Epilogue

The Epilogue examines the transformation of eighteenth-century New England Congregationalism through the religious experiences of four generations of the Lane family of Stratham, New Hampshire.

Exercised Bodies, Impulsive Bibles

George Whitefield’s innovative doctrine of the Holy Spirit as an indwelling principle proved to be a perplexing issue for may Congregationalists. Part 3 tells the story of one man’s struggle to discern its presence in the body of a young Boston revival convert named Martha Robinson. Through a close inspection of physical signs and verbal utterances, Hartford magistrate Joseph Pitkin found that Robinson’s body had been alternately conscripted by Satan and the Holy Spirit. His surprising discovery positions the phenomenon of ecstatic Spirit possession at the heart of the Whitefieldian new birth experience. During the revivals of the 1740s, New Englanders learned to associate the descent of the Holy Spirit with exercised bodies, impulsive biblical texts, and unusual visionary phenomena.

In a Flame

Part 2 reconstructs the theological and rhetorical strategies through which the popular Anglican evangelist George Whitefield and other itinerant preachers labored to persuade their audiences to repudiate the ideal of the godly walk. In its place, many New Englanders championed Whitefield’s "doctrine of the new birth," the instantaneous descent and implantation of God's Holy Spirit. Heady reports of dramatic preaching performances, such as Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God, convinced many "New Converts" that they were witnessing an unprecedented outpouring of the Holy Spirit, or what people began to call a singular "Revival of Religion." Traditional outsiders to the Congregational establishment, especially native and African Americans, played key roles in revival accounts of new converts. Diaries, letters, sermon notes, church membership demographics, prayer bills, and even gravestone iconography registered an abrupt shift in lay piety, as New Englanders began to narrate their experiences of the new birth in the earliest evangelical conversion narratives.

Introduction

Darkness Falls on the Land of Light opens with the story of two families—the Coreys and Holbrooks—who once worshipped side by side in the Sturbridge, Massachusetts, Congregational church but by 1750 no longer experienced religion in commensurate ways as a result of their experiences during the combustive religious revivals of the Great Awakening. The introduction frames the larger argument of the study and defines the key terms of analysis, including the categories of religious experience and religious practices.

Godly Walkers

Drawing on an exceptional collection of church admission relations from the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts, Part 1 examines the widely shared religious vocabulary through which Congregational church membership candidates during the period between 1680 and 1740 pledged to "walk answerably" to their doctrinal professions in the hope that a vengeful deity would not pour out affliction on their bodies, families, and communities. The multiple demands of a "Godly Walk" entailed spiritualizing everyday occurrences, meditating in secret, baptizing children in a timely fashion, and raising them in church fellowship. During the early decades of the eighteenth century, the rhythms of church affiliation were closely tied to family formation and social maturation, and women emerged as the primary source of religious authority. A godly walk was the key to safety and prosperity in this world, if not salvation in the next.

Travels

During the next several decades, from the 1750s through the 1770s, Congregational ministers across New England struggled and frequently failed to corral the unruly religious experiences of their inspired parishioners. Part 5 recounts the strife that plagued not only well-established churches such as Jonathan Edwards’s Northampton, Massachusetts, congregation but also upstart separatist groups led by ardent revival proponents like Separate Baptist minister Isaac Backus. Radical sectarian communities, Perfectionist seekers set out on a ceaseless quest for spiritual purity that led many of them to question all institutions—churches, communities, and families—and to generate startling new conceptions of the body and sexuality; others sought shelter from the growing ecclesiastical maelstrom in the rational faith and orderly worship of the Anglican church. Thrust into a dizzying and unstable religious marketplace, godly walkers, Separate Congregationalists, Anglican conformists, immortalists, Shakers, and “Nothingarians” trafficked in and out of the churches of the standing order at a startling rate. By 1780, religious insurgents had shattered the Congregational establishment.

Pentecost and Protest

The charismatic elements of an emerging Whitefieldian conversion paradigm impelled many revival participants to engage in dramatic acts of disobedience. The most notable of these ecclesiastical disorders, the infamous New London bonfires of 1743, anchors the discussion in Part 4. Inspired by powerful native-born itinerants such as the incendiary James Davenport, Spirit-possessed radicals railed against the opponents of the revivals in outbursts of heated speech, assumed the power to determine the conversions of others through a controversial practice known as spiritual discernment, and embraced internal callings or divine commissions to preach without license or ordination. In time, the voices of scripture that dropped into their heads and sounded in their ears compelled them to break communion with the churches of the established Congregational establishment altogether.