Notes and Essays on the Intersection Between History and Faith.
Welcome to Past and Piety. This substack is designed to be my own public commonplace notebook. At times you will see excerpts from my reading or miscellanies notes from research. At other times, you will find full length essays on topics pertinent to my subject interest.
I will attempt to stay within my wheelhouse of specialty, but I must admit I have a knack for taking large departures from my area of study and exploring other topics. Just to queue you up for what to expect, I’m following four major areas of inquiry in early modern history.
First, I am revising my dissertation for publication, and you should always expect me to continue to pursue studies on Jonathan Edwards. My dissertation focused on Edwards’ exegesis of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The trajectory of my future research on Edwards is going to take me deeper into his philosophical theology and especially into the area of his view on the Decree, sin, and the will. As such, Reformed Orthodoxy before Edwards and New England Theology after Edwards is of significance in this research. You’ll see much on both over time.
Second, New England missions and native contact is of interest to me, and I am particularly looking at the life of the minister and missionary Joseph Fish, who pastored the 2nd Congregational Church in Stonington. During his pastorate he ministered to the Narragansett and Pequot Indians. He also corresponded with a number of New England notables, including: Sarah Osborn, Samson Occom, Eleazar Wheelock, Samuel Sewell, and John Erskine (trans-Atlantic correspondent). Fish also became ensconced into a heated publication war with early Baptist leader Isaac Backus.
Third, the Salem witch crisis and the longer history of maleficium and witch-hunts has been of interest to me. My focus in this study is on the convergence of science with superstition and ministerial responses to the phenomenon of disenchantment and their seeming obsession with diabolical forms of magic. Though ministers and magic are treated in various ways as a feature in other studies, no study that I am aware of has focused its argument and research around the witch-hunters of New England and the longer history of ministerial involvement as witch-hunters and as students and experts of magical and diabolical studies.
Finally, as someone concerned with the story of American intellectual history, you’ll discover that I am also interested in the life of William James. I believe that he is an important figure in following Edwards in America’s intellectual journey. The continuum between the philosopher and theologian Jonathan Edwards to the philosopher and psychologist William James is an important pattern to perceive. The central role that psychology and therapy has taken on as a secular substitute to piety and penance is a fascinating trope in more recent history.
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