Popular Religiosity in the Colonial Atlantic World

by Madelon Proctor

The observance of religion takes multiple forms, from the structured manner one’s leaders present in the way of ritual and teaching to the many practices shaped within the context of culture and settings of lived experience. This study will examine the lived, or popular, religiosity present in Colonial America by considering its portrayal in various scholarly works. A diverse representation of Christian denominations travelled from the Old World of Europe to the New World, beginning with Spanish Catholics and expanding to several protestant factions after the Reformation. In addition to Christianity, however, indigenous and slave beliefs must be explored to get a truer picture of how religion was practiced in the Colonial Atlantic World.

Historian Ramón A. Gutiérrez examines marriage practices of the Ancestral Pueblo people, the rapaciousness of the Conquistadores, and the domination of religious culture through the Catholic terms of marriage and worship brought in by the Spanish in his 1991 text.¹ When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers went Away is a story of the Spanish conquest in New Mexico from 1500 through 1846 told as a “dialogue between cultures.”² Through his study of the anthropological, archeological, oral, and historical record available, the author creates a depiction of a matrilineal, non-hierarchical society and its envelopment by a patriarchal, segmented one.

In his examination of the Puebloans, Gutiérrez shines light on a culture based on equality and harmony. After retelling a myth of creation and relating the gifts the Corn Mothers passed on to the people from nature, the author describes cultural and religious expectations within the tribe. Although some members of the tribe would be able to supply more knowledge or gifts to others, their wealth did not translate to material possessions or any excess of power. Women, too, were the equal of men. When a marriage was proposed her family would be expected to provide gifts to her in-laws just as the man would be expected to do for her family. The division of labor between the sexes was perceived to be on equal footing, and women were the masters of the home while men supplied the needs of society from the outside. “Traditionally, men spun, wove, hunted, and protected the community. Women cared for the hearth and home and undertook all building construction.”³

Through the giving and receiving of gifts or services, the Ancestral Pueblos exhibited different standards of class separation than that of the Spanish. With European occupation, the foreign values and gendered expectations were imposed. Prior to their arrival, traditional marriage was monogamous, but spouses could separate and move on to form new marital relationships if it was agreed upon. Franciscan friars “injected themselves into the control of marriage” by insisting they maintain relationships of “monogamy and marital fidelity” within the context of their newly acquired Catholicism.⁴ Additionally, conquistadores raped indigenous women to signify a conquest of the people. Rather than view sex as an act of subjugation, however, the author suggests that Puebloan culture deemed it as an incorporation of those men into Indian families. It was an act of giving and indigenous understandings of gender equality designated for it to be reciprocated through familial ties and respect, just as giving had been modeled through their religious practices. Women’s authority and power decreased under new impositions like these.

Gutiérrez speaks to the religious lives of the Ancient Pueblo people and how the Spanish conquest attempted to overhaul them. The corn mothers, Iatiku and Nautsiti quarreled at the end of the creation myth at the beginning of his book. After describing their culture and the conquest by the Spanish in parts one and two, he begins part three with a continuation of that same myth. Nautsiti went to the East when she left the area of creation, but she vowed to return. Gutiérrez states that she returns as La “Nuestra Señora del Rosario, La Conquistadora, Mary, Our Lady of the Rosary, Virgin of the Conquest.”⁵ The Spanish made the attempt to place Catholicism in the minds of the people and bring about worship in churches instead of their traditional kivas. Friars attempted to replace aspects of Native worship with Catholic versions instead; however, Puebloans incorporated the new religion into their cultural worldview.

In a piece more distinctly related to this Catholic cause, David Weber, in his article “Conquistadores of the Spirit,” asserts that the Spanish Franciscan friars came, “to America with a militant vision that rivaled the more worldly dreams of the conquistadores.”⁶ They envisioned “utopian Christian republics” grown from the communal societies of the native populations, and their efforts to convert them to Catholicism began readily enough.⁷ The Spanish crown initially supported the endeavors to reach those natives by requiring that “at least two priests accompany all exploring parties” to the Americas.⁸ As diseases overtook the people, the demand for indigenous slave labor for the Spanish colonists grew, and costs of exploration increased, the friars were pressed to serve on the fringes of the empire to continue toward their goals. A new objective of “pacification rather than conquest” allowed the missionaries to “enter new lands” and direct their efforts to people yet unseen.⁹

Weber describes how the Franciscans constructed fifty churches and friaries in New Mexico by 1629. They utilized the labor of the Pueblo people much in the same way they are described to build their own homes in When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away. The Catholic friars’ outlook was grand as news spread about “the natives’ rapid and sometimes astounding conversions in New Mexico.”¹⁰ They pressed for more support and for a larger conquest of the whole of North America because they saw so many more left to be reached, and the author turned his attention to the Franciscans’ work in Florida.

