to day,” with a “peace & union the world knows nothing of.” And that choice was voluntary, as Callaway explained in the final lines of the letter. “Salvation is free for every soul,” he encouraged his brother-in-law, “they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that.” Utterly confident in the rightness of his new Shaker faith, Callaway proclaimed he would not “exchange my present situation, for the whole world.” He concluded the letter with an exhortation: “Come and see us, and know for yourself.”
Callaway’s crooked road to Shakerism began in what is now Bedford County, Virginia. He was born in 1761, the son of Richard and his first wife, Frances Walton. The elder Callaway had fought in the Seven Years War, and he later joined Daniel Boone in blazing the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. Caleb spent his early years at Fort Boonesborough, where he witnessed the capture of his sister and the death and mutilation of his father at the hands of the Shawnee. Early in the 1780s, Caleb sold his share in his father’s lands and lucrative ferry operation, returned to southwestern Virginia, and married Elizabeth Callaway, his first cousin once removed. He appeared regularly on the Virginia property tax rolls for Campbell County during the next two decades, slowly rising through the ranks of society as he accumulated material goods and enslaved servants. The Callaways had at least seven children between 1784 and 1802. Then, in 1804, Elizabeth died unexpectedly—“passed away to the Summerland,” according to later Shaker records—and Caleb vanished.
Some evidence suggests that Callaway moved his family to North Carolina. Or he may have fallen on hard times and sought refuge with relatives. But when he resurfaced in Ohio County, Kentucky, five years later, Callaway was a changed man. Like so many of his contemporaries, he had passed through the fires of the Great Revival and been transformed. According to Shaker missionary Benjamin Seth Youngs, who encountered him for the first time on June 1, 1809, Callaway had joined the Halcyon Church, one of the most peculiar religious sects of the early American republic. Founded around 1806 in Marietta, Ohio, by a quixotic prophet named Abel Morgan Sargeant, the Halcyons renounced the traditional Christian doctrine of the trinity, rejected Calvinism, and advocated universal salvation. Denounced as an imposter by his opponents, Sargeant claimed to communicate with angels; he traveled throughout the Ohio Valley with a group of twelve female apostles; and he exhorted his small group of followers to live “without sin” and “become so holy as to work miracles, heal the sick and live without eating.”
Following his encounter with Youngs and the Shakers, Callaway abandoned the Halcyons and moved with family to the newly organized Shaker settlement at Gaspar River in Logan County, Kentucky. The following year he wrote to James French explaining his new faith.
Callaway’s two-decade life among a Shakers was uneventful, although not without challenges. In 1815, he indentured his three teenage sons, John Constant, Henry, and William, to the believers at South Union, who agreed to provide food, lodging, education, and trade skills until the boys turned twenty-one. John Constant remained with the Shakers until his death in 1830, as did a daughter, Matilda, who lived into the 1880s. Caleb’s other two sons, along with their two older brothers, Elijah and Elisha, left South Union in 1818. Callaway occasionally traveled on business for the believers and worked in their various mill complexes. In 1827, he was listed among the 75 brothers and sisters of the “Junior Order” who were living in the East Family dwelling house. Callaway died on the morning of July 8, 1829, and was buried the following day in an unmarked grave in the Shaker cemetery at South Union.
Callaway spent his last years in the East Section dwelling house at South Union Shaker village, near Bowling Green, Kentucky. Isaac N. Young and George Kendall, “Sketches of the various Societies of Belivers in the states of Ohio & Kentucky,” 1835, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
At the end of his transcription, Shane noted that Callaway’s “spelling, & division of sentences” were “miserable.” Judging from Caleb’s shaky signature on a South Union financial document, Shane was right!
John Dabney Shane transcribed Caleb Callaway’s July 11, 1811, letter to James French into the second volume of his “Historical Collections” notebooks, which are now among the Draper Manuscripts of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (12 CC 209–10). For Callaway’s life at South Union, see Harvey L. Eads, transcr., Shakers—South Union, Ky., “Record Book A (including Autobiography of John Rankin, Sr.),” 1805–1836, 102, 265, 452, Shakers of South Union, Kentucky, Collection, 1800–1916, MSS 597, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green; “South Union Graveyard Book,” 1750–1881, 2–3, typescript, III B:32, MS 3944, Shaker Manuscripts, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland. Information on Callaway’s notable father, Richard, is available in John E. Kleber, The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington, Ky., 1992), 152. Adam Jortner briefly discusses the Halcyon Church in his recent Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2017), 164; see also C. E. Dickinson, A Century of Church Life, 1796–1896: A History of the First Congregational Church, Marietta, Ohio ([Marietta, Ohio], 1896), 31. On Shane and his “Historical Collections” notebooks, see Elizabeth A. Perkins, Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 15–24.
