The Protestant Interest

New England After Puritanism

Thomas S. Kidd

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9780300128406
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

During the early eighteenth century, colonial New England witnessed the end of Puritanism and the emergence of a revivalist religious movement that culminated in the evangelical awakenings of the 1740s. This engrossing book explores the religious history of New England during the period and offers new reasons for this change in cultural identity.

After England’s Glorious Revolution, says Thomas Kidd, New Englanders abandoned their previous hostility toward Britain, viewing it as the chosen leader in the Protestant fight against world Catholicism. They also imagined themselves part of an international Protestant community and replaced their Puritan beliefs with a revival-centered pan-Protestantism. Kidd discusses the rise of “the Protestant interest” and provides a compelling argument about the origins of both eighteenth-century revivalism and the global evangelical movement.

 

Thomas S. Kidd is assistant professor of history at Baylor University.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One: ‘‘Fidelity to Christ and to the Protestant Succession’’ Benjamin Colman and the Protestant Interest
• Chapter Two: ‘‘Let Hell and Rome Do Their Worst’’ World News, the Catholic Threat, and International Protestantism
• Chapter Three: Protestants, Popery, and Prognostications New England Almanacs
• Chapter Four: ‘‘The Devil and Father Rallee’’ Narrating Father Rale’s War
• Chapter Five: ‘‘The Madness of the Jacobite Party’’ Imagining a High-Church Jacobite Threat
• Chapter Six: ‘‘The Dawning of that Sabbath of Rest Promised to the People of God’’ Eschatology and Identity
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Index