Monks traveled alone or in very small groups to the furthest reaches of European influence and “persuaded the residents” of Indian communities “to construct a temple to an alien god.”¹¹ Their construction was distinct from the kivas they were used to worshipping in, and the expectations and practices of the friars were just as foreign. Weber contends that the Franciscans “altered native societies in ways that had nothing to do with Christianity but everything to do with living in civilized…fashion.”¹² They converted children and “enlisted their aid in converting others and in discrediting the belief and undermining the authority of obdurate members of the older generation.”¹³ Their focus was on converting and restructuring the lives of the people, but just as noted by Gutiérrez, these friars acted as “linguists and anthropologists in order to facilitate” those goals.¹⁴

The focal points of race, gender, and sexuality Gutiérrez emphasizes in his book are also prevalent in Monica Díaz’s, “The Indigenous Nuns of Corpus Christi,” an article about the nuns who lived and prayed in the “first convent in colonial Mexico for indigenous women.”¹⁵ To better portray the lives of these women who served their God in such a racially charged and gender-prejudiced setting, Díaz studies the writings about a religious Iroquois woman in New France called Caterina, a priest’s biography about “a nun who once lived among the indigenous nuns of Corpus Christi,” and “biographical accounts” written by some of the nuns about the “Lives of Some of our deceased sisters” – at least one of which was written by an indigenous woman.¹⁶

Another interpretation of the story of Catherine Tekakwitha, the pious Iroquois maid, appears in the article, “Iroquois Virgin: The Story of Catherine Tekakwitha in New France and New Spain,” by Allan Greer.¹⁷ Catherine, the same Caterina of Diaz’s writing, is presented as an example to New Spain of a pious India and is a unique representation of how indigenous Americans adapted these European religions to fit their own world views. Tekakwitha’s self-mortification and flagellation are examples of the adaptability inherent in the Catholicism of New France and New Spain.

Most of the earliest Spanish colonists and conquistadores, and even the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, “believed that indigenous people could not comprehend the meaning of monastic life.”¹⁸ The first convent for native peoples, Corpus Christi, opened in 1724 and was for indigenous noble women. By 1811 three more had opened around Mexico, the last of which was open to all “indigenous women regardless of class.”¹⁹

Interestingly, Diaz notes placement of indigenous nobility in positions to study Western reasoning, as well as Latin and Spanish, at the Colegio de Santa Cruz where men were trained to assist the Spanish priests. Women were held back far longer than men, however, due to the “problem of sensuality…Presumably the vows of poverty and obedience posed no difficulty to humble native women; rather it was the vow of chastity that was at issue.”²⁰ Grear’s study delves into the assumption by Spanish men and women that Indias were overly sensuous and not fit for any religious orders or vows. He describes the inclination of White colonizers, however, to depict a “feminized America” in need of “entering, possessing, and ravishing,” thus placing the blame for any lewdness on the Spanish rather than any natural propensity of the women.²¹

These explorations of race, class, and gender in Spanish colonies contain extensive sets of data pertaining to marriages, births, christenings of illegitimate babies born to slave women, and suits for loss of honor. Gutiérrez presents a fascinating case for how marriage and sexual relations in New Mexico were calculated to maintain status and inequalities of the time. In the island colony of Antigua, originally claimed by the Spanish, a girl named Shelly was born. Themes of race, gender, sexuality, and status revolve around this girl’s story as portrayed in John Sensbach’s book, Rebecca’s Revival.²²

Kidnapped at an early age, Shelly is enslaved to one of the elite planter families on nearby St Thomas. She prospered as much as one could in her position, receiving an education, being baptized with the Christian name of Rebecca, and attending church with her master’s family. She grew in her commitment to Christ and taught the other slave women about her newfound faith. Her owners regarded her well, and she obtained her freedom and a position of trust and authority in their household.

Sensbach opens his book with an account of a rebellion of the enslaved population on the Danish colonial island of St. John in November 1733. Rebecca comes of age in this tumultuous time on the sister island of St. Thomas.²³ Moravian missionaries arrived in the Dutch island colonies to convert the African slaves there, but experienced difficulties in adequately preaching to enslaved women. After meeting a Moravian priest, Rebecca began studying under his guidance and took a position in that church to teach and minister to the black women of St Thomas. Because of her natural inclination to share her knowledge of God, she was a great help to their undertaking.

The Moravians offered lessons in Dutch literacy to the enslaved population and people were drawn in and held by their lessons in the faith. Because of her freedom, Rebecca had the ability “to walk father, stay later, and teach longer” than her “enslaved brothers and sisters.”²⁴ They would travel to far off plantations with the plan of converting one or two of the slaves and those converts would, in turn, be expected to minister to their fellows. The Moravians worked to root out lingering African traditions among their brethren, but they kept the practice of mentorship already familiar to the slaves. Mentoring enabled them to reach more people and build a close-knit community of believers.

Many slaves drew upon religious traditions from their homeland across the Atlantic to carry them through life in bondage. In his book Slave Religion, Albert J. Raboteau presents the thesis that African religious practices remain visible in the religious experiences of Black Americans, and that those customs were passed down along even through slavery.²⁵ The author delves into the diaspora of the African people from that continent. Rebecca, for instance, was of African descent but grew up in the Caribbean islands after her ancestors were forcibly removed from their homeland, but her second husband lived in Africa before journeying to Europe. After building the patterns of migration, Raboteau compares the evolution of slave religious practices with their possible roots in Africa. Much like the absorption of Catholicism into the Puebloan or Iroquois religious experiences, the author describes slaves’ incorporation of Catholic Saints into their African religions and the difficulties they experienced with Protestantism. He also examines how those traditions and practices were passed down and what motivated people to convert in their new surroundings.

