“Such Monstrous Births”: A Neglected Aspect of the Antinomian Controversy

1985 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Jacobson Schutte
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The Other ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Critical Moment ◽  
Antinomian Controversy ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Theological Conflict ◽  
Scholarly Attention

The Antinomian controversy of 1636-1638, the earliest major theological conflict in colonial New England, has attracted much scholarly attention. For many, the central figure in the drama, Anne Hutchinson, is a heroine, a champion of religious freedom against the bigoted theocratic Puritan establishment of Massachusetts Bay captained by the elder John Winthrop, Governor of the colony. Others have interpreted the Puritan prosecution of the Antinomians as perhaps regrettable but absolutely necessary; theological splintering might well have led, as most contemporaries believed it would, to a fatal political weakening of the young colony at a critical moment. One feature of the Antinomian episode, however, has not yet received the attention it deserves: the occurrence of two monstrous births, one in the midst of the controversy (although belatedly discovered) and the other at its denouement.

Native Americans, Conversion, and Christian Practice in Colonial New England, 1640—1730

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linford D. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
The One ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Gospel Message ◽  
Over Time

Fortunately, the two travelers arrived before sunset. Earlier in the day, on 5 May 1674, John Eliot and Daniel Gookin had set out from Boston for Wamesit, the northernmost of the fourteen Indian “praying towns” within the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the one most subjected to retaliatory attacks from raiding bands of Mohawks in the previous few years. Upon safe arrival, the Englishmen greeted their Pennacook friends and gathered as many as they could at the wigwam of Wannalancet, the head sachem of Wamesit, where Eliot, the aging missionary to the Indians, proceeded to talk about the meaning of the parable of the marriage of the king's son in Matthew 22:1—4. Wannalancet, according to Gookin, was a “sober and grave person, and of years, between fifty and sixty”; he had from the beginning been “loving and friendly to the English,” and in return they had tried to encourage him to embrace Christianity. Although the English missionaries would have desired him to readily accept the gospel message they preached, Wannalancet voluntarily incorporated Christian practices slowly, over time, without necessarily repudiating his native culture and traditional religious practices.1 For four years Wannalancet “had been willing to hear the word of God preached”; when Eliot or other missionaries made their periodic visits to Wamesit, Wannalancet made sure he was there. Over time, Wannalancet adopted the English practices of keeping the Sabbath, learning to go to any available meeting or instruction, fellowshipping, and refraining from various activities proscribed by the town's praying leaders. Despite all that, however, the English missionaries still complained that he “hath stood off” since he had “not yielded up himself personally.”2

“Two Suns in One Firmament”: John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and the 1655 New Haven Sodomy Statute

2018 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 1003-1028
Author(s):  
Sandra Slater
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
The Other ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Sexual Activities ◽  
Legal Code ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Stark Contrast

This piece explores the origins of the anomalous 1655 New Haven statute against sodomy that broke with legal traditions and codes both in England and New England. A lengthy and extraordinarily specific piece of legislation, the New Haven law stands in stark contrast to the minimalist language favored by the English in the early seventeenth century. When viewed within the larger context of clerical animosities, particularly between Thomas Hooker and John Cotton, there is a strong circumstantial case to make for its implementation as an extension of John Cotton's rejected Massachusetts Bay legal code,Moses His Judicials, applied by his friend and admirer John Davenport in New Haven. A devout disciple of John Cotton, John Davenport's New Haven colony relied on Cotton's influence and stood as a rebuke to Thomas Hooker's Connecticut settlements, often criticized as too spiritually lax by those in Massachusetts Bay and New Haven. While seeking to demonstrate greater piety and rigidity, John Cotton and Thomas Hooker sought to exert dominance over the other, with Cotton employing Davenport's colony as an effective castigation of Hooker's perceived liberality. This piece is reflective of trends in studies of sexuality which suggest that ideas and identities related to sexuality do not operate in isolation, but often mirror anxieties not necessarily connected to the regulation of sexual activities. This article situates the 1655 Sodomy Statue within a broader context in order to understand its origins and animosities that potentially motivated its inclusion into the New Haven legal statutes.

