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A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England
A revelatory account of the aspirations and accomplishments of the people who founded the New England colonies, comparing the reforms they enacted with those attempted in England during the period of the English Revolution.
Distinguished historian David D. Hall looks afresh at how the colonists set up churches, civil governments, and methods for distributing land. Bringing with them a deep fear of arbitrary, unlimited authority grounded in either church or state, these settlers based their churches on the participation of laypeople and insisted on “consent” as a premise of all civil governance. Encouraging broad participation and relying on the vigorous use of petitioning, they also transformed civil and criminal law and the workings of courts. The outcome was a civil society far less authoritarian and hierarchical than was customary in their age—indeed, a society so advanced that a few dared to describe it as “democratical.” They were well ahead of their time in doing so.
As Puritans, the colonists also hoped to exemplify a social ethics of equity, peace, and the common good. In a case study of a single town, Hall follows a minister as he encourages the townspeople to live up to these high standards in their politics. This is a book that challenges us to discard long-standing stereotypes of the Puritans as temperamentally authoritarian and their leadership as despotic. Hall demonstrates exactly the opposite. Here, we watch the colonists as they insist on aligning institutions and social practice with equity and liberty.
A stunning re-evaluation of the earliest moments of New England’s history, revealing the colonists to be the most effective and daring reformers of their day.
Distinguished historian David D. Hall looks afresh at how the colonists set up churches, civil governments, and methods for distributing land. Bringing with them a deep fear of arbitrary, unlimited authority grounded in either church or state, these settlers based their churches on the participation of laypeople and insisted on “consent” as a premise of all civil governance. Encouraging broad participation and relying on the vigorous use of petitioning, they also transformed civil and criminal law and the workings of courts. The outcome was a civil society far less authoritarian and hierarchical than was customary in their age—indeed, a society so advanced that a few dared to describe it as “democratical.” They were well ahead of their time in doing so.
As Puritans, the colonists also hoped to exemplify a social ethics of equity, peace, and the common good. In a case study of a single town, Hall follows a minister as he encourages the townspeople to live up to these high standards in their politics. This is a book that challenges us to discard long-standing stereotypes of the Puritans as temperamentally authoritarian and their leadership as despotic. Hall demonstrates exactly the opposite. Here, we watch the colonists as they insist on aligning institutions and social practice with equity and liberty.
A stunning re-evaluation of the earliest moments of New England’s history, revealing the colonists to be the most effective and daring reformers of their day.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
15 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
About the author
David D. Hall
41 books10 followers
For the Fenland Survey historian, see David D. Hall.
Professor David D. Hall is an American historian, and was Bartlett Professor of New England Church History, at Harvard Divinity School.
He graduated from Harvard University, and from Yale University with a Ph.D. He is well known for introducing Lived religion to religious studies scholarship in the United States, most notably at Harvard Divinity School.
Hall was Bartlett Professor of New England Church History until 2008, when he became Bartlett Research Professor. He writes extensively on religion and society in seventeenth-century New England and England.
His books include The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century; Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England; Puritans in the New World: A Critical Anthology and, most recently, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England (2011). He has edited two key collections of documents: The Antinomian Controversy of 1636–1638: A Documentary History and Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History, 1638–1693.
Another interest is the "history of the book," especially the history of literacy and reading in early America. He edited, with Hugh Amory, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, the first of a five-volume series of which he was the general editor.
He continues to study and write about religion and culture in early America, with particular attention to "lived religion," and is presently writing a general history of Puritanism in England, Scotland, and New England c. 1550 to 1700, to be published by Princeton University Press.
Professor David D. Hall is an American historian, and was Bartlett Professor of New England Church History, at Harvard Divinity School.
He graduated from Harvard University, and from Yale University with a Ph.D. He is well known for introducing Lived religion to religious studies scholarship in the United States, most notably at Harvard Divinity School.
Hall was Bartlett Professor of New England Church History until 2008, when he became Bartlett Research Professor. He writes extensively on religion and society in seventeenth-century New England and England.
His books include The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century; Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England; Puritans in the New World: A Critical Anthology and, most recently, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England (2011). He has edited two key collections of documents: The Antinomian Controversy of 1636–1638: A Documentary History and Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History, 1638–1693.
Another interest is the "history of the book," especially the history of literacy and reading in early America. He edited, with Hugh Amory, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, the first of a five-volume series of which he was the general editor.
