“Souls refreshed, restored & comforted…”
Gathered Into a Church: Indigenous-English Congregationalism in Woodland New England
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It was the religion the puritans created when they came to the Eastern Woodlands. Many—but not all—Indigenous people adopted Congregationalism. Most congregations were mixed: Indigenous, Black, and English.
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Books that church members wrote in to leave a record before God of their most important, intimate, and immortal concerns, achievements, and arguments over three centuries. From the 1600s through the 1800s, these books were the lifeblood of the churches.
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For Indigenous and English Congregationalists, a church was a group of people, not a building. This gathering was called a church body. Members of a church body supported each other, relied on each other, reported on each other when they went astray, and did all they could to keep each and every limb of their body healthy.
“Eleazar Ohhumuh, just 16 when he perceived his approaching death, and lacking an experience of English assurance, “sent for some of the Neighbours to come and commit him to God, and as he expressed it, to give him a Lift toward Heaven, which, according to his Desire, they did… ”
“To go back I would not…”
Records of Trial from Thomas Shepard’s Church in Cambridge, 1638-1649: Heroic Souls
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Because it’s the story of the puritan women of early Cambridge, Massachusetts Bay Colony, and their deliberately created, strikingly powerful, confident, and independent spiritual identities that transcended their public lives as political second-class citizens.
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No! In New England, the vast majority of puritan women did not attempt to overthrow established social and political norms. You won’t find many political rebels. Instead, they poured their energy into utterly transforming their religion, claiming a vital personal power and agency, and a heroic sense of their own spiritual power and importance.
“Serving women, elderly widows, young wives and mothers, daughters of powerful men—all told stories of heroic seeking that feature their independent labor in reading, praying, listening, asking questions, and making meaning in a world narrowed down to just the seeker and her God.
Fierce and uncompromising, full of doubt and failings and sin, these individual women are above all important. The heroic soul is free to focus on herself. No one but God can tell her what is right or wrong, no one but God controls her destiny, no one but God has her ear. Her right to position herself in direct relation to God is unalienable.”