Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England (Early America: History, Context, Culture)

Rating:
Summary: The Ordinary Were Extraordinary
Review: Erik Seeman has mined deeply in the sources to produce an account of lay spirituality in early New England. The book should appeal to readers with these interests: early New England communities, the history of religion in America, or the fundaments of individual spirituality.

My favorite section of the book tells the story of John Barnard, the carpenter. Barnard, through his spiritual diaries, opens a world quite alien to many contemporary Americans, a world in which the spiritual struggle takes precedence over all other tasks in life. Barnard is an extraordinary ordinary person, an early American with a mission, for which he took responsibility, a man quite existential.

The author is quite careful not to speculate past the evidence, but it is provocative to think that Barnard, who died in 1732, was of an age to have been the grandparent of an American Revolutionary soldier. These soldiers sang, going into battle:

"Let tyrants shake their iron rod

And Slav'ry clank her galling chains;

We fear them not, we trust in God,

New England's God forever reigns.

Declaration of interest: the reviewer is the garndfather of the author's two beautiful daughters.