Amanda Porterfield

Women's Attraction to Puritanism

In 1566 when the Puritan ministers John Gough and John Philpot were suspended from their pulpits and banished from London for their refusal to wear the white outer robe, or surplice, marking their special holiness as priests of the church, a crowd of more than two hundred women gathered at London Bridge to cheer them on as they left the city. As Gough and Philpot crossed the bridge, the women pressed bags of food and bottles of drink on them, all the while “animating them most earnestly to stand fast in the same their doctrine.” That same year, when John Bartlett was also ordered to step down from his pulpit in London for refusing to wear the surplice, sixty women assembled at the home of his bishop to protest the suspension. Such demonstrations of womens support for Puritan ministers were not isolated events. As the historian of Elizabethan Puritanism Patrick Collinson asserted, “it was the women of London who occupied the front line in defence of their preachers, and with a sense of emotional engagement hardly exceeded by the suffragettes of three and a half centuries later.”

Does American Religion Have a Center

Undoubtedly, there are many centers to American religion-many topoi around which the wide-ranging multitude of historical developments associated with American religion might be seen to coalesce. Among the several that spring to mind-commitment to family, gender negotiation, concern for religious experience, freedom, conscience, millennial eschatology, respect for the Bible, social reform, desire for salvation (and there must be numerous others beyond my ken)-I see the myth of the Puritans as a good candidate for premier topos. In recommending it as a central category for organizing multiple forms and dimensions of American religion, I do not mean to draw attention to the Puritans in the exactitude of their historical

Leaving Providence Behind

The first issue of the journal Church History appeared in 1932—seventy-nine years ago—the year William Warren Sweet was president of the American Society of Church History. It was a time of considerable pain and social stress in many parts of the world. Perhaps in response to this turmoil, the inaugural issue conveyed a deep-seated optimism about the future. A bracing faith in the providential course of history characterized the three essays in that first issue and the authors conveyed that faith with erudition, narrative flair, and sweeping knowledge of Christian history. Few authors today exert such broad command of events in the larger history of Christianity, or display such facility with a wide range of primary documents, and few write with such ebullience. Such may be the price of leaving behind a world where providence is clearly in sight.

Native American Shamanism and the American Mind-Cure Movement: A Comparative Study of Religious Healing

Both Native American shamans and mind-cure practitioners dispel disease by visualizing it in symbolic form and enable recovery by invoking symbols of well-being. This paper shows how comparative study of shamanism and mind-cure furthers understanding of the techniques of symbolic healing characteristic of each religious tradition. Mind-cure techniques of hypnotic suggestion illumine the Native American idea that prayers, songs, and stories are spiritual forces. Conversely, the performing arts practiced by Native American shamans contribute to further understanding of the effective healing techniques practiced by Mary Baker Eddy and her teacher, Phineas P. Quimby. The paper also comments on the implications of studying particular forms of Christian theology and practice, such as the mind-cure movement, in light of shamanism.

Healing in the History of Christianity presidential address, January 2002 American Society of Church History

In 1866, after a fall on the ice left her in despair of ever being able to walk again, Mary Baker Patterson (later Mary Baker Eddy) picked up her Bible and began reading stories of the healings performed by Jesus. As she lay in bed, picturing Jesus commanding the lame to rise and demons to be gone, her own sense of the power of Divine Love became so strong that she stood up and walked, knowing that she was completely healed. Free from the weakness, pain, and fear that had plagued her life for decades, Eddy became a forceful and successful leader, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist who devoted the rest of her life to teaching others to know the healing power of Divine Love.

Algonquian Shamans and Puritan Saints

This paper compares the shamanism of seventeenth-century Indians in southern New England with the religion of the New England Puritans. The paper identifies shamanic elements within Puritan religion, focusing particular attention on the visionary experiences and social control the Puritans gained through praying, preaching, reading, and writing. Although the literacy and moralism essential to Puritan religion were absent in seventeenth-century Algonquian shamanism, the powers of Puritan literacy and moralism can be understood in shamanic terms.