Gaspar River, Logan Co.
Friend James,
I have taken the privilege of writing to you my faith and manner of life that I now live. We believe that Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world; and his errand is to save his people from their sins, and to destroy that nature that is in man, that is not subject to the law of God, & to bring in everlasting righteousness. The greater part of mankind h[as] b[een] expecting Christ to come in the shape of a man. I answer nay; the Church of Xt had its foundation in the revelation of God; and that foundation is Christ. But who or what is Christ? The name of Christ signifies the anointed, and arose from that spiritual unction, or anointing of the Holy Ghost, w[ho] [with] Jesus was anointed to preach the Gospel of Salvation to the [poor]. And I, as well as many others, have read: Christ, and as many as recieve him, to them he gives power to become the sons of God.[1] And we [heed] him by honestly confessing our sins to God before God’s witnesses. This I have done, and I now live a holy life from day to day; taking up the cross of Christ, self-denial, working out my salvation, forsaking all natural relations, that is, that is, that spirit that they are of, that stands against God. I love their persons & their souls, but not that carnal nature. Neither does God love it. I do know that I live clear of sin, from day to day; And I have that peace & union that the world knows nothing of. Nor wo’d I exchange my present situation, for the whole world. I do know that I have peace with God, and I know I am not decieved. To know God, & Jesus Xt whom he has sent, is eternal life, and nothing short of this is Eternal life. We have the everlasting Gospel w[ith] us, that saves people from their sins. And the Tabernacle of God is with men, and the judgment is set. And I have sent my sins into judgment beforehand, and judgment is given to the saints. This is that work that God promised long ago to bring about, by the prophets and Apostles. A strange work, and strange it is. And I can say as Paul did, I am crucified to the world, and the world to me. And I glory in the cross.[2] And I die daily unto sin, and live to God, putting on the Lord Jesus Xt, and making no provision for the flesh to fulfil it in the lust therof.[3]
Come and see us, and know for yourself. By the fruits you are to know them.[4]
I suppose my old mother is gone out of the body, is she not?[5] Tell Keeza and all the children, that salvation is free for every souls on the earth: either in the body or out of it, all will have a chance to come in.[6] And they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that. I add no more at present, but remain your friend,
Caleb Calloway
July 11th 1811
To James French, Montgomery Co., Ky.
(Post-mark, “Frankfort, K. July 11th.”)
(The spelling, & division of sentences, miserable.)
[1] John 1:12.
[2] Cf. Gal 6:14.
[3] Cf. Rom. 13:14.
[4] Cf. Mat. 7:20.
[5] Callaway’s stepmother, Elizabeth (Jones Hoy) Calloway (1733–1813), lived with French and was still alive in 1811. She is buried in the French family cemetery near Mount Sterling, Ky.
[6] “Keeza” was Callaway’s sister, Keziah (Callaway) French (1768–1845), who married James French and lived in Montgomery County, Kentucky.
John Dabney Shane’s transcription of Caleb Callaway’s 1811 letter to John French. Kentucky Papers, 12 CC 209–10, microfilm, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.
Talking DFLL with Steve Marini
I recently discussed Darkness Falls on the Land of Light at the Massachusetts Historical Society with Stephen Marini, one of my favorite scholars of religion in early America. Here’s the YouTube video from MHS. Gulp!
Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize Ceremony @ MHS
Yuqi Wang, Peter Gomes (2015). Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 86.4 cm. Harvard University Portrait Collection.
Looking forward to catching up with friends and colleagues in Boston this coming Wednesday, February 13, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. at the Massachusetts Historical Society. I’ll be discussing Darkness Falls on the Land of Light in an innovative public forum moderated by Wellesley College historian Steve Marini. I’m grateful to the staff at the MHS for supporting my research for more than two decades; and I’m thrilled and honored that DFLL was selected for the 2018 Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize. One of my favorite illustrations in the book—an unusual overmantel painting depicting a Council of Ministers (see below and page 368)—hangs in a quiet hallway in Memorial Hall, not far from the pulpit where Professor Gomes delivered inspirational sermons and addresses to legions of Harvard students during his four-decade career.
