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Recycling A Colonial Puritan Sermon: A Case Study, David M. Powers Oct 2019

Recycling A Colonial Puritan Sermon: A Case Study, David M. Powers

Sermon Studies

Notes which the teenager John Pynchon took in the 1640s as he listened to the Rev. George Moxon’s sermons in frontier Springfield, MA, have become the inspiration and the ingredients for sermon performances in 21st century New England. The project began with a word-for-word transcription of a symbol-for-symbol manuscript based on a code invented by Pynchon. Then a very few words which the notetaker skipped, in his rush to record just what he heard, were added to provide essential clarification. So, too, was introductory material to frame the experience by encouraging the listening congregation to “stretch” a bit to appreciate …


“Wild Mobs, To Mad Sedition Prone”: Preaching The American Revolution, Barry Levis Oct 2019

“Wild Mobs, To Mad Sedition Prone”: Preaching The American Revolution, Barry Levis

Sermon Studies

The Church of England in the American Colonies was really not a single institution. Because no local bishop governed the church in America, falling as it did under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, the clergy tended to have differing loyalties. Especially in the southern colonies, local vestries ruled the clergy because they controlled their stipends; therefore the clergy followed the lead of the local squirearchy and suppressed their personal views regarding independence. The New England Anglican clergy were equally in a difficult position. Midst the hostility of Puritanism and the Sons of Liberty, they seemed like an alien …


Preaching In Britain’S “Parish Church”: Sermons At London’S St. Paul’S Cathedral, In The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries, Frances Knight Oct 2019

Preaching In Britain’S “Parish Church”: Sermons At London’S St. Paul’S Cathedral, In The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries, Frances Knight

Sermon Studies

This paper will address the conference themes of ‘space, place and context’ with an examination of the development of preaching at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, over the course of two hundred years. Completely rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666, on a scale which was intended to rival St Peter’s in Rome, the new St Paul’s was explicitly designed as a Protestant cathedral. Preaching, therefore, was highly valued. Yet, despite the adoption of Wren’s ‘preaching box’ plan, speaking in the colossal space, potentially to a congregation of many hundreds, presented considerable challenges. As one would expect over a two-hundred-year …


“A Prey To Their Teeth”: Puritan Sermons And Ministerial Writings On Indians During King Philip’S War, Gregory Michna Nov 2017

“A Prey To Their Teeth”: Puritan Sermons And Ministerial Writings On Indians During King Philip’S War, Gregory Michna

Sermon Studies

King Philip’s War encouraged the construction of barbaric Native American typologies by puritan ministers through sermons and wartime histories. While select Algonquians in New England invested in a hybridized identity as a “Praying Indian” during the decades before the war, martial circumstances encouraged ministers to emphasize indigenous savagery, which outweighed earlier efforts to demonstrate the Christian piety of native converts. English texts outlining God’s providential wrath linked the contemporaneous war to Old Testament punishments meted out to the Hebrews. This typological reading of current events also superimposed the characteristics of heathen barbarians on Native Americans irrespective of their allegiance, offering …