|
|
|
Reviews of Books
The Puritans and the Self
Institutional Individualism: Conversion, Exile, and Nostalgia in Puritan New England. By Michael W. Kaufmann. (Hanover, N. H., and London: Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England, 1998. Pp. x, 156. $35.00 cloth, $19.00 paper.)
Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial
Massachusetts. By
James F. Cooper, Jr.
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 282. $55.00.)
Coming into Communion: Pastoral Dialogues in Colonial New England.
By Laura Henigman.
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 234. $54.50
cloth, $17.95 paper.)
The Self and the Sacred: Conversion and Autobiography in Early American
Protestantism. By
Rodger M. Payne.
(Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1998. Pp. x, 123. $27.00.)
|
When the Puritans talked or wrote
about themselves, as they so often did, they acknowledged the need
to change. Their profound sense of the soul's innate tendency to
sin made it clear that, as Thomas Hooker put it, one of the Christian's
"Chiefe Lessons" was "Selfe-Deniall." John Winthrop's great lay
sermon to his fellow colonists gave the theological underpinnings
of this belief when he observed that because "Adam rent himself
from his creator, . . . every man is born with this principle in
him, to love and seek himself only." The Fall of Man, it seemed,
resulted from an excess of individualism. Winthrop insisted that
the success of the Massachusetts Bay Colony depended on subduing
self-centeredness and recognizing the larger importance of the community:
"We must be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain
each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge
ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others' necessities."
An excess of self was the enemy, both for the individual yearning
for redemption and for the covenanted community seeking to build
its strength. For the Puritans, no issue was more central in church
and commonwealth than finding the proper relationship between self
and community. This theme has long been understood by students of
the Puritans, notably Sacvan Bercovitch, Michael Zuckerman, Francis
J. Bremer, and more recently Janice Knight and Richard Gildrie,
among others, and the four books under review here all affirm it,
though in very different ways. |
. . . |
There are about 2249 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.
|
