Pugnacious Puritans

Pugnacious Puritans
Author: Carl I. Hammer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 135
Release: 2018-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1498566537

Hadley, located on the Connecticut River at the far western frontier of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was settled from the colony of Connecticut to the south, and early Hadley’s social and economic relations with Connecticut remained very close. The move to Hadley was motivated by religion and was a carefully planned removal. It resulted from an important dispute within the church of Hartford, and Hadley’s earliest settlers continued to observe their very strict form of Puritanism which had evolved as the “New England Way.” The settlers of Hadley also believed in a high degree of colonial independence from the Crown. These beliefs, combined with a high degree of internal cohesion and motivation in the early settlement, enabled the community of Hadley, despite its isolation and small size, to play an unusually prominent and contentious role in three great crises which threatened the Bay Colony. The first Episode examines the refuge given by Hadley, at great risk and in defiance of the Crown, to the important English Regicides, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, between 1664 and 1676 when the surviving Regicide, Goffe, was removed to Hadley’s allies in Hartford where he was sheltered before disappearing from the record. The second Episode describes Hadley’s divisive support for Increase Mather and John Davenport in opposing the “Half-Way Covenant,” a dispute which split the New England churches over baptismal practice and church polity. The third Episode deals with an internal dispute within Hadley over the direction of the local school which then was caught up into the larger dispute over the Dominion of New England government imposed by the Crown after the suspension of the Bay’s Charter. Through the course of these troubles within the Bay Colony from the 1660s to the 1680s, the initial internal solidarity of the town fractured, and its original unity of purpose with the rest of Colony was eroded. This secular “declension” led to Hadley’s political decline from prominence into the pleasant but unremarkable village it is today.

People, Politics, and Society in Colonial Western Massachusetts

People, Politics, and Society in Colonial Western Massachusetts
Author: Carl I. Hammer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2021-02-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1793634335

Examining the colonial history of western Massachusetts, this book provides fresh insights into important colonial social issues including African slavery, relations with Native Americans, the experiences of women, provisions for mental illness, old age and higher education, in addition to more traditional topics such as the nature of colonial governance, literacy and the book trade, Jonathan Edwards’ ministries in Northampton and Stockbridge, and Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s efforts to prevent a break with Britain. For related reading on this topic, check out Carl I. Hammer’s Pugnacious Puritans.

The Source of Civilization

The Source of Civilization
Author: Gerald Heard
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2019-03-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1532655150

""...full of fascinating facts and significant implications...an inexhaustible well of living water."" The New York Times ""Man has an inner life as complicated and challenging as the outer world. During most of his history advances in one sphere have been balanced by equal advances in the other. The problem of uneven, uncompensated progress in understanding and controlling the powers of nature did not arise in an acute form until the mind fissured into a critical and analytic conscious intelligence insulated from contact with the large unconscious mind. In order to cope with this situation man needs to learn and practice deliberate psychological techniques. Is there evidence that he has done so? Yes, answers Mr. Heard..."" Rev. Edmund A. Opitz Gerald Heard (1889-1971) was a well-known author, philosopher, and lecturer. Trained as a historian at Cambridge, he served as the BBC's first science commentator. Later in California he founded and directed Trabuco College, which advanced comparative-religious studies. His broad philosophical themes and scintillating oratorical style influenced many people. Heard wrote thirty-eight books, including his pioneering academic works, several popular devotional books, and a number of mysteries.

