194 william and mary quarterly

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1 194 william and mary quarterly Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England. By Douglas L. Winiarski. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. 631 pages. Cloth, ebook. Reviewed by Heather Miyano Kopelson, University of Alabama Scholars of early American religion have long been anticipating the publication of Douglas L. Winiarski s Darkness Falls on the Land of Light. Sweeping yet fine-grained, this hefty tome offers both a magisterial synthesis of existing scholarship on Congregationalism in New England and a close analysis of the language and statistical patterns of manuscript church records and admission narratives. Winiarski excavates the deep veins of historiography on eighteenth-century Anglo-Protestantism in the region in a manner that is both satisfying for specialists and accessible for those seeking an introduction to the topic. He sets aside the scholarly argument about whether or not there was such a thing that should be called a Great Awakening, in favor of examining the demonstrable effects of the series of Whitefieldarian revivals (17) that spread across much of New England in the 1740s following the theatrical sermon performances (141) of the Anglican minister George Whitefield, whose style of preaching sharply contrasted with the prevalent plain-style approach. Rather than the last gasp of puritan piety, Winiarski maintains, the revivals were the historical fulcrum on which the shared culture of David Hall s world of wonders tilted decisively toward Jon Butler s robust antebellum spiritual hothouse (9). The revivals, that is, built on seventeenth-century spiritual engagement by providing the somatic and verbal vocabularies for the competitive religious environment of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in which individuals could adopt or reject those vocabularies and choose church affiliations based on inclination rather than geography. Previous studies of the revivals have focused on the role of ministers such as Jonathan Edwards in spreading and obstructing this type of spiritual comportment. Winiarski argues, however, that rates of church membership across much of eighteenth-century New England increased primarily because of lay Euroamerican women and men s fascination with the drama of conversion and the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit (9). The intensity of their religious beliefs and practices created a bottom-up historical process in which the laity s insurgent religious radicalism (8) changed the definition, affect, and timetable of conversion and membership. An orderly familial rite of passage undertaken as a mature adult metamorphosed into a moment of change that was characterized by somatic manifestations (229) of crying, singing, William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 75, no. 1, January 2018 DOI:

2 reviews of books 195 falling down, laughing, pinching, pulling, and knocking; heavenly voices speaking scriptural verses; and visions and experiences of translocations to the gates of heaven. That change happened because laypeople demanded it. Preachers who modeled themselves after Whitefield capitalized on these desires rather than created them, and the laity continued to seek such experiences and to assert the theologically questionable certainty of their own salvation gained through these sensations and visions, even after ministers tried to withdraw their support for such violent bodily reactions. Winiarski introduces his analysis of the Whitefieldarian revivals by detailing the increasingly tribal nature of Congregational culture (88) from 1680 to He neatly builds on nearly seventy-five years of scholarship on Euroamerican Congregational churchgoing in New England by delving into the quantitative patterns and individual experiences contained in church records. Valuable tables enumerating the number, age, and marital status of men and women admitted to full communion, the age of children presented for baptism, and the total number of children presented at a family s first baptism reveal that across colonial settlements in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, many Congregationalists of English descent delayed petitioning for church admission well into adulthood. Winiarski s discursive analysis shows that they often waited to do so until prompted by a catalyst such as their own illness, the death of a child, or a natural catastrophe. Laypeople read these events in a providential light, attributing their occurrence to God s punishment for laxity in the performance of religious duties and ascribing their cessation to divine mercy. But even as individual circumstances drove the timing of the petitions, this period was characterized by clerical authority. The petitions themselves became increasingly routinized, especially in comparison to the individualized conversion testimonies of the first generations of English puritans. Ministers standardized them into similarly structured narratives that articulated petitioners gradual acceptance of the need for the collection of upright behaviors known as godly walking (117). Another change in admission petitions encouraged by clergy was that candidates more frequently made credentialing statements (87) that asserted their origin in a godly family and included specific doctrinal statements of belief. As Winiarski demonstrates, neither the emphasis on inherited spiritual background nor ministerial efforts to convince the laity to seek admission to the church signaled the deadening of piety into formalism. Instead and somewhat paradoxically lay reluctance revealed the continued vitality and perhaps intensification of Congregational beliefs. Ministers urged individuals to seek admission so they might fulfill the central duty of participation in the ritual meal of the Lord s Supper, an experience that was open only to full church members. But potential church members were often paralyzed by fear (48), worried that they would risk damnation if they partook without being worthy. Instead of admission and participation in the Lord s Supper,

