Race and Redemption in Puritan New England (review)

This book is an interesting study of Puritan racial attitudes and practices in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England. In his analysis of the sermons, diaries, and correspondence of English colonists—particularly those of ministers Jonathan Edwards, Stephen Williams, and James MacSparran—Bailey addresses the issue of race from a variety of angles, looking at colonists’ expressions of color prejudice, infantilization of racial others, commitment to the institution of slavery, and paternalistic inclusion of people of color in a steeply hierarchical society. Throughout the book, Bailey thoroughly and incontestably documents the pervasiveness of racism in colonial New England society. His discussion of how the word black connected people considered racially others with the spiritually demonic is especially powerful and illuminating, as is his evidence describing the economic and emotional benefits that slaves afforded ministers, who routinely ranked among the slave-owning class.

Bailey juxtaposes this entrenched racial inequality against the more egalitarian implications in Puritan commentary on a godly afterlife accessible to all and in church membership, which created a space where whites, blacks, and Indians acted and were treated in equivalent ways. This contrast between stridently devout communities that theologically endorsed a color-blind faith and an exploitive ideology built upon a belief in racial difference is what most intrigues Bailey, who casts it as the fundamental contradiction embedded in New England Puritan society. Indeed, Bailey seems more puzzled by this contradiction than do the historical characters in the book, particularly the prominent ministers. Bailey shows that they were comfortable espousing a religious faith of humility and debasement while they enjoyed material lives richly rewarded by the labor of people of color.

Many scholars will find this book important and insightful, whether they are interested in New England Puritans or the history of race. Moreover, Bailey’s consideration of race in multiple contexts, including Puritan understandings of the properly ordered household and the too-little-studied topic of New England slave markets, makes this book a model for other historians to follow when designing a project, gathering the material, and analyzing it for race’s presence and dynamics. The book’s only deficiency is that it could have been more substantive in the breadth and depth of its research. More research probably would not have changed Bailey’s argument or conclusions, but many of his best examples redundantly reappear throughout the book as stories we have already heard. Such quibbling aside, Race and Redemption in Puritan New England makes an essential contribution by revealing New England Puritan society in a new light.