Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism PDF
Preview Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism
Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism ChristianitiesintheTrans-AtlanticWorld,1500–1800 GeneralEditors: CrawfordGribben,Queen’sUniversityBelfast,UK ScottSpurlock,UniversityofGlasgow,UK EditorialBoard: JohnCoffey,LeicesterUniversity JeffJue,WestminsterTheologicalSeminary SusanHardmanMoore,UniversityofEdinburgh JohnMorrill,UniversityofCambridge DavidMullan,CapeBretonUniversity RichardMuller,CalvinTheologicalSeminary JaneOhlmeyer,TrinityCollegeDublin MargoTodd,UniversityofPennsylvania ArthurWilliamson,UniversityofCalifornia,Sacramento Building upon the recent recovery of interest in religion in the early modern trans-Atlanticworld,thisseriesoffersfresh,livelyandinterdisciplinaryperspec- tivesonthebroadviewofitssubject.Booksintheserieswillworkstrategically and systematically to address major but under-studied or overly simplified themesinthereligiousandculturalhistoryoftheearlymoderntrans-Atlantic. Titlesinclude: BenjaminBankhurst ULSTERPRESBYTERIANSANDTHESCOTSIRISHDIASPORA,1750–1764 FrancisJ.Bremer LAYEMPOWERMENTANDTHEDEVELOPMENTOFPURITANISM Forthcomingtitlesinclude: CrawfordGribbenandScottSpurlock(editors) PURITANISMINTHETRANS-ATLANTICWORLD1600–1800 MarkSweetnam MISSIONANDEMPIREINTHEEARLYMODERNPUBLICSPHERE ChristianitiesintheTrans-AtlanticWorld,1500-1800 SeriesStandingOrderISBN978-0-037-31152-8hardcover (outsideNorthAmericaonly) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to usattheaddressbelowwithyournameandaddress,thetitleoftheseriesand oneoftheISBNsquotedabove. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke,HampshireRG216XS,England Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism Francis J. Bremer ProfessorEmeritus,MillersvilleUniversity,USA ©FrancisJ.Bremer2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-35288-0 Allrightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmissionofthis publicationmaybemadewithoutwrittenpermission. Noportionofthispublicationmaybereproduced,copiedortransmitted savewithwrittenpermissionorinaccordancewiththeprovisionsofthe Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988,orunderthetermsofanylicence permittinglimitedcopyingissuedbytheCopyrightLicensingAgency, SaffronHouse,6–10KirbyStreet,LondonEC1N8TS. Anypersonwhodoesanyunauthorizedactinrelationtothispublication maybeliabletocriminalprosecutionandcivilclaimsfordamages. Theauthorhasassertedhisrighttobeidentifiedastheauthorofthiswork inaccordancewiththeCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988. Firstpublished2015by PALGRAVEMACMILLAN PalgraveMacmillanintheUKisanimprintofMacmillanPublishersLimited, registeredinEngland,companynumber785998,ofHoundmills,Basingstoke, HampshireRG216XS. PalgraveMacmillanintheUSisadivisionofStMartin’sPressLLC, 175FifthAvenue,NewYork,NY10010. PalgraveMacmillanistheglobalacademicimprintoftheabovecompanies andhascompaniesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld. Palgrave®andMacmillan®areregisteredtrademarksintheUnitedStates, theUnitedKingdom,Europeandothercountries. ISBN 978-1-349-67497-8 ISBN 978-1-137-35289-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-35289-7 Thisbookisprintedonpapersuitableforrecyclingandmadefromfully managedandsustainedforestsources.Logging,pulpingandmanufacturing processesareexpectedtoconformtotheenvironmentalregulationsofthe countryoforigin. AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Bremer,FrancisJ. LayempowermentandthedevelopmentofPuritanism/FrancisJ.Bremer, ProfessorEmeritus,MillersvilleUniversity,USA. pagescm.—(Christianitiesinthetrans-atlanticworld,1500–1800) Includesbibliographicalreferences. 1. Puritans. 