3 196 william and mary quarterly by 1700 the great majority of people affiliated with a church by owning the Covenant (98), a ritual in which large groups made a public commitment to godly walking but offered no individual testimony. Winiarski points out that this reform provided the social benefits of connection with a church while resolving fears of the eternal consequences of unworthy sacramental participation and of denying baptism to their children. Scholars of early American religious history have often referred to the practice of baptizing the children of those who owned the covenant as the Halfway Covenant, a derisive term concoted by ardent revivalists who charged that it allowed a form of church membership to those who lacked a saving experience of grace. But, Winiarski argues, its prevalence reflected the deep piety of the laity. Whitefield, however, came to regard adherence to the routines of community spiritual life as an indication of the absence of God s grace and not a true conversion. And his 1740 New England preaching tour sparked a series of revivals unlike previous seasons of heightened religious concern (139) that had periodically struck British North America. His sophisticated marketing strategies (139) using personal correspondence and print media drew crowds of listeners who lived far from his preaching sites, and his emotive style channeled the region s preexisting religious intensity into new outlets. Itinerant ministers copied Whitefield s style. As the revivals spread, established ministers such as Jonathan Edwards also worked to elicit bodily distress in their audiences by impressing upon them that their conversions were built on the Sandy Foundation (135) of godly walking. Winiarski redates Edwards s well-known spiritual autobiography describing the moment of change that brought him that new sense of things (196) to late 1741 rather than 1740 a significant revision indicating that rather than introducing the language of change, Edwards adopted it from conversion narratives modeled after Whitefield s spiritual autobiography. As Spirit-possessed (274) congregations across colonial New England reported increasing numbers of dreams, visions, and translocations, however, Edwards and other ministers tried to rein in these enthusiasms. Their growing conviction that the revivals encouraged destructive (274) and Scandalous (275) behavior seemed justified in 1743 when the itinerant minister James Davenport presided over bonfires whose flames were fueled first by manuals for the practices of godly walking and treatises on divinity and then by fine clothing, including his own breeches. Breakaway churches formed even as Davenport joined the ministers who reconsidered their initial enthusiasm. These congregations aspired to make the visible church of members coterminous with the invisible church of the saved through exclusionary admission practices, provoking a pitched battle (372) between a separatist laity and establishment Congregationalist ministers. The outcome of their battle was a religious culture no longer controlled by Congregational ministers or adjudicated in civil courts. But there was no spiritual peace. Instead, bitter infighting (399) over one ecclesiastical

4 reviews of books 197 dispute after another roiled the new churches during the middle decades of the eighteenth century as believers censured one another and summoned each other for disciplinary hearings. Along with a growing network of radicals who believed that humans could attain perfection, those who left established Congregational churches included disaffected men and women of old puritan stock (450) who sought refuge from the relentless strife of the 1750s and 1760s in the regular and ordered ritual (455) of the Church of England or who found relief in adhering to no religion. The emphasis on increased liberty of conscience and the ascendancy of individual experience over corporate discipline (505) generated a varied religious marketplace with frequent schisms. For a book that in some ways is so inclusive of religious experience in eighteenth-century New England, it is disappointing that Darkness Falls mentions Native and African Christians primarily in reference to white perceptions or as an occasional point of comparison with white participation (such as The large cohort included several native Americans as well as numerous adolescents and young children [201]), with none of the rich detail afforded their white counterparts. This limitation is particularly noticeable because an analysis of Native Christianity would have only required incorporating material from Winiarski s earlier and deeply influential articles. The spiritual lives of the Native families such as the Neds and the Hoods who relocated to Josiah Cotton s farm or of the families at Manomet Ponds would have broadened the discussion of popular spirituality in the early eighteenth century while also illuminating the ubiquity of the developments Winiarski describes. 1 Although pointing to previous scholarship is standard scholarly shorthand, in this case not including details from those publications detracts from the book s stated aim of fully detailing New England s Protestant religious landscape throughout the eighteenth century. Indeed, although a brief discussion covers the period of 1741 to 1744, during which people of color joined English congregations in significant numbers, the detailed narrative presented in this hefty volume largely omits analysis of Indian-run Christian churches and glosses over the tangled intersections between religion and race. Studies of Native and African Christians that analyze their religious practices as something more than socially and economically useful activities are briefly cited as different perspectives (181 n. 95), rather than integrated into the analysis, or are not cited at all. The approach on this particular topic exists in contrast to Winiarski s synthetic approach throughout most of the book. A more extensive discussion 1 Douglas L. Winiarski, A Question of Plain Dealing: Josiah Cotton, Native Christians, and the Quest for Security in Eighteenth-Century Plymouth County, New England Quarterly 77, no. 3 (September 2004): ; Winiarski, Native American Popular Religion in New England s Old Colony, , Religion and American Culture 15, no. 2 (Summer 2005):

5 198 william and mary quarterly of the scholarship on religion and race and on Native and African Christianity might have highlighted changes and continuities in articulations of ideas about family, race, and descent as they related to religious experiences. By including few specifics regarding the religious experiences of Native and African Christians, Darkness Falls hews to an older definition of the field of early American religion and of New England studies, in which early American religion was synonymous with puritans and then Congregationalists and their splinter groups who were English or of English descent. Darkness Falls accounts for the power of the revivals in southern New England through a broad and deep investigation of lay religious practice in the less frequently studied early eighteenth century, building on the foundation of previous generations of New England and puritan studies scholarship. The radical religious enthusiasm of lay Whitefieldarians for direct sensory experiences drove the change in the rhythms of congregational life and the creation of new Separate Congregational and Separate Baptist churches. This book has been anticipated as, and will become, a standard on eighteenth-century Protestant Christianity in New England. Precisely because of that status, it is not enough to direct readers to previous articles. A book whose sweep, length, and style so clearly demonstrate that it is meant to be a magisterial, definitive monograph that synthesizes previous research as well as contributes new analysis of underutilized sources needs to include either all Protestants in New England or articulate a narrower scope of white Protestant Christianity in eighteenth-century New England. In contrast to the full range of Winiarski s publications, Darkness Falls defines the field of early American religion in a way that recasts the shadows of the land of light so as to obscure the religious lives of Natives and Africans.