When God Had No Competition
New Insights into the Puritans' Pulpit Culture
Imagine a literate society in which there are no newspapers, magazines or even mail - in which the only regular medium of public information is the sermon, delivered twice on Sundays and often during the week as well, to congregations assembled on hard wooden benches in draughty meeting-houses. Imagine that, and you have entered the world of Colonial New England where, according to Yale historian Harry S. Stout, the average citizen in a lifetime heard more than 7,000 sermons requiring some 15,000 hours of concentrated attention.
In his important new book, 'The New England Soul' (398 pages. Oxford University Press. $29.95), Stout reconstructs the aural culture of Puritan America as a unique moment in American history. The sermon was not simply a homily to be endured but a social sacrament in which the flesh of everyday experience was ritually transformed by preachers into the spoken word of God.
Nine years in the making, Stout's book draws on fresh evidence: more than 2,000 manuscripts and hand-written sermon notes that Colonial preachers carried into the pulpits on Sunday mornings. What this material reveals is the unprecedented reach of the pulpit in Puritan New England and - by inference - why sermons have never been so powerful since the American Revolution.
Although the Puritans read the Bible in private, their ministers insisted that only during the Sunday sermon could they be certain of receiving the pure Word of God and of being personally transformed by the Holy Spirit. Born-again though they may have been, the faithful were constantly warned from the pulpit to take no credit for their salvation - or for their good works. Still, they were urged to do good and obey God's laws, lest the Lord abandon His people. Caught in this spiritual paradox, the Puritans relied on their preachers as experts in the anatomy of the soul - and on the Sabbath sermon as the moment when the entire community gathered, says Stout, "to hear God speak."
Work ceased: Except for quarterly town meetings, sermons provided the only occasions when the entire community gathered. And they accompanied every public event: election days, thanksgiving days, funerals and military exercises. Whenever preachers had something to say, they would announce a fast day: all work ceased while the entire community assembled, often for as long as two hours at a stretch, to be reminded of their unique corporate identity as God's "New Israel" and of their obligation to maintain a society worthy of His covenant.
Neither richer nor poorer than their mostly rural flocks, the Puritan preachers were usually the village's only intellectuals. The pastor's study housed the community's only books besides the Bible, and when Harvard and Yale were founded it was to supply the colony with native-trained clergy. Whatever else he did, the Puritan minister understood that the sermon came first. His week-nights were devoted to self-scrutiny, sometimes on his knees, Bible study and preparation of notes. On Saturday he would, as Increase Mather recorded in his diary, "imprint the sermon in my memory" so that on Sunday God could speak freely through him. Unlike contemporary preachers, Puritan divines rarely used the word "I" in their sermons. After all, they too were sinners in the hands of an angry God.
Heavy lids: The first generation of Puritans preached to rapt audiences; there was, in any case, no other game in town. By the end of the 17th century, however, some New England preachers encountered heavy-lidded indifference in the pews. Timothy Edwards, father of the greatest Puritan divine, Jonathan Edwards, complained of listeners who "sinfully yielded to a drowsy sleepy frame in the time of Divine worship." William Brattle implored his congregation to "shew forth [your] love to Christ's Ambassadors" by not "carping at them." But carping was the layman's prerogative, and many were skilled critics. Unlike modern congregations, Stout observes, the Puritans regarded the listeners in the pew as God's "watchmen" who were expected to analyse sermons and correct any preacher who ventured novel interpretations of Scripture.
In Stout's retelling, the first blow against New England's pulpit centred culture came during 'The Great Awakening' (1740-1743) when George Whitefield, America's first mass evangelist, took the sermon into the streets and, preaching without notes, railed against the "head knowledge" of the churches' Harvard-trained clergy. Henceforth, in America, Protestant laity would be periodically subjected to an aural tug for souls between itinerant preachers gifted in dramatic delivery and the more subdued admonishments of educated parish clergy.
After the American Revolution, Stout observes, new denominations arose "whose only acknowledged authority was each individual's untutored reading of the Bible." Preachers continued to preach, of course, but never again would their words ring out with the authority of the Puritans' shared convictions. And now? Radio and television have created a new Babel of aurality in which celebrity evangelists compete for audiences and always shout "I". Sunday sermons survive, of course, but as brief homilies for the inattentive, delivered mostly by preachers anxious to please. Stout's New England, by contrast, recalls a less distracted age when the preacher could presuppose the sort of cultural stillness without which the Word cannot be heard.
by Kenneth L. Woodward
Source: 'Newsweek', November 3rd, 1986
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