2. Laity. I. Title. BX9323.B262015 285(cid:2).909032—dc23 2015001200 For all my family and the memories of Francis and Marie Bremer and Alice Woodlock This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments viii Introduction 1 1 TheExperienceandMeaningofGod’sCaress 5 2 ThinkingoftheLaityintheEnglishReformation 10 3 LayPuritansinStuartEngland 27 4 GatheringsoftheSaints inEnglandandtheNetherlands 49 5 ShapingtheNewEnglandWay 69 6 TheFreeGraceControversyand RedefiningtheRoleofLayBelievers 87 7 TheRoleoftheLaity inEngland’sPuritanRevolution 105 8 VarietiesofLayEnthusiasm inNewEnglandandEngland 127 9 Respondingtothe ChallengesofDiversity,1640–60 144 10 ClergyandLaityinthe LaterSeventeenthCentury 157 Epilogue: LookingBackwards,andAhead 177 Notes 182 Bibliography 216 Index 233 vii Acknowledgments IfirstbegantoreflectonthetopicofthisbookwhileaLongRoomFel- low at Trinity College, Dublin in the spring of 2012. I wish to thank Crawford Gribben for encouraging me to apply for that fellowship, and the Long Room staff for making my stay comfortable and produc- tive. I would also like to thank Crawford and his students for valuable conversationsduringmytenure. DuringthecourseofresearchandwritingIhavebenefited,asalways, from the community of puritan scholars in England and America who are friends as well as scholars and who have shaped my understand- ing of the field over the years. But in particular I would like to single out L. Baird Tipson, Jr. and Joel Halcomb, both of whom read the entire manuscript and provided numerous helpful suggestions. After the book was essentially finished I benefitted from the suggestions of Margo Todd and the students in her graduate seminar at the Univer- sityofPennsylvaniawhowerekindenoughtoreadthemanuscriptand discussitwithme. This is the first study I have undertaken since my retirement from Millersville University. I thank the university for having granted me emeritusstatusandtheabilitytodrawuponthelibraryresourcesinget- tingaccesstonumerousworkscitedhere.AndIwouldliketothankmy family,whichhasalwaysbeentherockonwhichmylifeisgrounded. viii Introduction Diarmaid MacCulloch has written that religious institutions “create their own silences, by exclusions and by shared assumptions, which...silences are often at the expense of many of the people who could be thought of as actually constituting the Church.”1 My goal in the pages that follow is to examine one such silence—the substantial omissionoftheroleplayedbycountlessnamedandunnamedmenand womeninthestoryoftheshapingofpuritanism.Theearliesthistories of puritanism were written by clergymen and highlighted the impor- tance of the clergy. William Hubbard, whose General History of New England was commissioned by the Massachusetts General Court in the 1670s,statedthat“Inthebeginningoftimeswasoccasionedmuchdis- advantagetothegovernmentofthechurchbymakingittoopopular.”2 Clerical authors such as Cotton Mather in New England and Samuel Clarke in England were themselves invested in the importance of the ministryandnotunsurprisinglydownplayedtheroleofthelaityinthe churchesandfocusedontheroleofprominentclergyintheiraccounts. Later writers, many writing from an institutional perspective, fol- lowedtheirlead,thoughnotallexclusionofthelaitywastheresultof institutional bias. The fact that the vast proportion of surviving puri- tan writings were composed by ministers reinforced this perspective. I myself titled one of my books Shaping New Englands: Puritan Clergy- men in Seventeenth Century England and New England.3 Even those who, likeDarrettRutman,pausedtowondertowhatextentthemessagefrom the pulpit was imbibed by those in the pews took it for granted that themessagewasshapedbytheclergy.4Thelaymenandlaywomenwho entered the story were typically those described by the clergy of their time and by later historians as radicals—the Anne Hutchinsons and MaryDyers,theLevellersandtheQuakers.5EvenChristopherHill,who 1
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