Click the button below to learn more about the MHS event on Wednesday evening, which requires a reservation but is free and open to the public.
Unidentified Artist, Council of Ministers (circa 1744). Oil on wood panel, 77.3 × 106 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Dr. Francis L. Burnett and Mrs. Esther Lowell Cunningham.
DFLL Now in Paperback!
Darkness Falls on the Land of Light is now available in paperback. Happy reading!
Seized by the Jerks (East Tennessee, 1803)
My latest journal article just appeared in the new issue of the William and Mary Quarterly! “Seized by the Jerks: Shakers, Spirit Possession, and the Great Revival” tells the surprising story of the “jerking exercise,” one of the most controversial religious practices in the history of early American Protestantism. Research for this project led me to dozens of archives from Michigan to Mississippi. Altogether, I uncovered more than 200 reports of this notorious somatic phenomenon. Most of these documents will soon be available in a curated digital archive. (Stay tuned!) For a student-friendly version of the article, consider downloading the OI Reader edition, which includes an interactive map and a selection of fascinating primary texts. Many thanks to Joshua Piker for championing this project and to Meg Musselwhite, Kim Foley, Becky Wrenn, and the OI apprentices for providing matchless editorial and design support. Hopefully, “Seized by the Jerks” will help scholars reconsider the origins of southern evangelicalism during the Second Great Awakening.
DFLL Selected for 2019 Virginia Festival of the Book
So thrilled that Darkness Falls on the Land of Light has been selected for the 25th Annual Virginia Festival of the Book! I’m looking forward to chatting about the “people called New Lights” on a panel with fellow OI author Robert Parkinson. Our session will take place in Charlottesville on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 20, 2019. More details coming soon!
Childe Hassam, Church at Old Lyme, Connecticut, 1905. Oil on canvas, 92.07 x 81.91 cm. Albert H. Gracy Fund, 1909. Collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.
Of Whores & Witches, Rakes & Hell Hounds (Old Lyme, Connecticut, 1743)
Sometimes even a single manuscript I stumbled across while researching Darkness Falls on the Land of Light overturned everything I thought I knew about New England’s era of great awakenings. Consider the stunning letter (below) by Joseph Higgins, a coastal trader and merchant from Old Lyme, Connecticut.
In 1743, Higgins dispatched this strident missive to an unnamed clergyman. The recipient was likely Charles Chauncy, Boston’s vociferous opponent of the Whitefieldian revivals. Higgins was aiming to blow the whistle on his own minister, Jonathan Parsons. The letter contains a petition in which several parishioners in the Lyme Congregational church accused Parsons of nearly three dozen theological and ecclesiastical errors.
Here’s the unusual part: Parsons ranked among the most successful and respected ministers in eighteenth-century New England. Historians frequently point to his published account of the religious stir in Lyme—which was serialized in an evangelical magazine called the Christian History—as the paradigmatic revival narrative of the colonial era. In later years, Parsons presided over one of the largest congregations in New England: Newburyport’s Old South Presbyterian Church, the final resting place of George Whitefield himself.
But the figure in Higgins’s letter is nothing like the temperate clergyman of revival literature. Parsons abandoned all decorum in his church services and opened his pulpit to an array of gifted lay people. He brazenly declared that whores, witches, rakes, and hell hounds would find their way to heaven long before the “old Gray hedded” communicants his church. One of the aggrieved brethren even recalled hearing Parsons gloat that he would stand as a witness against unconverted sinners on the Day of Judgment; and he prayed aloud that hellfire might blaze out of their mouths. Most ominously, the Lyme minister zealously endorsed the “Enthusiastick Doctrines & Practices” of the most incendiary New Light itinerant of the era, James Davenport.
After discovering Higgins’s extraordinary letter, it took me several years to piece together the entire controversy. The search lead me first to the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston; then to the Connecticut Conference Archives of the United Church of Christ in Hartford, the Library of Congress in Washington, and the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan; and finally to a unique cache of church papers at the Florence Griswold Art Museum in Old Lyme.