The transatlantic slave trade brought people from mainly Western Africa to the Caribbean and into the continental Americas. Although there was some Christian and Muslim influence in these regions, the primary means of religious expression was through their ancestral customs. Many traditionally believed in a high god who was associated with the sky; that god stayed out of the everyday lives of people and, although he was venerated, he did not receive sacrifices and prayers. Many African religious customs are linked to lesser deities and to the spirits of the ancestors. He quotes M.J. Field by stating that “‘most people are…more afraid of offending these [dead forefathers] than of offending the gods, though in theory…they give the higher place to the gods.’ A person neglects the veneration of his ancestors at the risk of sickness, misfortune, even death.”²⁶ The lesser gods and ancestors acted as intermediators with that high god of the sky.

African religions often incorporated the gods of neighboring regions, and when slaves were brought across the Atlantic, they did likewise. In Catholicism the roles of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints take on that mediator position to God, the Father, and it was an easy transition for those slaves brought into Catholic colonies of New Spain. “Catholic popular piety has long been open to syncretism with ‘pagan’ belief and practice.”²⁷ In the Caribbean and South American religious practices, passed down by the former slave population, depictions and actions of the Saints are somewhat interchangeable with some of the African gods. However, “on the deepest levels the parish church and the cult house remain parallel and separate… To add the power of Christianity to that of African cults made sense, for ‘it is better to rely upon two magics instead of one.’”²⁸

Protestantism was less amenable to this blending and fluidity; however, there is some evidence of traditional African culture within its bounds. For instance, Baptist practices in Jamaica have many remnants of African cultism. Also, the slaves incorporated dance and shouting into the Revival meetings. Certain movements and patterns in their dancing, as well as the rhythms and method of singing and shouting can have a possible background from their homeland.

Whereas Catholics and Protestants purported to seek out the conversion of indigenous and enslaved peoples, in practice the latter inhibited their inclusion in Christianity. Many slaveholders in Colonial England refused to allow missionaries to catechize slaves for fear they would need to be freed, and laws were enacted to keep them in bondage even if they had converted. It was supposed that African slaves were not smart enough to learn about Christianity, and that any education would cause them to think too much of themselves. Although prominent men like Cotton Mather said that slaves were Christian neighbors with whom the Gospel needed be shared, slave holders did not want to consider any Black person to be on the same level and possibly share Heaven with them. Ministers were at the whim of those who held that pocketbook, and so could not teach those deemed unfit by them.

In Rebecca’s Revival, Rebecca experienced similar animosity and prejudice on St. Thomas, undergoing trial and a long imprisonment when her beliefs opposed those of the slave holders there. Even after journeying to Africa, themes of race and bias abound in her story. Sensbach uses Rebecca’s life to show the struggle of race and gender in the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. She was slave and free, “heathen” and Christian, and wife and widow. She gave birth to two children and grieved their deaths when they were still very young. The biracial nature of her first marriage triggered animosity against them from their government, but her second marriage was upheld in her church as an example of how far-reaching and inclusive their religion could be. Even though that church was such a big part of her life for many years, she died alone in a land far from her home with no known source of support. Hers was a remarkable story, and yet much of it is in shadow.

Acceptance of women’s religiosity and their place within the church drew upon generations of theological discussion and learning dominated by the men of Europe. Spanish men imposed barriers upon the indigenous women who wanted to take vows of chastity, and English men deemed their feminine cohorts as similarly defenseless and corruptible. In her book, Damned Women, Elizabeth Reis makes the case that women in Puritan New England were considered inherently “damned.”²⁹

Although there were some individuals who did not attend church and would never seek membership in the congregations, Puritanism “saturated the culture,” and the laity took to heart what was preached in the pulpit.³⁰ For the majority of the book the author examines Salem’s witch trials, in conjunction with other references to that subject in New England, to study the relationship between the church’s beliefs about Satan and their acceptance of a theology that women were more susceptible to his domination. She concludes with analysis of Salem’s legacy and how the perception of sin, and of Satan’s presence, changed after the trials.

Puritans considered men and women to be spiritual equals, according to the author. The female body was weaker, but both genders held a feminine soul with which to unite with Christ or succumb to possession by Satan. It was “the body’s duty…to protect the soul [from the devil], but more often than not it failed.”³¹ A woman, according to the Puritans, should be submissive and docile; she was then made more susceptible to the wiles of Satan with her inwardly feminine soul and outwardly weak, female body. She must be always seeking the stronger connection of either God or the devil to dominate her being.

