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Full-Text Articles in History
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy I: David Hall's Diary And Letter To Edward Billing, Douglas L. Winiarski
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy I: David Hall's Diary And Letter To Edward Billing, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Jonathan Edwards’ fateful decision to repudiate the church admission practices of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, provoked a bitter dispute with his parishioners that led to his dismissal in 1750. Scholars have long debated the meaning of this crucial turning point in Edwards’ pastoral career. For early biographers, the Northampton communion controversy served as an index of eighteenth-century religious decline. More recent studies situate Edwards’ dismissal within a series of local quarrels over his salary, the “Bad Book” affair, conflicts with the Williams family, and the paternity case of Elisha Hawley. This essay is the first a series that reexamines the …
The Trials Of Robert Ryland, Edward L. Ayers
The Trials Of Robert Ryland, Edward L. Ayers
History Faculty Publications
Robert Ryland tried to behave in a generous Christian way with the African-American people among whom he lived all his life even as he presided over what he recognized was a compromised form of the church. He faced skepticism and criticism from all sides, and experienced considerable doubt, but he pressed on.
Spirit Politics: Radical Abolitionists And The Dead End Of Spiritualism, Robert Nelson
Spirit Politics: Radical Abolitionists And The Dead End Of Spiritualism, Robert Nelson
University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications
On June 30, 1858, abolitionist Parker Pillsbury wrote William Lloyd Garrison and readers of the Liberator that he had “just returned from attending one of the largest and most important Reformatory Conventions ever held in this or any other country.” In his report on the “Free Convention” held at Rutland, Vermont, Parker praised the “character and quality” and the “large brains and full hearts” of the convention participants. “The most numerous class” among these participants, he noted, were Spiritualists. Spiritualism had burst on the American scene a decade earlier, quickly attracting thousands of adherents who believed that communication and communion …