The Lyme controversy is one of my favorite sections of Darkness Falls. It’s a powerful example of the social and ecclesiastical costs of the Great Awakening—something scholars have been slow to acknowledge. Even still, the story of Lyme’s checkered religious history was quickly forgotten. Early in the twentieth century, artists and literary recast Lyme as the quintessential New England village. Immortalized in the vibrant colors and bold brushwork of American impressionist Childe Hassam, the Congregational meetinghouse emerged as an icon of simpler times, a pre-industrial community bound together by town and church.
Joseph Higgins knew better.
Higgins’s 1743 letter to an unidentified clergyman is part of the collections of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston (Mss. C 1345). For a detailed analysis of the Lyme controversy, see Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2017), 333–352. Jonathan Parsons published his “Account of the Revival at Lyme West Parish. . .” in Thomas Prince, Jr., ed., The Christian History, Containing Accounts of the Revival and Propagation of Religion in Great Britain & America (Boston, 1744), 118–162 (for excerpts, see Alan Heimert and Perry Miller, eds., The Great Awakening: Documents Illustrating the Crisis and Its Consequence [Indianapolis, Ind., 1967], 35–40, 187–191, 196–200). Additional documents relating to the Lyme revival appear in Richard L. Bushman, ed., The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740–1745 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), 40–42, 53–54. See also the Records of the New London Association, 1708–1788 (available online at the Congregational Library’s New England’s Hidden Histories: Colonial-Era Church Records New England's Hidden Histories digital archive).
Click image to view in NEHGS Digital Collections.
Lyme 1743
Reverend Sir.
At your Request I have undertaken to Give you an Account of the Doctrine & Conduct of the Minister & People of this Place & I have Thought Best to Give you a Coppy of a Complaint Exhibited Against Mr. Parsons by Capt. Timothy Mather in the following things:
1. With Approving Attending & Encouraging Separate Meetings for Religious Worship.
2. With Allowing Approving & Encouraging Persons when moved with Imperssions (that are Common Among us) to Cry out with a loud voice in the Time of Divine Worship to the Disturbance of the Worshipping Assembly.
3. With Inviting & approving Unqualified Persons to preach & to Exhort the People such as Thacher Prince &c.
4. With Breaking Covenant with this people by Going to Long Island, to preach without any Necesary Call, when he knew the Church was in Great Danger of being led away from the Simplicity of the Gospel by the Enthusiastick Doctrines & Practices of Mr. Davenport.
5. With Recommending a Theif (Prosecuted found Guilty & [Recorded]) to the Charity of a Neighbouring Church without any Christian Satisfaction, tho he well knew the whole Matter.
6. With using his Endeavours to Admit a Baptist that had Apostatised from her Profession to Occational Communication with this Church.
7. With making an Unscriptural & unwarrantable Difference between Chirch Members of a Good standing in the Church by Giving the Appelation of Dear Brothers to Some & not to others (the new Lights are the Dear Brothers).
8. With Admitting Persons into the Communion of the Church that are Grossly Ignorant of the Principles of Religion &c.
9. With forbiding unconverted Persons to sing the 23 Psalm & such like Psalms.
10. With Publickly declaring Persons are converted Immediately upon their Experiences of these things, viz.: Distress & Terror of Conscience for Sin & their being afterwards filled with Joy, &c.
11. With Callumniating the Civill Authority (both in prayer & preaching) by Intimating that many of their Dictates are Unlawfull & unjust to be Imposed upon a Christian people terming of them Tyranny & a Bloody Inquisition &c. Praying that they people might not submit in Matters of the least Indifference.
Click image to view in NEHGS Digital Collections.
Farther Capt. Mather laid these following Articles of false Doctrine, viz.:
1. That we have no Reason to think a man in a Goodd State let his life be never so Seemingly Religious, or Moral until he hath told his Experiences alledge its as a just Inference from our being, by Nature, Children of Wrath.
2. That an External Conformity to the Gospel is no Evidence that a person is a True Christian.
3. That multiplied acts of Gross Sins, yea sins of the Grossest kind is no Arguments or Evidence against a State of Grace.
4. That all Doubting in a Christian of his Good state was from the Devil.
5. That there is more hopes of a profane Swearer, Sabbath Breaker, Drunkard, whoremaster, going to heaven when he dies than that he will, that lives an honest Life & Strives to Serve God as well as he Can.
6. That he knows not but God might Save a Moral man but an hundred to one if he did for it was out of his usual way to save such.