This speculation that women were similarly crafted and yet inferior or weaker is reflected in Ava Chamberlain’s article, “The Immaculate Ovum: Jonathan Edwards and the Construction of the Female Body.” Scientific discoveries concerning the differences between male and female anatomies and their reproductive structures were brand new. As with most science, belief in these findings took time, and a lot of speculation and doubt surrounded them. According to Johnathan Edwards, the egg of Jesus had been elected within Mary; created in the body of Eve, it passed from one mother to the next prior to His birth. Every man and woman, likewise, was made at Creation and carried from the time of Adam.³²

Chamberlain, like Elizabeth Reis, says that women were considered “spiritual equals” to men.³³ Many began to believe that the female body was similarly structured to the male, but inferior.³⁴ Boys “transformed the strangeness of the female body into disgust,” and made them into something “other,” or “nasty.”³⁵ Edwards contended that “at the beginning of his life Christ is conceived in a woman’s womb so that at the end of his life he may overcome the filthiness and corruption that that womb also represents.”³⁶

The devil was a physical presence for New Englanders, and his machinations were always to win souls for damnation in Hell. Men and women each confessed to sinning in various ways, taking seriously Satan’s motivations for their eternal home. Women, however, were more aware of their mortality, having gone through the trauma of childbirth and caring for children. They deemed themselves wholly corrupt in nature, whereas men considered individual sins, rather than their souls, to be impure. During the witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, as with most other suspicions of witches throughout history, it was considerably more likely for women to be accused than men because of this perceived fallibility. Puritan women felt they were unworthy of salvation because of the state in which they supposed their souls to be. Because her soul was always seeking out a union, and any indication of sinfulness would link her to Satan, she must be one of his own.

The concept of union in Christ was not unique to Puritans. Richard Godbeer, in his article “‘Love Raptures’: Marital, Romantic, and Erotic Images of Jesus Christ in Puritan New England, 1670-1730,” states that this imagery was drawing “upon a tradition well established in Christian devotional literature, both Catholic and Protestant.”³⁷ Unity with the devil, however, was much more serious than any minor sins a normal person would commit. Belonging to Satan and signing one’s soul over to him was to deny Christ, His church, and His promise of salvation for eternity. In Salem, many of the accused confessed to having signed a covenant with the devil; some women even admitted to having sexual relations with him to consummate that union. Rather than imagery of a loving marriage, however, a relationship with Satan was enslavement or ravishment and not at all good for one’s soul.

Reis alludes to the sexuality inherent in these beliefs, but Godbeer goes into greater detail about the symbolic meaning of union in the church. “Ministers taught that God had ordained sexual relations within marriage both as a means to procreation and as an expression of marital affection.”³⁸ “Consummation” in one’s marriage with Christ, however “took place in ‘the world to come,’” and Christians must remain pure for His most perfect marriage.³⁹ The Lord proposed marriage to the feminine soul, and she would assume His name and become a rightful heir “With him who is the heir of all things.”⁴⁰ He would pay her debts, any sins committed in life, and their “prenuptial celebration during which the betrothed could regularly and ‘solemnly renew’ their marital covenant” was the Lord’s Supper.⁴¹ Upon Christ’s return, Thomas Foxcroft wrote that saints would become “impregnated, and spring up; sprout upon his stalk, and (being ripe to the harvest of glory) be gathered into the garner of paradise.”⁴²

In the early 1700s, the devil took the form of a suggestive presence rather than the physical representation he had been to the Puritans. Women’s view of their sinfulness became more in line with men’s, as well. They did not consider themselves to have covenanted with the devil for minor infractions and instead alluded to his tempting them but being more able to overcome; an understanding of the inherent fallibility to human nature persisted, however. Additionally, Puritan women held very little authority over their own destinies, either in Europe or in Colonial America. The equality of Puebloan culture and the agency Rebecca took over her path can be seen in stark contrast to that afforded to Eunice Williams, the daughter of a Puritan minister in Deerfield, Massachusetts. John Demos, in his book The Unredeemed Captive, presents a narrative of captivity and redemption in Colonial New England.⁴³

The Puritan town of Deerfield sat at the furthest reaches of the colony. They feared Indian raids, and Biblical allusions of Israel’s deliverance from Esau and Jacob’s fight with the Almighty demonstrate encouragement from the pulpit to prepare themselves and remain steadfast in their faith. They should not be caught off guard and have their divine right in question but rather seek blessings for perseverance. War parties came from New France in the middle of the night, however, and the people of Deerfield were caught sleeping – literally. After the “massacre,” references to the Israelites’ affliction by the people of Canaan abound in their stories. Puritans felt as if they were being admonished by God for having neglected to drive from the Promised Land of the Americas their own Canaanites: the Indians.

Early colonizers to the New World left Europe with several goals in mind. The primary focus of their kings and queens was to procure land, wealth, and desirable products to export and support the costs of their new acquisitions; however, they also claimed a desire to win souls of the indigenous “heathen” for the God of Christianity. Catholic monks traversed New Spain with the Conquistadores and won souls through domination and ministry, building elaborate missions to host and teach their new converts. In New France, the Jesuits, also Catholic, grew their communities from the ground up by preaching to the Iroquois Five Nations and their “adoptees.”⁴⁴ The Puritans of New England, overall, did not want any association with the local native population, however.