A Constitutional Culture

A Constitutional Culture
Author: Adrian Chastain Weimer
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2023-04-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1512823988

In A Constitutional Culture, Adrian Chastain Weimer uncovers the story of how, more than a hundred years before the American Revolution, colonists pledged their lives and livelihoods to the defense of local political institutions against arbitrary rule. With the return of Charles II to the English throne in 1660, the puritan-led colonies faced enormous pressure to conform to the crown’s priorities. Charles demanded that puritans change voting practices, baptismal policies, and laws, and he also cast an eye on local resources such as forests, a valuable source of masts for the English navy. Moreover, to enforce these demands, the king sent four royal commissioners on warships, ostensibly headed for New Netherland but easily redirected toward Boston. In the face of this threat to local rule, colonists had to decide whether they would submit to the commissioners’ authority, which they viewed as arbitrary because it was not accountable to the people, or whether they would mobilize to defy the crown. Those resisting the crown included not just freemen (voters) but also people often seen as excluded or marginalized such as non-freemen, indentured servants, and women. Together they crafted a potent regional constitutional culture in defiance of Charles II that was characterized by a skepticism of metropolitan ambition, a defense of civil and religious liberties, and a conviction that self-government was divinely sanctioned. Weimer shows how they expressed this constitutional culture through a set of well-rehearsed practices—including fast days, debates, committee work, and petitions. Equipped with a ready vocabulary for criticizing arbitrary rule, with a providentially informed capacity for risk-taking, and with a set of intellectual frameworks for divided sovereignty, the constitutional culture that New Englanders forged would not easily succumb to an imperial authority intent on consolidating its power.

The Bahama Islands

The Bahama Islands
Author: Hans W. Hannau
Publisher: E.A. Seemann Publishing
Total Pages: 136
Release: 1977-09
Genre: Travel
ISBN:

A pictorial volume of all the islands making up the Bahama Islands.

The Elizabethan Puritan Movement

The Elizabethan Puritan Movement
Author: Patrick Collinson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2020-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000223450

Originally published in 1967, this book is a history of church puritanism as a movement and as a political and ecclesiastical organism; of its membership structure and internal contradictions; of the quest for ‘a further reformation’. It tells the fascinating story of the rise of a revolutionary moment and its ultimate destruction.

T&T Clark Companion to Nonconformity

T&T Clark Companion to Nonconformity
Author: Robert Pope
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 760
Release: 2013-11-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1472558308

Protestant Nonconformity, the umbrella term for Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and Unitarians, belongs specifically to the religious history of England and Wales. Initially the result of both unwillingness to submit to the State's interference in Christian life and a dissatisfaction with the progress of reform in the English Church, Nonconformity has been primarily motivated by theological concern, ecclesial polity, devotion and the nurture of godliness among the members of the church. Alongside such churchly interests, Nonconformity has also made a profound contribution to debates about the role of the State, to family life and education, culture in general, trade and industry, the development of philanthropy and charity, and the development of pacifism. In this volume, for the first time, Nonconformity and the breadth of its activity come under the expert scrutiny of a host of recognised scholars. The result is a detailed and fascinating account of a movement in church history that, while currently in decline, has made an indelible mark on social, political, economic and religious life of the two nations.

The Puritans

The Puritans
Author: Perry Miller
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 910
Release: 2014-09-22
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0486161056

Critically acclaimed compilation includes writings by William Bradford, Increase Mather, William Hubbard, Anne Bradstreet, and other influential figures. "The best selection ever made of Puritan literature." — historian Samuel Eliot Morison.

St. Paul and Protestantism, with an Essay on Puritanism and the Church of England

St. Paul and Protestantism, with an Essay on Puritanism and the Church of England
Author: Matthew Arnold
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2022-09-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

This essay following the treatise on St. Paul and Protestantism, was meant to clear away offense or misunderstanding which had arisen out of that treatise. There still remain one or two points on which a word of explanation may be useful, and to them this preface is addressed. The general objection, that the scheme of doctrine criticized by me is common to both Puritanism and the Church of England, and does not characterize the one more essentially than the other, has been removed, the author hopes, by the concluding essay. But it is said that there is, at any rate, a large party in the Church of England,—the so-called Evangelical party,—which holds just the scheme of doctrine the author has called Puritan; that this large party, at least, if not the whole Church of England, is as much a stronghold of the distinctive Puritan tenets as the Nonconformists are; and that to tax the Nonconformists with these tenets, and to say nothing about the Evangelical clergy holding them too, is injurious and unfair.