7. He told us in a Sermon from Luke 14:13 that Christ Chose Sailors the worst of men to be his Companions, Highway & hedge Sinners a Company of Whores & Witches. That there was more hopes of a Rake Hell & hell hounds than Moral men & many things of the like Import &c.
8. That if he could get all the people to do nothing towards their Conversion he should not doubt but that they would all be converted in one Month.
9. That if God should Discover his glory to an unconverted person it would cause Hell in his soul & that hell flames would Blaze out of his mouth.
10. For a Person to Infer his Justification from his Sanctification was a Proof that Pharisees & Hypocrites have of their Justification.
11. That a Person Could draw no true Comfort to his own Soul when he does Justice, loves mercy, & walks humbly with God.
12. That he had often heard of a Humble Doubting Christian but never saw one that was a Humble Doubting Christian but was a Mear Chimera in Religion, an Imaginary Monster made up by Hypocrites & an Absolute Contradiction, a thing that never was nor can be & Such as Dream of Humble Christians Doubting were filled with pride & Opposition to God.
13. That Continued acts of Grose Sins of the Gosple Sort was no Evidence of a State of Nature or Sin & Death.
Click image to view in NEHGS Digital Collections.
14. That St. Ambrose Says that to Call the Works of God the works of the Devil is the Sin against the holy Ghost though Ignorantly so Called.
15. That this is the Sin against the Holy Ghost (1) when Persons have Greived away the holy Spirit (2) turn again to Sin like a Dog to his vomit or the washed Sow &c. (3) Got to a heigher degree of Sin than before and then prayed oh that God would cause Some one now in this Assembly to Roar out to be a warning to others & that the Flames of hell might blaze out of all their mouths, for he knows of no Rule in the word of God to pray for Such.
16. That a Hypocrite may love God with a Sincere love.
17. That we had as much Reason to think Mr. Davenport was an holy Man as we have to think Peter James & John were.
18. In his Sermons he often tells us in an Angry manner I will Increase your Damnation in hell. I Expect to be a Witness against the Worst of you in the Day of Judgment, Though you have set under the Gospel 40, 50, 60 years the Bottom of hell I expect will be paved with the Soulls [Sculls?] of the most of you. You Cursed old Gray hedded Pharisees & Hypocrites &c. You Damn’d men & Damn’d Women &c.
19. You are Guilty of Adultery in the house of God. [You] Commit adultery in the Time of Divine Worship.
20. That in Conversion there is a Phisical Change that Conversion was one thing & Regeneration is Another.
21. The holy kiss Spoken of by the Apostle was meant in a Carnal Manner.
22. In opening them words, Judge not least ye be judged, he told us if he knew what the Rash Judging there meant was, it was Judging men converted before they had told their Experiences.
23. That the Apostle John had the Spirit on the Lords Day, but we read no more of it & we have Reason to think that the Spirit left him, without any more Returns.
24. It is no matter what Religion we are of if we beleive in Christ.
25. That if we have not Sensible Acts of Faith in Divine Worship we have not the Presence of God.
26. Forbids his hearers to read any of Dr. Tillitsons Works the whole Duty of man, & many others Authors & says that the Peice Entitled the French Prophets is the Cursedest piece of Stuf that ever was raked together on this hole Hell.
Click image to view in NEHGS Digital Collections.
27. With speaking contemptuously of the Ministers of Former & Latter Days in saying these Churches have been Stuft with Damnable Stuff these 30, or 40 years & that the Substance of the Doctrines for 40 years past was such Cursed & Damnable Stuff.
28. That in Conversation a Man repents of all Sin both past & future & that Repentance is not necessary after Conversion.
29. That a person may Commit Gross acts of Sin such as fornication & Adultery having Grace in Exercise, yea that Grace in exercise sometimes prompts men to Sin.
30. When a Person was crying out in the meating house after service said Mr. Parsons you that are Dissatisfyed Go & take the words of the holy Ghost from that mans mouth.
31. That we have as much reason to beleive the Present work is the work of God as we have to beleive the Mission of Christ.
In the next place Capt. Mather Charges Mr. Parsons Prayers with being unwarrentable in these things:
1. Praying for the Miraculous Gift of Tongus (2) that Unconverted ministers may be converted or put out of the Ministry (3) that God would Appear in as Visable a manner as at that Memorable Sacrament when there was Crying laughing & talking even every thing [allmost] Imaginable.
