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Program and Workshop Schedule
Brown Bag Lunch: Rebecca Kellogg
06/19/20131704 Deerfield Captive to Congregational Missionary Interpreter for the Mohawks
Eight-year-old Rebecca Kellogg was one of the 112 English colonists captured by French/Canadian/Iroquois forces in 1704 in Deerfield, Massachusetts. She was adopted into the Mohawk community of Kahnawake on the St. Lawrence River. Rebecca married a Mohawk man and raised children, but then, quite surprisingly, she came back to British territory. She eventually became an interpreter to the Mohawk for the famous Jonathan Edwards when he preached in Stockbridge to Mohegan and Mohawk Christians. She then translated for a young Gideon Hawley as he attempted to set up his first mission in Mohawk country. In Edwards's letters and Hawley's diary, we meet a woman who was loyal, funny, strong, kind, and stubborn. How Edwards and Hawley wrote about Rebecca delightfully challenges assumptions we might have about Indian captivity, mission work, and women in the eighteenth-century backwoods.
Joy A. J. Howard is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia where she teaches early American literature courses and introductory classes. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University and wrote a dissertation exploring how colonial writers altered the long-standing discourse of spirit possession stories. She's interested in colonial writings where religion intersects with constructions of the self and representations of the body. Her recent studies on Jonathan Edwards's Indian sermons in Religion in the Age of Enlightenment have led her to her work on Rebecca Kellogg because she translated for Edwards in Indian country. Some of this work will appear as "Rebecca Kellogg Ashley: Negotiating Identity on the Early American Borderlands, 1704-1757" in Women in Early America, edited by Tom Foster, under contract with New York University Press.
Wednesday, June 19th
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Program begins promptly at noon.
Brown Bag Lunch: Congregationalism and Christian Science
07/18/2013Practice, Polity, Profession
If you have ever wanted to know more about either of these churches and their sometimes surprising historical connections, this talk is for you!
The founder of the Christian Science church, Mary Baker Eddy, was a Congregational church member for almost forty years, from 1838 to 1875. She spent half of her adult life as a Congregationalist. She even stayed a member for a decade after the event she came to call her "discovery" of Christian Science in 1866. She was a member the entire time she wrote the first edition of her book Science and Health, which she claimed explained the principles behind Jesus's healings.
Eddy founded her own church in 1879. Her Church of Christ, Scientist, inherited many legacies from the Congregational church that show up in surprising ways. This talk focuses on those. After sketching Eddy's biography and historiography, including the many cultural trends with which she interacted, Dr. Voorhees will discuss precedents, parallels, and problems that have surfaced in her comparison of Christian Science and Congregational organization, rule-making, rhetoric, and assumptions about faith and life.
Dr. Voorhees holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she specialized in American religious history. She holds the 2013-2014 ACA-Athenaeum Fellowship for joint study in both collections. Her research supports a book she is writing on Eddy and authorship at the intersection of American religious history, print culture, and women's history. Her most recent peer-reviewed articles appear in the journal Church History and in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, from which she received the 2012 Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award. She has received several fellowships and served as a manuscript referee for the Harvard Theological Review. She is currently on the graduate faculty of the White Mountains Institute at Plymouth State University.
Thursday, July 18th
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Program begins promptly at noon.
Free.
Registration opens soon.
Brown Bag Lunch: The Tale of Two Bostons and the Rise of the Puritan Path
08/21/2013
This summer, the much anticipated Puritan Path will be unveiled in the "other" Boston, that is, the U.K. town after which Boston, Massachusetts is named. Puritan men and women sailed from Boston in Lincolnshire in 1630 and founded the American city of the same name, formally dubbing it Boston on September 7th of that year. Twelve of the founders and their spiritual leader, John Cotton, are remembered with thirteen stones forming a path at St. Botolph's Church, whose 272-foot tower is affectionately referred to as "The Stump" (pictured).
Wilfred Holton, President of The Partnership of the Historic Bostons (based in Boston, MA) and Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Northeastern University, will tell the story of how the idea for the Puritan Path was conceived and developed over the past five years. The Partnership was instrumental in the progress of the Puritan Path, and Professor Holton will provide an insider's perspective on the project and on the festive opening ceremony taking place in July.
Join us to learn more about the Path, 700-year-old St. Botolph's Church, and their historic connection to Boston, MA!
Wednesday, August 21st
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Program begins promptly at noon.
Free.
Registration opens soon.
Year-long Activities
Library Tour
We offer tours of our stacks and archive, which are otherwise closed to the public. If you're going to be in town, come on by and let us show you around. Join us for an introductory tour of the library, its history and services. Reservations are appreciated, but walk-ins are always welcome. Please contact Claudette Newhall by email or call 617-523-0470 ext. 229 to arrange the date and time for your visit. No charge.
Congregational Boston Walking Tour
Boston is a city full of history. If you're interested in the religious parts in particular, then this tour is for you. Explore the downtown area's rich and complex past on your own or guided by our resident historian. For details, take a look at our dedicated tour page.
Registering for Events
Advance Event Registration
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Advance registration is required for all events and is open until the start of the event unless otherwise stated. For additional information or help registering, contact us by phone at (617) 523-0470 ext. 230 or send an email to the Administrative Assistant.
Registration Fees
To pay online, click on the PayPal button at the upper right of this page. In PayPal please use the "Purpose" field to indicate the title of the class you are registering for.
To pay by mail, make checks payable to the Congregational Library and send it to us at: 14 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108.