People of the Iroquois had very little knowledge of Christianity prior to the coming of the Jesuit missionaries in their “Black Gowns.”⁴⁵ Some of the adoptees in their midst claimed that Christians “brought disease…and killed people with their rite of baptism.”⁴⁶ Of course, colonists from the Old World did bring diseases to the New; they carried smallpox and other germs which caused widespread devastation among the native tribes in the Americas. Of the latter, however, Christian missionaries and priests refrained from granting baptismal rites on Indians who were not near death; thus, it appeared to kill them. Converted Algonquian and Huron tribesmen, however, “were eager to see the priests again,” and it was this desire which was a “major factor in Iroquois diplomacy” in the 1650s.⁴⁷

Jesuit missionaries used knowledge of eclipses and medicine to appear like shamans, and the people converted.⁴⁸ In the eyes of the Indians, the Christian “priests were sorcerers who secretly practiced strange ceremonies that sapped the spiritual power of communities.”⁴⁹ Some conversions were probably genuine; however, the prospect of gaining access to a religion deemed to bring more power and material benefit was decidedly one factor. Additionally, Catholicism used incense and a showiness that Protestantism did not, creating some parallel to the native religious practices. An avenue for conversion which cannot be ignored is the compulsion to do so when heads of households or community leaders joined the Church.

As more Iroquois converted to Christianity, they began to define themselves as distinct peoples and the traditional tribal members treated as kin no longer, but as enemies. New villages, like Kahnawake, formed from these Catholic Indians, and the missionaries helped them to take on new roles defined by gender within their chosen lifestyle. Men would no longer be hunters, but farmers and women eschewed the planting for sewing and weaving. They would turn out products which could be sold to support themselves.⁵⁰

Iroquois warriors, under the direction of French Canadians, initiated the havoc in Deerfield. The only remaining description of the terror citizens experienced is in the writings of the town’s minister, John Williams. In a letter written while still in captivity, Williams compared the charity efforts of the Jesuits in Canada to his faith’s own. He admonishes Puritan leaders for apparent laxity in that arena. When some of his townsfolk were set to sail back home, he feared for those left behind, like himself at the time, and wrote another letter in which he decried a “campaign [of the Jesuits] to seduce our young over to popery.”⁵¹ He drew attention to the shared experience of the redeemed captives as a “we,” others who had not had those realities as “them,” and the expectations that the redeemed, “you,” should return to tell of God’s glory. “Captivity should,” according to Williams, “prove a ‘purging and purifying’ experience.”⁵²

His daughter, Eunice, remained one of those children whom he referred to as having been seduced. She married a member of the tribe into which she had been adopted after her capture. The Kahnawake Indians made her a full member of their community and raised her as one of their own, including having baptized her into Catholicism under a new name of Margaret. She was given unique names in her tribe, too, a childhood one and one to signify her adulthood. After a time, she forgot her native English tongue and could only speak and understand the Mohawk language. In her captivity, though, she gained an autonomy inaccessible to women in the home of her birth.

Demos connects much of the history and culture of the Iroquois Five Nations with Eunice’s story to fill in some of the gaps of how she survived – and even thrived. He draws on the distinctions between her Puritan upbringing and the freer life she led with the Kahnawake. He suggests that if she had returned, it might not have been a redemption at all, but another sort of captivity. She never saw her father again, although he never stopped praying for her to return to their family. Her older brother, Stephen Williams was able to meet with her and she came to visit the family again a few times; however, she remained with her adoptive family in Canada until her death.

Jesuit missionaries, like those mentioned in The Unredeemed Captive, seemed tolerant of native practices and they showed some “willingness to adapt Christianity to the traditions of their converts.”⁵³ Puritans, in contrast, attempted to root out any beliefs and practices they deemed impure. David Hall, in his book, The Puritans, a Transatlantic History, gives the reader a history of that theology and explains some of its finer points.⁵⁴ Although it is not an all-encompassing chronicle of the Puritan religion, the book attempts to lay a common ground for the roots of Puritanism in England and Scotland before taking that story to Colonial New England. His study shows similarities in the established doctrine of the Puritans even through their diverse beginnings.

King Henry VIII initiated the reformation in England, and after the ascension of his daughter Elizabeth I to the throne, protestants had high hopes for the church’s furtherance. Instead, she maintained her prominence as the governor of the church, she had a propensity for moderation, and she preferred conformity to the ideals being pushed by various sects. Puritans aspired to a two-kingdom model of church and state and wanted a separation of the visible world from the divine and a governance similarly split. Many felt that church polity should return to that of the first churches: instead of the episcopalian method, the use of a presbyterian one or even maintaining their own congregations with no higher governance. There were also troubles in keeping an educated clergy in England; Puritans wanted their worship to be based in scripture and unscripted prayers.

In Scotland the reformation was not advanced by the head of state, but rather through the nobility of the country after the death of King James V. In battles against the regency of his widow Mary of Guise, followed by the tumultuous reign of their daughter Mary Stuart, the kirk was able to gain a dominant position in that country.⁵⁵ It aligned more with the ideals of Puritan England in that it had achieved a two-kingdom model of church and state, the Scottish had removed Catholic “idolatry” from their churches, and there was an active and disciplined body of believers. After James VI came of age, he tried to tighten his grip on the leadership of Scotland’s kirk, more in line with Elizabeth’s in England, but there were numerous objections by the clergy and the nobility.

