Abstract
This chapter examines the shifting language of conversion in New England Congregationalism - the bastion of Puritan culture in North America - from the period of settlement in the 1630s to the eve of the Civil War. Evidence is drawn from a database of more than a thousand church-admission narratives from nearly three dozen communities scattered across Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Throughout this period, most Congregational ministers remained committed to a Calvinist theology that emphasized innate human depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace. Yet the importance of conversion - the sacred calculus through which God winnowed saints from sinners - waxed and waned through the centuries, and New Englanders affiliated with local churches for a variety of reasons, including, but not always limited to, their hopes for eternal salvation. By the mid-1800s, recurrent waves of religious revivalism had recast the extended Puritan "morphology of conversion" into a discrete and often instantaneous temporal experience of being "born again" in the Holy Spirit- the hallmark of American evangelicalism. In tracking the generic conventions of New England church-admission narratives over two centuries, we can begin to appreciate the important role that early American evangelicalism played in mediating larger processes of cultural change and modernization.
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2010
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2010 Augsburg Fortress Press. This chapter first appeared in Modern Christianity to 1900.
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Recommended Citation
Winiarski, Douglas L. "Religious Experiences in New England." In Modern Christianity to 1900, edited by Amanda Porterfield, 209-32. Vol. 9. A People's History of Christianity. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2010.