These sir are the things Laid in against Mr. Parsons & there is no Doubt but they will be proved and many such more might be added. There are many meatings in this place where there is all these things acted in the mean time, Viz.: Singing Praying Groaning Exhorting laughing & Talking in the same Room & all manner of noises that may be Imagined &c. & one thing more I will mention that is, we may Command God the whole of his Kingdeom &c. & now Sir please to Send me your Opinion on these matters from your friend & Servant,
Joseph Higgins
But Sir Mr. Parsons hath been well satisfy’d for 4 years. But this Day we had a Meeting & now he Demands £320—£350 in the Room of £240: though a very holy man & quite left of[f] Caring for this Worlds Goods.
P.S. I had the Request by my kinsman Mr. Israel Higgins known to yourself.
[Endorsed:] Charges Against Bishop Parsons
A Family Fight on Thanksgiving (Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1743)
Unidentified Man (Josiah Cotton?), by John Smibert, oil on canvas, circa 1736–1737. Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Here’s a deleted scene from Darkness Falls on the Land of Light involving Josiah Cotton, one of my favorite eighteenth-century New Englanders. Cotton was a cantankerous Plymouth, Massachusetts, civil magistrate and Indian preacher. For a time during the 1730s, he owned a haunted house. A decade later, he emerged as an outspoken critic of the Whitefieldian revivals.
Cotton’s annual memoirs and extensive correspondence contain vivid descriptions of the ecclesiastical chaos that enveloped the Old Colony of southeastern Massachusetts during the 1740s. He reserved his sharpest invectives for Andrew Croswell. Cotton utterly loathed the itinerating Connecticut firebrand who ignited a powerful religious revival in Plymouth during the winter of 1742. In one of his sermons, Croswell brazenly pronounced three quarters of the congregation unconverted hypocrites; and he filled the Plymouth pulpit with a motley assortment of children, women, and enslaved Africans who roused the audience into a frenzy of shrieking and convulsing bodies. Nearly one hundred people joined the Plymouth church in full communion in 1742—a figure ten times the yearly average. Newspapers and magazines carried reports of the “Great Awakening” in Plymouth throughout the Atlantic world.
Cotton watched with mounting frustration as the Congregational establishment came apart at the seams. Over the next decade, nearly every town in southeastern Massachusetts suffered through bitter church schisms. Isaac Backus settled in nearby Middleborough and organized a separate Baptist church. Radicals such as Sarah Prentice claimed to have achieved a state of spiritual perfection and bodily incorruptibility. Along the South Shore, liberal ministers peddling new “Arminian” theological doctrines drew many laypeople—including members of Cotton’s extended family—onto a path that would culminate the development of Unitarianism.
Cotton considered himself a religious conservative, a voice crying for moderation in a maelstrom of change. Yet his financial writings disclose a fascinating little secret: the judge did as much to accelerate the breakdown of New England Congregationalism as Croswell and his radical “New Light” contemporaries.
Josiah Cotton’s list of “Publick” and “Charitable” contributions, 1743–1744. Courtesy Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Mass.
Consider this list of “Publick” and “Charitable” expenditures from Cotton’s diary and account book. The cramped, hastily scrawled entries recorded taxes paid to the province and county; gifts distributed to prisoners, paupers, Indian families, and the victims of fire and other misfortunes; and, especially, charitable contributions for the Plymouth Congregational church. As one of the town’s godliest walkers, Cotton made regular financial contributions to support minister Nathaniel Leonard. In a cash-starved economy, the judge usually paid in local bills of credit or hard currency—somewhere between one and two pounds annually. He also provided Leonard with staple goods during the lean winter months.
Cotton typically made no distinction between himself and his wife when he recorded his charitable contributions. After all, Hannah Cotton had suspended her legal identity when she married Josiah in 1708 and, thus, owned no property to bestow on individuals or institutions. But on May 6, 1742—just two months after Croswell’s raucous fortnight in Plymouth—the judge inscribed a curious entry of three pence for his “Wifes Contribution” at Leonard’s church. On several occasions later that summer, Cotton carefully noted “My Contribution” to the church at Jones River (now Kingston), located just north of his farm. Occasional entries for “My Wifes Contribution” continued throughout the summer and fall, including three shillings, eight pence on “Thanksgiving Day,” November 24. The next line in Cotton’s account book was even more cryptic: “My Contribution at New Meeting House.”
What did these subtle changes mean?