After the ascension of the new king, James I of England, following the death of his cousin Elizabeth I, Puritans prepared a petition of their requests with one thousand signatures: the Millenary Petition.⁵⁶ Their primary concerns were a presbyterian governance, a better qualified clergy, and an “abolishing [of] ‘idolatry and superstition’” – to “root out the very memory of them.”⁵⁷ They charged their monarch with the responsibility of ensuring correct doctrinal teaching in his country. James I, and later his son Charles I, did not hold to these charges, however. Each asserted their monarchical authority over the Church of England and tried to institute that same control over its counterparts in Scotland and Ireland.

King Charles I took a Catholic wife from France, much to the horror of his protestant subjects, and she brought with her a retinue of priests and the accoutrements of her religion. Protestants began to believe more stringently that the apocalypse, foretold with the trumpets and breaking of seals in the book of Revelations, was nigh. They reasoned they were living in the time during which Rome would fall, and the author asserts that there continued a “suffering few who defied church and state in order to expose the malice of the Antichrist.”⁵⁸ After decades of negotiation and debate, a civil war broke out between Royalists and Parliamentarians. People believed that a “popish plot” was being accelerated to undermine God’s true church in Britain, citing the French queen, her priests, and even conformists like the Laudians as accomplices to it. These “papists” had the king’s ear, and thus he was won over to the plotting. The armies of Oliver Cromwell defeated Charles’s Royalists, and the king was summarily beheaded. The cause of “the godly” looked bright and it seemed as though Rome had fallen.

The movement of ideas spurred these political happenings within the British Isles. In his brief introduction to the reformation in the British Isles, Hall Specifies the importance of the English translation of the bible and the “message of sola gratia” to English protestants.⁵⁹ According to William Tyndale “it was not possible to stablish the laypeople in any truth, except the Scripture were so plainly laide before their eyes in their mother tongue.”⁶⁰ And although Catholics argued against the translation, stating that “Christ never spoke in English,” Protestants responded that “neither spoke he any Latin; but always in such a tongue as the people might be edified thereby.”⁶¹

In addition to the Bible, the works of Luther, Zwingli, and a few other reformers made their way to England and Scotland. By far the most dominant reformation literature available to the isles, however, was that of John Calvin. Calvin was “the dominant theological influence in Elizabethan England,” and his ideas were the seeds that grew into Puritanism.⁶² For their ultimate benefit, the Protestants believed that people needed to read about God’s divine plan in their own language. The common people read and studied the bible and theological texts for themselves to gain a deeper understanding of God’s word. Puritan reformed theology was shaped by six common ideas: “a critique of idolatry,” a fixed “understanding of divine revelation,” “high praise for the…visible church,” discipline among the brethren, “evangelical and social activism,” and “divine providence.”⁶³

The Puritans had one goal: salvation. According to Hall, they did not “experience [a] shattering rebirth…Instead, conversion was a lifelong process.”⁶⁴ They esteemed learning, and writing was one of the primary ways they shared ideas. “Vast quantities of catechisms, psalters, sermon series, and books of devotion” were used to teach and build up the Puritan church.⁶⁵ This learning would, in time, build up strong communities and help to maintain better discipline. “A nation or church that disobeyed divine law would be punished, but righteous monarchs and a faithful people could expect great blessings.”⁶⁶ To save themselves and their countries, they needed to study the Bible, obey God’s word and commandments, and speak out to help their neighbors keep in line as well.

This lifelong process of learning and a goal of salvation speak something to the chapter “Puritan as Pilgrim,” by Charles Hambrick-Stowe.⁶⁷ The Catholic pilgrimage was one where the believer would travel to pay homage to certain sites or relics, but this pilgrimage of the Puritan was his “spiritual life.”⁶⁸ It would almost seem that their suffering was teaching them to be more chaste and obedient. Their lives were to be spent learning God’s ways and they would reach the end of their journey through this world of sin. Puritan literature of the New World took up this mantle of Pilgrims and applied it to their walk through the temporal.

Religious literature produced in the colonies was not confined to a specified geographic area. Tracts and books from the Old World arrived in the New with the colonizers as well, and news and stories would even return across the ocean. The tales of the “Iroquois Virgin” traveled from New France to Europe before arriving in New Spain to support the nuns of Corpus Christi. Published works traversed the continent as well as the sea, however, and some proof of that travel lies in the extensive library of Thomas Teackle. The article, “Thomas Teackle's 333 Books: A Great Library on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1697,” by Jon Butler, gives an accounting of that preacher’s literary holdings.⁶⁹

Teackle was the reverend of Accomack and Northampton counties in Virginia from about 1652 through his death in 1695. An elaborate inventory was taken of his books for the probation of his will in 1697, and Butler’s piece is an analysis of its importance to posterity. The author describes books published in New Spain by friars after the counter reformation, pre-reformation Catholic texts, an extensive collection of prominent Puritan writings as well as many lesser-known authors on that subject, books discussing biblical exegesis, and a collection of medical and occult texts. Although there is no surviving record of his ordination, he was a revered preacher of the word in Virginia, and many men requested him to preside over their funerals and other religious needs in life.

