The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570-1700

by Stephen Foster

In this wide-ranging study Stephen Foster explores Puritanism in England and America from its roots in the Elizabethan era to the end of the seventeenth century. Focusing on Puritanism as a cultural and political phenomenon as well as a religious movement, Foster addresses parallel developments on both sides of the Atlantic and firmly embeds New England Puritanism within its English context. He provides not only an elaborate critque of current interpretations of Puritan ideology but also an original and insightful portrayal of its dynamism. According to Foster, Puritanism represented a loose and incomplete alliance of progressive Protestants, lay and clerical, aristocratic and humble, who never decided whether they were the vanguard or the remnant. Indeed, in Foster's analysis, changes in New England Puritanism after the first decades of settlement did not indicate secularization and decline but instead were part of a pattern of change, conflict, and accomodation that had begun in England. He views the Puritans' own claims of declension as partisan propositions in an internal controversy as old as the Puritan movement itself. The result of these stresses and adaptations, he argues, was continued vitality in American Puritanism during the second half of the seventeenth century. Foster draws insights from a broad range of souces in England and America, including sermons, diaries, spiritual autobiographies, and colony, town, and court records. Moreover, his presentation of the history of the English and American Puritan movements in tandem brings out the fatal flaws of the former as well as the modest but essential strengths of the latter.

Genres: History

416 pages, Paperback

First published April 23, 1991

Reviews

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Foster writes with dynamic prose about exceedingly complex traditions of Puritan theology and historians' tangled debates. The book is dense not because of Foster's writing, but rather because there are so many intellectual strands to juggle here. Basically, Foster criticizes the narrative in which Puritan history began with the first settlements in MA, reached a high point of Protestant culture, and declined into nonexistence, but left a legacy upon America overall. Foster instead says we must connect the Puritans in America to Puritans back in England. From this perspective, the story of Pilgrims, Puritans, and other Calvinist settlers begins in 1572, with the first major declaration of British Puritanism. By connecting the thirteen colonies to England, we see — instead of a story of the American Puritans' decline — a story of British Puritanism receiving a long afterlife in America. Oliver Cromwell's Puritan government ended in 1660, but American Puritanism continued, with fairly similar principles, until 1740 (the start of the Great Awakening). Even after that point, Congregationalist churches were the next incarnation of Puritan theology, although they added the more ecstatic style of new evangelical churches.