Nature, Grace and John Cotton: The Theological Dimension in the New England Antinomian Controversy

1975 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
William K. B. Stoever
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Wrong Side ◽  
Antinomian Controversy ◽  
Anne Hutchinson ◽  
The Hill ◽  
The City ◽  
A Company ◽  
The Church

In 1636 the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay was confronted with a sectarian outburst which rent the religious and civil peace of Boston and temporarily threatened that of the whole colony. Certain of the Boston congregation, led by Anne Hutchinson and abetted by John Cotton, the teacher of the church, charged that the clergy of the Bay, almost entirely, were not true ministers of the gospel but in fact a company of unregenerate “legalists”, preaching a “covenant of works” instead of a “covenant of grace”, and there by hindering the work of redemption. For nearly two years the “Antinomian Controversy” darkened the radiance of the City on the Hill, and echoes of the affair returned in the next decade to plague apologists for the New England Way. Part of the apologists' difficulty was the fact that their star, the illustrious Cotton, had been on the wrong side.

Puritans and Race

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Race And Religion

In scholarly discussions about “race” in the Americas, colonial New England often receives little attention. While race-based slavery perhaps never commanded the same attention in the northern colonies as in regions farther south, “race” factored into nearly every aspect of life in New England from the outset. This chapter not only discusses how scholars have approached this conversation but also investigates some of the ways in which New Englanders made sense of themselves and the peoples of varying ethnicities, relying at times on the specific theological context of New England puritanism. Focusing on the ways in which New Englanders wrestled with the dilemma of racial thinking within their theological system brings New England fully into the discussion of the intersections between “race” and religion in colonial America.

Literature & Theology in Colonial New England.

1951 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 536
Author(s):  
Theodore Hornberger ◽  
Kenneth B. Murdock
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Colonial New England

Breathing the “Free Aire of the New World”: The Influence of the New England Way on the Gathering of Congregational Churches in Old England, 1640–1660

2010 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-46
Author(s):  
Ralph F. Young
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
New World ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Church Polity

Puritans in England, although engaged in the struggle against Charles I and setting up the Commonwealth under Cromwell closely watched the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. In demonstrating how the New England Way of church polity influenced the rise of Congregationalism in England, Young details the transatlantic flow of ideas from colony to motherland.

The Contested Will of “Goodman Penn”: Anglo–New England Politics, Culture, and Legalities, 1688–1716

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-584
Author(s):  
John M. Lund
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Suffolk County ◽  
The Other ◽  
William Penn ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
Made In

In February 1704, a Boston laborer named Thomas Lea found himself surrounded by townspeople as he lay on his deathbed. These spectators had gathered hoping to hear a much anticipated confession of the crimes they believed Lea had committed fifteen years earlier during the Dominion of New England. In Suffolk County, many townspeople had long maintained that Lea and others had used the confusion and chaos generated by the unsettling political and legal transformations introduced to New England during the 1680s to surreptitiously gain legal title to the estate of a prosperous Braintree, Massachusetts, landowner named William Penn. Standing by Lea's bedside, one witness, who believed Lea had perjured himself at the 1689 probate administration of Penn's estate, demanded: “Thomas can you as you are going out of the World answer at the Tribunal of God to the Will of Mr Penns, which you have sworn to[?]” “Was Mr Penn living or Dead when this Will was Made?” In the presence of assembled witnesses, Lea acknowledged, “he was dead.” Other townspeople pressed Lea to reveal the role he played in what many believed had been a murder for inheritance scheme. They reminded Lea that Penn's corpse had been found covered “in blood, in his own dung” with “a hole in his back, that you might turn your two fingers into it” and, even more disturbing, “one of his [Penn's] stones in his codd [scrotum] was broken all to pieces.” Averting the onlookers' gaze, Lea “turned his head aside the other way, saying what I did I was hired to do.” For these witnesses, the death-bed confession confirmed the rumors of Lea's crimes and strengthened their belief that a wave of corruption introduced in the 1680s had sabotaged New England's distinctive Puritan jurisprudence. Indeed, townspeople had labored for years to overturn the 1689 probate of Penn's estate in an effort forestall the crown's efforts to bring New England into political and legal conformity with the dictates of the growing English empire.

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