He continues to study and write about religion and culture in early America, with particular attention to "lived religion," and is presently writing a general history of Puritanism in England, Scotland, and New England c. 1550 to 1700, to be published by Princeton University Press.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 9, 2011
I’ve been spoiled by the popular histories I’ve been reading. This book is very readable for an academic history but it does seem to be aimed at more of a specialized audience. Hall’s mission is to refute the image of a rigid theocratic oligarchy that has been imposed on early American government. As he shows in this astute and well-researched book is that the reality was much more complicated. The Puritans put a lot of value on their notion of “equity” and there was much more participation in governing than has been portrayed both by the “saints” and those who hadn’t joined.
March 14, 2019
The Puritans are always on the receiving end of historical maltreatment that either wants to morally lionize them, or berate them for the being petty, small-minded … well, Puritans that they are. Whether it’s been through his work on the Antinomian crisis, the intersections of witchcraft and popular religion or, as in this book, a gradual but perceptible change in the nature of Church-state relations, the work of David D. Hall has always served as a solid intellectual reminder that history is very often more complex than merely what these potted versions, handed down by the likes of George Bancroft and Nathaniel Hawthorne respectively, have to offer their readers.
In a deeply textual analysis of concepts like godly rule, consent, participation, and equity, Hall illustrates how the late Jacobeans’ dialectical understanding of both the Anglican Church and the civic commonwealth was transformed. Instead of using democracy, liberty, and republicanism (argot taken explicitly from the tradition of Enlightenment political philosophy), Hall shows how the rightful powers of everyone were expanded through property exchange, the circulation of petitions, and the use of protest.
Understanding and fully appreciating Hall’s argument means having to come to terms with the differing ways in which words have been used over the centuries. His discussion of “equity” is particularly illustrative of this point. Rough synonyms for equity were impartiality, fairness, and justice, but the idea of applying it in the same way to everyone - *our* conception of true equality – was far removed from the Puritan mind because people were not equal (which again, is not to argue that some were necessarily inferior to others).
Taken in sum, Hall’s arguments examine how church governance and membership, land distribution and taxation, and the reformation of English legal codes were all used to create not only a godly society, but also to instantiate the ideas of harmony and equity. While it might take some convincing to equate the ideas of equity and liberty with the common knowledge that has been handed down about the Puritans for generations, Hall believes that they Puritans really were driven by social reform (and hence the title of the book). Their migration to the New World removed them from the entrenched institutions and the suffocating power of elite that was over lorded over their heads and opened up new vistas and possibilities.
The changes charted in this book are far from extreme, and it is to Hall’s credit that he never gets hyperbolic, or tries to rewrite John Winthrop as a prototype of a Madison or Monroe. And while the book isn’t directed at scholars, there is a sense that one could more easily appreciate it if they were at least familiar in passing with the work of scholars who have done similar work, especially the estimable Perry Miller; my experience with his “Errand Into the Wilderness” was especially helpful when trying to distill the big takeaways from the book. Notwithstanding Hall’s last chapter, in which he tries to draw lessons from the seventeenth century and compare them to those in the twenty-first with no sense historical irony, this book is a sturdy addition to the dialogue of transatlantic ideas that, with each passing generation, help us discover what it meant to be a Puritan in the past, as well as the values and norms that are tied up with the loaded idea of what it means to be “American” today.
In a deeply textual analysis of concepts like godly rule, consent, participation, and equity, Hall illustrates how the late Jacobeans’ dialectical understanding of both the Anglican Church and the civic commonwealth was transformed. Instead of using democracy, liberty, and republicanism (argot taken explicitly from the tradition of Enlightenment political philosophy), Hall shows how the rightful powers of everyone were expanded through property exchange, the circulation of petitions, and the use of protest.
Understanding and fully appreciating Hall’s argument means having to come to terms with the differing ways in which words have been used over the centuries. His discussion of “equity” is particularly illustrative of this point. Rough synonyms for equity were impartiality, fairness, and justice, but the idea of applying it in the same way to everyone - *our* conception of true equality – was far removed from the Puritan mind because people were not equal (which again, is not to argue that some were necessarily inferior to others).
Taken in sum, Hall’s arguments examine how church governance and membership, land distribution and taxation, and the reformation of English legal codes were all used to create not only a godly society, but also to instantiate the ideas of harmony and equity. While it might take some convincing to equate the ideas of equity and liberty with the common knowledge that has been handed down about the Puritans for generations, Hall believes that they Puritans really were driven by social reform (and hence the title of the book). Their migration to the New World removed them from the entrenched institutions and the suffocating power of elite that was over lorded over their heads and opened up new vistas and possibilities.