Virginian religiosity in the colonial era is often overshadowed by that of the New England Puritans. Just as Teackle’s inventoried books shed some light on what a preacher of that period and locale might have studied and professed, Beasley’s “Ritual Time and Space in British Colonies” describes some of the lived experiences of the churchgoers there. Beasley presents the church of Virginia, where communities were far more spread out than in New or Old England, as a place for societal gathering as well as worship. Everyone was expected to be in attendance, and their seats were highly sought after.

Pews could be purchased or rented, depending on the congregation, and advertisements for their sale might even be posted on taverns. Interestingly, the author notes that “even tavern-goers would be interested in church pews.”⁷⁰ Spots with the best view of the communion were the most sought after, people were expected to dress exceptionally well, and attendance of parishioners was undeniably observed by others. This article also touched on some of the experience of the enslaved Africans in colonial America from the Caribbean to Virginia. The liturgical year with its emphasis on the Sabbath through the slave perspective and the evolution of segregation within southern churches is discussed.

People throughout the colonies claimed an affiliation with Christianity. Certainly, other religions were represented, albeit in nowhere near the numbers of Christ’s followers. The Bible and the Almanac take the place as the most widely available books in early America; the former was a staple in all Christian households, while the highly agricultural society relied on calendars and reports contained in the latter. T. J. Tomlin, in A Divinity for all Persuasions, presents his study of the importance of Almanacs in early America.⁷¹ Although mass production in printing revolutionized access to the written word, most families did not own more than a few books.

Almanacs are a “barometer of public opinion” in eighteenth century America, according to the author.⁷² He develops a thesis that Almanacs promoted a sort of “pan-Protestantism” through their incorporation of a set of core Christian beliefs.⁷³ Rather than limit their audience with divisive principles and opinions, publishers of these almanacs included “distilled and more simplified” tenets of faith alongside the primary articles.⁷⁴ Not only did the publications present an idea of a national religion, according to Tomlin, they “offered Americans a stable reference point in the face of political and social change” as the Revolutionary era loomed over them.⁷⁵

The attraction readers found in a united colonial perspective grew during the revival of the Great Awakening. In his book, Pedlar in Divinity, Frank Lambert asserts that Whitefield’s revivalism “redefined popular religion, fashioning something public and national out of what had been private and local,” and created a “direct link between the Great Awakening and the American Revolution.”⁷⁶ The author builds an account of George Whitefield’s use of print media and a rise in consumerism to sell religion. It is not a biography but sets out to view the “cultural ramifications of the consumer revolution” in a “case study of the commercialization of religion.”⁷⁷

Whitefield used his experiences in a merchant family and learned how to promote his preaching schedule in the growing newspaper market. After beginning his career in Britain and Scotland, he hosted his first preaching tour in the colonies in 1739. The revival preacher used the newspaper to portray “a transatlantic community of faith whose members, often unknown to each other, exulted in the…awakening of experimental religion in Britain and America.”⁷⁸ He expounded on the Calvinist maxim of justification by faith alone, maintaining his qualifications as an Anglican minister and speaking out against any excess in worldly desires.

His was a “print and preach strategy,” and he used that same consumerism he told his listeners to disdain. His command of the dramatic and a renowned following for his oratorical skills was matched by the way he “transformed mere notices into advertisements rivaling those promoting the latest consumer goods.”⁷⁹ As his popularity grew, Whitefield published journals, sermons, and devotional literature and offered booksellers quantity discounts or other incentives to boost his sales and reach. To increase interest – to whet public appetite for his works – he even published excerpts from his books in the newspapers.

Lambert attributes Whitefield as the forerunner in the commercialization of religion, who “changed the scope and character of colonial evangelical revivals.”⁸⁰ His use of the public sphere for religious debate brought faith and conviction to the national arena; he preached to crowds of thousands. There was an overwhelming popularity to his message and the platform he chose forced people to truly contemplate their beliefs.

Popular religiosity, lived religion, in the colonial Atlantic world often different from its outline as presented from the pulpit. Spanish and French Catholics, as well as Dutch and English Protestants, dominated the New World of the Americas and attempted to live there according to the tenets of their respective doctrines. Numerous Indian tribes inhabited the land claimed by European governments and incorporated Christianity into their understanding of the spiritual world. Also, slaves involuntarily imported from Africa brought their religious understandings with them, adding to the interpretations and practice of religion in the Americas. With the growth of the newspaper market, a more public avenue of discourse surpassed previous, more isolated theological discussion. As the Revolution dawned, colonial citizenry found greater commonalities through revivals and core doctrines which contributed to a more nationalistic outlook.

