New or Old? Piety in Eighteenth-Century New England

Erik R. Seeman. Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. xiii + 263 pp. Notes and index. $36.00.

In recent years historians of American religion have devoted increasing attention to the way in which religious life Is experienced. ¹ Without ignoring the study of faith and doctrine as it can be traced in sermons and tracts, we have begun to ask questions about the practice of parish religion, the social interaction of the members of congregations, and, indeed, the ways in which the experience of religion can shape beliefs and forms. ² Erik Seeman clearly takes this agenda to heart in his study of the piety of laymen and laywomen in the congregations of eighteenth-century New England.

Borrowing and adapting a metaphor employed by T. J. Jackson Lears, Seeman seeks to identify eighteenth-century New England religious culture as moving from a "closed" (i.e., seventeenth-century) end of a spectrum, where it is less possible to add cultural scripts to those which elites consider appropriate, towards a more open situation in which laymen had a greater opportunity to add their own scripts to the culture. He rejects the suggestion that such changes were initiated or even significantly advanced by the Great Awakening. Instead, a central argument of the study is that "in the years after about 1700, ministers played less of a role in determining the scope of available belief and practices" (p. x). "The importance of this streak of potential antiauthoritarianism," he contends, " became clear when it was mobilized to help break with England's patriarchal authority" (p. 206).

The most valuable element in the book is the actual examination of the Pious Persuasions of ordinary New Englanders. Seeman begins with a careful reading of a spiritual journal kept between 1716 and 1719 by John Barnard, a Boston carpenter and deacon in the Mathers' North Church. He uses the document effectively to depict the piety and devotional practices of this orthodox churchgoer and to examine the sources upon which he drew in shaping his faith. The following chapters likewise draw on extensive investigation of the journals of ordinary colonists but also on a careful reading of clerical writings on lay behavior. Indeed, the "Note on Primary Sources" that follows the text is an excellent explanation of Seeman's approach and a useful guide for others who would wish to explore the lives and beliefs of laypeople.

The chapters that comprise the bulk of the study are devoted to occasions that could provoke expressions of lay views that challenged orthodox positions. Chapter Two examines "Deathbed Scenes and Attitudes Towards Death." Seeman demonstrates how "during the deathbed scene the usual power relations were inverted or at least temporarily altered--especially along axes of male/female and minister/layperson" (p. 61) and how such scenes were contested, "with laypeople asserting their various and occasionally unorthodox attitudes towards death" (p. 77). The dying person certainly commanded center stage on these occasions and some examples show individuals deemed irreligious spurning the comfort of ministers. In many cases however, the contest seems to be along the lines of ministers expressing concerns that the individual dying might be too sure of his or her approaching union with Christ.

Chapter Three examines the contested meanings of religious rituals, with the author reading the rituals as texts as he searches for differences in how the laity as opposed to the clergy interpreted the signs of the ceremony. Conversion narratives, baptism, and the Lord's Supper are the ceremonies examined and in these cases, as in deathbed narratives, Seeman finds evidence that the lay perspective did not always fully accord with that expressed in clerical publications. Writing about baptism, he argues that laypeople sometimes insisted on stricter applications of accepted practices than the clergy and that in general "laypeople contributed ideas about the sacraments to New England" (p. 96). Emphasizing the lay...