The changes charted in this book are far from extreme, and it is to Hall’s credit that he never gets hyperbolic, or tries to rewrite John Winthrop as a prototype of a Madison or Monroe. And while the book isn’t directed at scholars, there is a sense that one could more easily appreciate it if they were at least familiar in passing with the work of scholars who have done similar work, especially the estimable Perry Miller; my experience with his “Errand Into the Wilderness” was especially helpful when trying to distill the big takeaways from the book. Notwithstanding Hall’s last chapter, in which he tries to draw lessons from the seventeenth century and compare them to those in the twenty-first with no sense historical irony, this book is a sturdy addition to the dialogue of transatlantic ideas that, with each passing generation, help us discover what it meant to be a Puritan in the past, as well as the values and norms that are tied up with the loaded idea of what it means to be “American” today.
October 23, 2012
Liked it. I wasn't completely enthralled the whole time, but Hall has an interesting argument here. Basically he is saying that the Puritans of early New England were very conservative by our standards but they were really not the excessively theocratic authoritarian controlling prigs that we tend to accuse them of being. To Hall, they were the "most advanced reformers of the Anglo-Colonial world." They instituted reforms in Massachusetts and Connecticut and Rhode Island that people talked about instituting in England but never managed to implement. Of course, part of this was because towns were spread out and it was hard to exercise control over them, and they had a lot of land to give away so local government ended up pretty democratic pretty fast. But just because it was all wrapped up in conditions on the ground doesn't mean the Puritans weren't reformers.
I was getting a little bored with the book until Hall caught my attention again in the last chapter, which is a case study of sorts of Cambridge, Mass. That was a little more particular and, I thought, more interesting.
I was getting a little bored with the book until Hall caught my attention again in the last chapter, which is a case study of sorts of Cambridge, Mass. That was a little more particular and, I thought, more interesting.
June 29, 2012
Hall's work here is not as broad or as easily accessible as the magisterial World of Wonders, but it is a wonderful book in and of itself. Denying that the Puritans were authoritarian theocrats or 17th century liberal democrats, he instead argues that in their church order, their legal system, their local and colonial governments, they created a widely participatory government and society that sought to limit the exercise of authoritarian power. The Puritans could create a truly revolutionary society because they began entirely anew in a way that not even the Civil War could accomplish in English society. Well-argued from primary and secondary sources (both in New England and England) it is also a clear read.
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September 3, 2012Hall carefully debunks the idea that the Puritans were religious authoritarians who opposed liberty in the new world and oppressed those who differed from their theology. In doing so, Hall demonstrates that the liberal idea of freedom that dominates contemporary culture is not the only possible conception of freedom. The Puritans did not understand authority and liberty as opposites. Rather, they are interrelated and mutually checked by recognized "obligation and limits."
October 2, 2020
I arrived at this book after reading Marilynne Robinson's What Are We Doing Here?. In her speeches and essays, Robinson consistently contends that Calvinists and Puritans deserve a new hearing in the twenty-first century as they, their theology, and their ideas have been thoroughly misrepresented over the last four hundred years. After all, H.L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as "[t]he haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
Mencken's thesis was the one presented to me in my history classes. In my junior-year APUSH class, we had a memorable "Puritan Day," where our history teacher had us dress up in bland black or grey garb, forced us to memorize Bible (or other religious text) verses, and was uncompromisingly and unreasonably harsh. Puritan became synonymous with authoritarian, fundamentalist, and superstitious. This perspective was the one I came to accept and internalized as received wisdom from on high.
Things began to change a few years later. In college, I was introduced to the writings and teachings of Jonathan Edwards and other Puritan writers. To be sure, the Puritans were exacting people who held to high standards for morality and living. At the same time, as Edwards demonstrated, they were capable (and indeed prone) to startlingly beautiful meditations on the nature of reality and aesthetics. For example, Edwards writes that God is constantly involved in the intimate act of creation such that “[t]he image constantly renewed, by new successive rays, is no more numerically the same, than if it were by some artist put on anew with a pencil, and the colors constantly vanishing as fast as put on. . . . The image that exists this moment, is not at all derived from the image which existed the last preceding moment.”
So it's fair to say that I came to A Reforming People hoping to gain further insights into Puritanism and, more precisely, who was correct: my high school APUSH teacher/HL Mencken or Marilynne Robinson.
