Beacon Street Blog

In June, I spent the longest day of the year in Salt Lake City. More specifically I passed all those daylight hours in the bowels of a hotel, in and out of a conference I was attending, trying to look purposeful while searching for food or a way to fill a few hours between sessions. The view of the mountains from my hotel room window was wonderful, changing color and outline over the course of the day from sunrise to sunset, but other than that the hotel could have been anywhere. I could have been down the street for all I knew.

In other ways, though, Salt Lake City was a revelation. As a historian of American religion, I always get a thrill experiencing Big Places up close, following the same horizon line that Brigham Young might have contemplated, imagining what the valley looked like to people bringing their belongings on pushcarts across the Great Plains. I also love to visit other people's archives, and thanks to a generous and hospitable colleague, I was treated to a backstage tour of the LDS holdings. The tour was all that I imagined and more: not just the collection, lovingly and carefully arranged and preserved, or the climate control, which took up two whole floors and looked like the engine room of the starship Enterprise. What stuck with me, and what I ended up quietly envying, was the obvious, deeply-rooted love for history.

[]Being a Latter Day Saint is a full-time occupation, and to an outsider it can seem like a long list of volunteer opportunities and obligations. The shy young maidens who led me on a tour of Brigham Young's house started off by telling me that they were missionaries, one from Salt Lake and the other from South Africa. The same was true of the flocks of young men in short-sleeved white shirts and black ties, hurrying around the Temple Square. Outside of the tourists like me, probably most of the people I saw were serving as unpaid volunteers.

They do it because of history, as my historian friend explained. I'm certainly no expert on LDS doctrine, but the more he talked I could understand the impact of Mormonism as a faith built on stories — of Joseph Smith's revelations in upstate New York, the prehistory of North America and the epic clash between the Nephites and Lamanites, and the violent persecution that drove the Saints from Ohio and Missouri across the Plains to Utah. But the story is even bigger than that. Those early saints believed they were re-enacting biblical history; they were latter-day Israelites escaping from Egypt and journeying to Canaan, the land of milk and honey. In other words, being a Mormon isn't simply agreeing to a set of doctrines or going on a church mission, it's living into a story.

The opening chapter in a recent book on Mormonism is entitled "Mormon Envy", an eye-catching phrase but also a telling one. Quite honestly, all during my tour of the LDS archives I kept thinking of all the history being forgotten or discarded in Congregational churches. In that sense they're not all that much different from most American Protestants, but certainly for them the loss is pretty considerable, and worth a special thought or two.

[]Why do we so often find eighteenth-century Congregational church records stored in the pastor's closet or crammed into a cubbyhole under the organ? Why do so many of these documents turn up on eBay, destined for some private collection somewhere or, even worse, a waste basket? The problem goes beyond the people who don't know the difference between a Pilgrim and Puritan, or the surprise of some parishioners who discover that those Puritans were their spiritual ancestors. It's the quick dismissal of the past as boring or benighted, the snide comments about "how we've progressed" beyond our founders. And it's the toe-tapping pastor hoping to get on to truly important church business once we're done rooting through those closets and cubbyholes.

Where does this lack of energy come from? Did the UCC merger cut so many Congregational churches off from their history — or is the problem wider and deeper? It's certainly not just one denomination's predicament, or even an issue just affecting church people.

Lately I've been re-reading George Orwell's 1984, not for any exalted intellectual reason but because I needed to grab some reading material before a long trip on the Boston subway system. The actual year 1984 ended up a lot more prosaic than Orwell predicted, but the substance of his critique is eerily accurate. Winston Smith's job, as you'll remember, was literally re-writing history, throwing old unwanted documents down the "memory hole" next to his desk in the Ministry of Truth. At the heart of his transformation was his dawning conviction that the past was real and that refusing to forget it was the ultimate act of rebellion. Perhaps the recovery of history in Congregational and UCC churches is the awareness that history not only matters — it's a dangerous business. It's where we appeal for justice and find hope for change. It's essential and critical, and if we're not careful, it will disappear, like the yellowed clippings of yesterday's news from Winston Smith's desk, into the memory hole.

-Peggy Bendroth

image of researchers at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City courtesy of FamilySearch.org

What better way to spend the last weeks of summer than with a good book? Whether you're headed to the beach or taking refuge in air conditioning, Associate Librarian Steve Picazio has five suggestions for you summer reading list. Brush up on your Congregational history and knowledge of early New England with these summer reads, all available to borrowing members of the Congregational Library & Archives.

[]David Powers' work Damnable Heresy is a rich, fascinating look at the first book banned in Boston. It's a biography of William Pynchon, an influential landowner whose work The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption was burned on the Common in 1650 for its argument against Puritan theology.

[]Francis Bremer's new work, Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism, looks at how laypeople influenced Puritan society, where religious figures had an outsize influence on government, society, and private life. Frank will be speaking at the CLA on November 12 as part of our History Matters speaker series.

[]Colonial Comics: New England, 1620-1750 is a great pick for younger readers. It features twenty-five stories told by an eclectic mix of comic artists, authors, professors, and historians. Colonial Comics provides an inclusive history of New England's first century: Stories about women, slaves, and Native Americans appear alongside familiar stories of the Puritans' migration, and well-known characters like Cotton Mather.

[]If you're not already familiar with Cotton Mather, try The First American Evangelical by Rick Kennedy. This entertaining biography recasts Mather as a neighborhood preacher, instead of a larger-than-life religious figure, or overzealous witch hunter. Kennedy is a Mather expert, and spoke at the Library's Mather Redux program in 2013.

