| 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

Women and Religion in Early America, 1600–1850: The Puritan and Evangelical Traditions. By Marilyn J. Westerkamp. (New York: Routledge, 1999. x, 219 pp. Cloth, $85.00, ISBN 0-415-09814-9. Paper, $22.99, ISBN 0-415-19448-2.)

Marilyn J. Westerkamp's synthetic study attempts to sketch early American women's efforts to find a religious voice in the Puritan and evangelical traditions. Thematic unity in the book comes from the constant focus on formal leadership and preaching roles (or their absence) for women and on the subordination of women in the family. 1

The strongest parts of the book are its early chapters on Puritanism. Here Westerkamp weaves a skillful synthesis of both the constraints on and the opportunities for women in the colonial manifestations of English dissenting traditions. Westerkamp's discussions of Anne Bradstreet, Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer, and the witchcraft prosecutions are clear and skillfully weave the findings of a generation of scholars into a story of articulate women who were constrained by an ideology that saw women as more easily led into sin. . . .

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