Book Review

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 206 words from this article are provided below; about 351 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.2 | The History Cooperative

The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England. By Mark A. Peterson. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. xiv, 325 pp. $49.50, isbn 0-8047-2912-3.)

Mark A. Peterson, who teaches at the University of Iowa, completed an earlier version of his provocatively reimagined religious history of colonial Massachusetts as a Harvard University dissertation. As a well-crafted book, The Price of Redemption convincingly replaces the old declension model of Puritan studies with a narrative in which faithful and successful adaptation to social change in the 1660s, not a golden age of the founders, is the primary reference point. The author achieves his purpose by juxtaposing chapters on two very different congregations—one that embraced an outward-looking evangelicalism and one that adhered to the model of church as gathered saints separated from the world. Chapters 1, 3, 5, and 7 trace the history of Boston's Third Church (Old South), while chapters 2, 4, 6, and 8 tell the story of the Westfield congregation pastored by the introspective poet Edward Taylor. Peterson builds on revisionist scholarship that has viewed the Halfway Covenant, not as evidence of spiritual decline or of churches selling out to secularism, but as a means by which orthodox Congregationalism secured its future. . . .

There are about 351 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.