| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England. By Erik R. Seeman. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. xvi, 263 pp. $36.00, ISBN 0-8018-6208-6.)

Erik R. Seeman argues that ordinary believers in the eighteenth century enjoyed a more open culture than had their forebears in the seventeenth century, and, because of their independent-mindedness, they were able to contest, or at the very least negotiate, various elements of their religious practice. Unlike seventeenth-century laity, the folks that David D. Hall explored so beautifully in Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment (1989), who shared a cultural world with elite ministers and perhaps stifled major disagreements, Seeman's laity pushed the envelope, as it were, sometimes forcing ministers to reevaluate their positions in order to accommodate the wishes of their parishioners. Seeman examines the tensions between regular churchgoers and their ministers primarily by analyzing differing interpretations of several religious rituals and practices: baptism, the Lord's Supper, conversion, magical practices, heterodox beliefs, and revivalism. . . .

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