Ramon A.Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), xvii. ↩
Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, xxi. Although the author frequently uses the name of Anasazi to describe the indigenous inhabitants of “the Four Corners region, where modern-day Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet,” a more appropriate term is that of Ancestral Pueblo people. Here is the link to an article published by the National Park Service and Mesa Verde National Park about the change: http://npshistory.com/publications/meve/index.htm. ↩
Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, 76. ↩
Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, 77. ↩
Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, 143. ↩
David J. Weber, "Conquistadores of the Spirit," in The Spanish Frontier in North America, (Yale University Press, 1992), 50. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Weber, “Conquistadores of the Spirit,” 49. ↩
Weber, “Conquistadores of the Spirit,” 51. ↩
Weber, “Conquistadores of the Spirit,” 54. ↩
Weber, “Conquistadores of the Spirit,” 64. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Weber, “Conquistadores of the Spirit,” 69. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Monica Diaz, “The Indigenous Nuns of Corpus Christi: Race and Spirituality in Colonial Mexico,” in Religion in New Spain, eds. Stafford Poole and Susan Schroeder, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007) 179. ↩
Diaz, “The Indigenous Nuns of Corpus Christi,” 180. ↩
Allan Greer, “Iroquois Virgin: The Story of Catherine Tekakwitha in New France and New Spain,” in Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas, 1500-1800, (London: Routeledge, 2003), 235-250. ↩
Diaz, “The Indigenous Nuns of Corpus Christi,” 182. ↩
Diaz, “The Indigenous Nuns of Corpus Christi,” 183. ↩
Diaz, “The Indigenous Nuns of Corpus Christi,” 184. ↩
Greer, “Iroquois Virgin,” 240. ↩
John S. Sensbach, Rebecca's Revival, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005). ↩
Sensbach, Rebecca's Revival, Chapter 1: A Baptism in Blood. ↩
Sensbach, Rebecca's Revival, Chapter 4, The Path. ↩
Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). ↩
Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion, 12. ↩
Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion, 22. ↩
Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion, 25. ↩
Elizabeth Reis, Damned Women, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). ↩
Reis, Damned Women, xviii – Emphasis my own. ↩
Reis, Damned Women, 97. ↩
Ava Chamberlain, "The Immaculate Ovum: Johnathan Edwards and the Construction of the Female Body," The William and Mary Quarterly 57 (2): 289-322, 2000. 311. ↩
Chamberlain, "The Immaculate Ovum,” 314. ↩
Chamberlain, "The Immaculate Ovum,” 316. ↩
Chamberlain, "The Immaculate Ovum,” 319. ↩
Chamberlain, "The Immaculate Ovum,” 355. ↩
Richard Godbeer, ""Love Raptures": Marital, Romantic, and Erotic Images of Jesus Christ in Puritan New England, 1670-1730," The New England Quarterly 68 (3): 355-384, 1995. 357. ↩
Godbeer, "Love Raptures," 358. ↩
Godbeer, "Love Raptures," 362. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Godbeer, "Love Raptures," 363. ↩
Godbeer, "Love Raptures," 366. ↩
John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive, (New York: Random House, 1994). ↩
Daniel K. Richter, "The Ascendancy of the Frankophiles," in The Ordeal of the Longhouse, (Williamsburg, VA: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 107. ↩
Richter, "The Ascendancy of the Frankophiles," 105. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Richter, "The Ascendancy of the Frankophiles," 108. ↩
Shamans were Indian spiritual leaders for the Iroquois tribes. ↩
Richter, "The Ascendancy of the Frankophiles," 107. ↩
Richter, "The Ascendancy of the Frankophiles," 108. ↩
Demos, The Unredeemed Captive, 57. ↩
Demos, The Unredeemed Captive, 59. ↩
Richter, "The Ascendancy of the Frankophiles," 108. However, they refused to consider indigenous peoples to be truly Christian unless they “shed their native ways and adopted European customs.” ↩
David D. Hall, The Puritans A Transatlantic History, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). ↩
The kirk was the name of the Church of Scotland. ↩
Hall, The Puritans, 172. ↩
Hall, The Puritans, 172-173. ↩
Hall, The Puritans, 217. ↩
Hall, The Puritans, 14. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Ibid. ↩
Hall, The Puritans, 17. ↩
Hall, The Puritans, 19-27. ↩
Hall, The Puritans, 116. ↩
Hall, The Puritans, 141. ↩
Hall, The Puritans, 146. ↩
Charles Hambrick-Stowe, "Puritan as Pilgrim," in The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England, (Williamsburg, Virginia: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1982). ↩
Hambrick-Stowe, "Puritan as Pilgrim," 55. ↩
Jon Butler, "Thomas Teackle's 333 Books: A Great Library on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1697." The William and Mary Quarterly 39 (3): 449-491, 1992. JSTOR. ↩
Nicholas M. Beasley, “Ritual Time in British Plantation Colonies,” 1650-1780. Church History. 2007;76(3):541-568. ↩
T. J. Tomlin, A Divinity for All Persuasions, (Oxford University Press, 2014). ↩
Tomlin, A Divinity for All Persuasions, 28. ↩
Tomlin, A Divinity for All Persuasions, 3. ↩
Tomlin, A Divinity for All Persuasions, 116. ↩
Tomlin, A Divinity for All Persuasions, 160. ↩
Frank Lambert, A Pedler in Divinity, (Princeton University Press, 2002), 197-198. ↩
Lambert, A Pedler in Divinity, 9. ↩
Lambert, A Pedler in Divinity, 67. ↩
Lambert, A Pedler in Divinity, 53. ↩
Lambert, A Pedler in Divinity, 95. ↩

Page last updated 11:24 AM, June 29, 2026