Shortly after Croswell’s departure from Plymouth, a small clique of disgruntled church members demanded a public meeting to discuss the recent “unusual Practices in Religious Exercises.” Cotton penned a proposal for a day of ritual fasting to heal the growing rift in the church. But minister Nathaniel Leonard refused to address their complaints. In response, Cotton and the aggrieved brethren withdrew from communion in the oldest Congregational church in New England. During the summer of 1743, a crew of eighty men constructed a new meetinghouse near the center of town and began auctioning pews; the Massachusetts General Court granted a petition to form a separate parish the following December. Nine members of Leonard’s church requested a formal dismissal to the new precinct. After a lengthy trial of probationary preachers, the separatists settled upon Thomas Frink as their minister. Boston’s Charles Chauncy, the most outspoken opponent of the Whitefieldian revivals in New England, delivered the ordination sermon.
Tucked away amid the minutiae of a sprawling account book, the records of Cotton’s charitable contributions disclose a startling revelation. Sometime shortly after Thanksgiving Day, 1743, Josiah and Hannah Cotton began worshiping in separate churches. He had become the very thing he despised: a Congregational separatist. Cotton never mentioned the split in his memoirs, but it must have been a galling experience for Plymouth’s leading revival opponent to continue supporting a church he no longer attended. For the rest of his life until his death in 1756, Josiah and Hannah spent their Sabbaths in separate meetinghouses, dividing their gifts of butter and wood, mutton and chocolate between the two ministers of Plymouth’s warring Congregational churches. No eighteenth-century text captures the costs of the Whitefieldian revivals better than these fugitive account book entries.
Cotton’s list of public and charitable contributions may be found in “The Cotton Diaries, 1733–1774,” 22–23, 33–34, 39–42, Cotton Families Collection, Pilgrim Society, Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Mass. To learn more about Josiah Cotton’s opposition to Andrew Croswell and the Whitefieldian revivals, see Leigh Eric Schmidt, “‘A Second and Glorious Reformation’: The New Light Extremism of Andrew Croswell,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 43 (1986): 214–244; Timothy E. W. Gloege, “The Trouble with Christian History: Thomas Prince’s ‘Great Awakening,” Church History: Studies of Christianity and Culture 82 (2013): 125–165; and Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2017). For Cotton’s Indian “Business” and ownership of New England’s best-documented haunted house, see the Related Articles on this website. I am currently completing a critical edition of Cotton’s major manuscript writings for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Death by Pancakes and Other Incidents in the History of New Light Evangelicalism
Gearing up to deliver the William and Mary Quarterly Prize Lecture twenty years to the month after I published my first journal article, “Pale Blewish Lights and a Dead Man’s Groan” (1998). I’m thrilled to be presenting this lecture honoring legendary Quarterly editor, Mike McGiffert.
The talk will bridge the argument in Darkness Falls on the Land of Light and my recent work on frontier Shakerism. I’m looking forward to sharing stories of murder, spouse swapping, genderlessness, celibacy, the jerks, and other New Light family values. Here’s the promotional blurb:
In this illustrated lecture, historian Douglas Winiarski examines the varied ways in which the “people called New Lights”—progenitors of today’s evangelical Protestants—resolved perplexing mind-body problems associated with their transformative conversion experiences. Drawing upon a wide range of examples from maritime Canada to the Carolinas and from New England to the trans-Appalachian frontier, Professor Winiarski will explore how the religious revivals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries fueled controversies over marriage, the family, sexuality, and the body.
“Death by Pancakes” will take place on Monday, October 22, 2018, at 4:00 in Blow Hall, room 201, on the campus of the College of William & Mary. Hope to see you there!
DFLL Receives Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Award from MHS
Darkness Falls on the Land of Light has been awarded the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Award from the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. This prestigious book prize honors the Rev. Peter Gomes (1942–2011), Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School and a longtime supporter of the MHS.
The MHS is one of my favorite research haunts. I can still remember my first visit to Boylston Street over two decades ago. On that day, I discovered several important letters that anchor my analysis of the Great Earthquake of 1727. Over the years, regular trips to the MHS taught me critical archival research skills: from searching finding aids and card catalogs to handling rare books and manuscripts. I’ll always be grateful to the MHS archivists for sharing their incomparable expertise with unfailing good humor as I plowed through countless boxes and folders.
The award ceremony next February will feature a public forum in which I discuss DFLL with Wellesley College historian Stephen Marini. More details soon!