I'm siding with Robinson (but I'm also biased, so whatever). Hall painstakingly argues that New England Puritanism, contrary to modern historians, had a more "liberal" and pragmatic side when it came to political governance and social ethics. Specifically, the 1641 Massachusetts Charter of Liberties was an astonishingly "liberal" document. First, it renounced the law of primogeniture, whereby the eldest son would inherit the entire estate and instead apportioned inheritances such that the eldest son would receive double what the other children would, but also permitted daughters to inherit property. Second, it drastically reduced the number of capital crimes from what was then prevailing in England. For example, stealing was a capital punishment in England at the time, but in New England, the punishment was restitution. Furthermore, the Puritans only permitted capital punishments upon the testimony of 2-3 witnesses, and even then, for many crimes such as adultery, capital punishments were rarely or never carried out even upon a finding of guilt. Finally, many congregations released congregants from compulsory tithing (which was required in the Church of England) and specifically set aside donations and land grants to impoverished members of their communities. To the Puritans, such practices were mandated by Scripture and its commands for charity, love, and equity.
To be fair, this is not to say that the Puritans would have recognized or accepted modern American invocations of liberty or that we would necessarily have felt at home in 17th century New England. The Puritan colonists' project was a political one, but more fundamentally, it was a religious one--to inaugurate the Kingdom of God and permit true practice of purified religion, and specifically their Congregational, Reformed practice of Protestantism. But at the same time, I think there's much to learn from the Puritans' attempt to create a beautiful and harmonious society and that we should perhaps recognize that we have inherited much good from New England Puritans.
Hall perhaps put it best at the end of the book: Seventeenth century New England "becomes a place where ever-present greed and self-interest were mediated and sometimes held in check by ethical values and social practices. As well, it was a place where the figure of the saint became blurred and several versions of status, participation, and community met and coexisted: saints and strangers, 'full' church members and those who entered via baptism, the core group that came [initially] but also those who arrived without this affiliation, outliers and those with house lots in the historic center, the better-off and the people who needed economic assistance, freeman and nonfreemen, women and men, town and gown, officers of the church and officers of the town, all of them wanting fairness and equity, though not always able to live up to these rules. Would that the workings of capitalism and the diminished form of democracy in twenty-first-century America gave us as much."
Mencken's thesis was the one presented to me in my history classes. In my junior-year APUSH class, we had a memorable "Puritan Day," where our history teacher had us dress up in bland black or grey garb, forced us to memorize Bible (or other religious text) verses, and was uncompromisingly and unreasonably harsh. Puritan became synonymous with authoritarian, fundamentalist, and superstitious. This perspective was the one I came to accept and internalized as received wisdom from on high.
Things began to change a few years later. In college, I was introduced to the writings and teachings of Jonathan Edwards and other Puritan writers. To be sure, the Puritans were exacting people who held to high standards for morality and living. At the same time, as Edwards demonstrated, they were capable (and indeed prone) to startlingly beautiful meditations on the nature of reality and aesthetics. For example, Edwards writes that God is constantly involved in the intimate act of creation such that “[t]he image constantly renewed, by new successive rays, is no more numerically the same, than if it were by some artist put on anew with a pencil, and the colors constantly vanishing as fast as put on. . . . The image that exists this moment, is not at all derived from the image which existed the last preceding moment.”
So it's fair to say that I came to A Reforming People hoping to gain further insights into Puritanism and, more precisely, who was correct: my high school APUSH teacher/HL Mencken or Marilynne Robinson.
I'm siding with Robinson (but I'm also biased, so whatever). Hall painstakingly argues that New England Puritanism, contrary to modern historians, had a more "liberal" and pragmatic side when it came to political governance and social ethics. Specifically, the 1641 Massachusetts Charter of Liberties was an astonishingly "liberal" document. First, it renounced the law of primogeniture, whereby the eldest son would inherit the entire estate and instead apportioned inheritances such that the eldest son would receive double what the other children would, but also permitted daughters to inherit property. Second, it drastically reduced the number of capital crimes from what was then prevailing in England. For example, stealing was a capital punishment in England at the time, but in New England, the punishment was restitution. Furthermore, the Puritans only permitted capital punishments upon the testimony of 2-3 witnesses, and even then, for many crimes such as adultery, capital punishments were rarely or never carried out even upon a finding of guilt. Finally, many congregations released congregants from compulsory tithing (which was required in the Church of England) and specifically set aside donations and land grants to impoverished members of their communities. To the Puritans, such practices were mandated by Scripture and its commands for charity, love, and equity.
To be fair, this is not to say that the Puritans would have recognized or accepted modern American invocations of liberty or that we would necessarily have felt at home in 17th century New England. The Puritan colonists' project was a political one, but more fundamentally, it was a religious one--to inaugurate the Kingdom of God and permit true practice of purified religion, and specifically their Congregational, Reformed practice of Protestantism. But at the same time, I think there's much to learn from the Puritans' attempt to create a beautiful and harmonious society and that we should perhaps recognize that we have inherited much good from New England Puritans.
