discard
Radical Sects ignores the irreligious
06/18/2009 15:25
Stephen A. Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)
Mentioned by Gilmore in his notes and bibliography. Covers the religious sectarianism of the revolutionary decades (1770-1790). Completely ignores any challenges to religion from the outside. As if there were no rationalists, materialists, “infidels,” deists, or atheists at all in New England. The overall effect is to misrepresent the radical impulse, as if it was a denominational issue debated and decided within the religious community.
This isn’t useful to me. Although the religious scholars see a huge difference between the Old and New Light Congregationalists, to me they’re pretty much all Calvinists. The Baptists in Ashfield are interesting, with their appeal to King George III for their rights against the Puritans and their supporters in the Massachusetts legislature. But Marini doesn’t mention even this. Ashfield gets a brief nod as a site of Shaker activity, but without acknowledgement that the Ashfield Congregational Society voted to run Mother Ann and the “tremblers” out of town.
I think there is some interesting history buried in the stories of these churches and their disintegration into rival sects in the revolution and early republic. But I’m more interested in what these changes say about the social situation in towns like Ashfield. What if Baptist hisotry in Ashfield was as much about resistance to the people (mainly river-valley proprietors) running the Congregational Society as it was about theology. It’s easier for me to see Chileab Smith as a social dissident than as a theological disputant. We’ll see how that plays out. In the meantime, Radical Sects goes in the discard pile.
Mentioned by Gilmore in his notes and bibliography. Covers the religious sectarianism of the revolutionary decades (1770-1790). Completely ignores any challenges to religion from the outside. As if there were no rationalists, materialists, “infidels,” deists, or atheists at all in New England. The overall effect is to misrepresent the radical impulse, as if it was a denominational issue debated and decided within the religious community.
This isn’t useful to me. Although the religious scholars see a huge difference between the Old and New Light Congregationalists, to me they’re pretty much all Calvinists. The Baptists in Ashfield are interesting, with their appeal to King George III for their rights against the Puritans and their supporters in the Massachusetts legislature. But Marini doesn’t mention even this. Ashfield gets a brief nod as a site of Shaker activity, but without acknowledgement that the Ashfield Congregational Society voted to run Mother Ann and the “tremblers” out of town.
I think there is some interesting history buried in the stories of these churches and their disintegration into rival sects in the revolution and early republic. But I’m more interested in what these changes say about the social situation in towns like Ashfield. What if Baptist hisotry in Ashfield was as much about resistance to the people (mainly river-valley proprietors) running the Congregational Society as it was about theology. It’s easier for me to see Chileab Smith as a social dissident than as a theological disputant. We’ll see how that plays out. In the meantime, Radical Sects goes in the discard pile.