Hall perhaps put it best at the end of the book: Seventeenth century New England "becomes a place where ever-present greed and self-interest were mediated and sometimes held in check by ethical values and social practices. As well, it was a place where the figure of the saint became blurred and several versions of status, participation, and community met and coexisted: saints and strangers, 'full' church members and those who entered via baptism, the core group that came [initially] but also those who arrived without this affiliation, outliers and those with house lots in the historic center, the better-off and the people who needed economic assistance, freeman and nonfreemen, women and men, town and gown, officers of the church and officers of the town, all of them wanting fairness and equity, though not always able to live up to these rules. Would that the workings of capitalism and the diminished form of democracy in twenty-first-century America gave us as much."
December 17, 2017
I really enjoyed reading this book. It contains a careful look at how the New England Puritans transformed public life by implementing the biblical teachings, reforms, and ethic they had developed in their preaching and teaching. It was a good book on a historical level, giving a better understanding of our American roots and the development of our society, as well as on an applied theology level, giving an example of a society that took seriously the imperative to submit itself to Christ the King and His revelation, the Bible. Rather than resulting in a cruel and authoritative oligarchy (as some would portray it), Puritan society in New England fostered community participation and checks on any potentially "arbitrary" government power. The details of their reforms and practices as they were hammered out in the new world is quite interesting and inspiring.
March 5, 2019
This is a worthwhile read that reexamines the myth of the early New England colonies as puritanical theocracies. It's not popular history, but it's still accessible. Having not personally read much about this era in recent years, this was an interesting volume to re-engage this period of American history. I would love to read an analysis that builds on this work to examine how the common cultural perception of early New England has come about to how it is commonly understood (or misunderstood) today.
November 19, 2021
This book provides a fascinating angle on the foundational ideas that formed the political culture of the US. In some ways, Hall provides the historicity that Max Weber's theories required, expanding on the political repercussions of the religious beliefs held by many of the early immigrants.
His tone is engaging and avoids the pitfalls of overly academic language, while still presenting a glimpse of history in a well-researched manner.
His tone is engaging and avoids the pitfalls of overly academic language, while still presenting a glimpse of history in a well-researched manner.
April 24, 2025
An excellent overview of Puritan political thought in the New England colonies, especially focusing on Massachusetts.
August 23, 2024
How they set up society and government in New England -- colonial times, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut.
Things like the tension between popular and arbitrary power -- democratic and elite, in modern terms, but at the time, respect for the elite was much more influential. Dread of disorder put a lot of limits on such things as petitions. Still they were implementing much of what the Levelers wanted, far more than they achieved in England.
Division of land and questions of taxes were fierce issues, especially given the conflict between wanting to choose good residents for the town and the advantages of a free market in land. The original, literally apocalyptic attempts to create church of visible saints and put them in power. The enormous controversies over whether the churches were excluding too many good Christians, or including hypocrites, and what the standards should be. Questions of equity. A particular discussion of how they played out in Cambridge.
Things like the tension between popular and arbitrary power -- democratic and elite, in modern terms, but at the time, respect for the elite was much more influential. Dread of disorder put a lot of limits on such things as petitions. Still they were implementing much of what the Levelers wanted, far more than they achieved in England.
Division of land and questions of taxes were fierce issues, especially given the conflict between wanting to choose good residents for the town and the advantages of a free market in land. The original, literally apocalyptic attempts to create church of visible saints and put them in power. The enormous controversies over whether the churches were excluding too many good Christians, or including hypocrites, and what the standards should be. Questions of equity. A particular discussion of how they played out in Cambridge.
August 26, 2012
Not the most accessible monograph, David Hall nevertheless clearly achieves his aim in convincing the reader that contrary to popular belief (propagated in part by authors of fiction in the 19th and 20th centuries), the Puritans were not at all authoritarian -- in fact, their civil government and religious institutions were extremely participatory. They accomplished much of the reform only dreamed of in contemporary England, and in examining their society, we need to look at it through a contemporary rather than modern context.
June 13, 2015
An excellent book!
March 8, 2017
David Hall's book teaches us despite whatever present idea we have about Puritans and their lifestyle, they were not quite the authoritarian wet blankets that stereotyping has made them out to be.
November 2, 2016
Excellent
Loved the book. A close look at the political, social and religious world of the early New Englanders. Special focus on Cambridge and Thomas Shepard.
Loved the book. A close look at the political, social and religious world of the early New Englanders. Special focus on Cambridge and Thomas Shepard.
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