[]A Storm of Witchcraft is a new survey of the Salem Witch Trials. Salem State University professor Emerson Baker has synthesized the many theories about why the witch trials happened. It's great for anyone casually interested in the witch trials, or as a jumping-off point for deeper study. If you're in the Boston area, you can hear Dr. Baker speak at 14 Beacon on September 16 as part of the History Matters series.

[]Executive Director Peggy Bendroth recommends The Rainborowes: One Family's Quest to Build a New England. The book follows one of the original English families to settle at Plymouth, Massachusetts, tracing their influence through a generation in England and New England. From the father's taste for adventure, to his daughters' social ambition, to his sons' passion for democracy, this English family embodied American values. Adrian Tinniswood's new biography resurrects the all-but-forgotten clan that left its mark on England and the United States alike.

The latest addition to our New England's Hidden Histories program is the common-place book of Thomas Weld (1702-1757), a pastor in New England from 1727 until his death in 1757/8.

[]This notebook from his time at Harvard University contains notes on various subjects and topics, mostly of a religious nature. Of note is that different handwriting appears in the latter half of the book, but it is presumed that the first half is Weld's. It is unknown who else has written in this book, but sometime after 1723 the book was gifted to politician John Fairfield (1797-1847) who gifted it to his nephew, J. Wingate Thornton (1818-1878) who was attending Harvard, two inscriptions on the inner cover document these events.

Thomas Weld was born November, 1702 in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Weld graduated from Harvard University in 1723, and with his degree taught at Roxbury Latin School until he went to preach at Southborough, and the frontier. In 1735 he became the minister at the newly formed town of Upton. Difference in theology as well as rumors of an illicit relationship with Weld's landlord's daughter, Ms. Wheeler, forced Weld to leave Upton in 1744. After suing for his wages, and defamation against Ms. Wheeler, Weld became one of two ministers in Middleborough. When the other minister, Conant, was ordained in 1745, the church split with Weld remaining in Middleborough preaching to a small group of New-Lights. By 1749/50 Weld's congregation had grown tired of his ministry, and elected to rejoin the other church. After disputing the wages owed to him, Weld returned to Roxbury before going back to the frontier to preach. During the French and Indian War (1754-1763) he joined army as a chaplain before dying in 1757 or 1758.

You can learn more about the history of this collection by viewing the finding aid, or go directly to the NEHH collection page and start reading.

Now that I have your attention, here's something to think about. In spite of all the stereotyping about Puritans as repressed, angry woman-haters, we really don't know what they'd make of our world today. I'm guessing they'd be repelled as anybody at the coarseness we now take for granted, the easy vulgarities on public media and in the conversations we overhear during the course of a day. You don't have to be a religious prude, I think, to feel a sense of loss. We do know that the Puritans thought about sex a lot, and I don't mean just the daydreaming kind. They knew it was important, powerful, and needed to be everybody's concern — it had to be a community matter, not shouldered by isolated individuals.

[]I used to teach women's history and often used A Midwife's Tale, a film based on Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's book about Martha Ballard and her life in rural Maine during the late 1700s. There were a few fairly detailed childbirth scenes in the movie, which I'm sure my young students did not forget easily. I remember one in particular — Martha and the women of the town were attending an unmarried woman and, as was the practice at the time, at the height of labor asked her to name the father. This young girl did, though not with the extra adjectives one would imagine, and everyone took note. But no one was standing with a scarlet "A", getting ready to shame the couple. Naming the father was simply in everyone's interest: a man was now on record in front of the community, and it would be his responsibility, not just theirs, to support the mother and child. And witnesses were there to see that he did.

The twentieth-century descendants of the Puritans didn't have anywhere near their frankness around sins of the flesh, but they did inherit a basic understanding. The two great passions of the Congregational churches, up through the 1950s and 1960s, were ecumenism — cooperation between churches and denominations — and human rights. []They were tireless promoters of Christian unity, even at cost to themselves, and as early as the 1930s in the vanguard of civil rights, worker's rights, the rights of refugees, and the rights of farmers. The Commission for Social Action, established in 1934, was their signal achievement, an agency staffed by rebels and visionaries who would put the average mainline functionary today to shame. They recognized that religion had to be about more than my particular denomination or my personal relationship with God — people of faith had to care about the good of everybody.

And though it might seem a little outside of things for the Congregational Library & Archives to house a collection about the UCC Coalition, a post-1957 organization for gay and lesbian rights, it is historically accurate. We're not, of course, an advocacy organization and we have no political agenda. And I'm sure that there is no single Congregational opinion about the goals of the Coalition, much less the recent Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. We shouldn't expect one. But there is no brick wall separating the concerns of the present from those of the past. There is instead an internal logic, a tradition of care for the common good — one that the New England ancestors might recognize and, I think, genuinely respect.

-Peggy Bendroth

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed on Friday, July 3rd in observance of Independence Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions for the staff, please send an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Monday.

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fireworks over the U.S. fleet in Sasebo, Japan

We will be open again on Monday the 6th.

photograph of sailors, family members and Japanese citizens gathered to watch fireworks on U.S. Fleet Activities Sasebo, Japan (2005) by U.S. Navy Photographer's Mate 1st Class Paul J. Phelps

This file is a work of a sailor or employee of the U.S. Navy, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

As we stand on the brink of a monumental Supreme Court decision regarding marriage equality and mark 30 years since the explosive impact of the AIDS crisis, I took the opportunity to speak with Marnie Warner and her wife, rosi olmstead, initiators of the UCC's growing commitment to LGBT support and acceptance.

[]"I never thought we'd be married in our lifetime," exclaims Marnie Warner with the spirit of patience, joy and wonderment. For Marnie and her wife rosi the chain of events that started around their dining room table in Boston seems as vivid today as the day it began thirty years ago. Once a dream, the quest for acceptance and love of lesbians and gays and now bisexuals and transsexuals has spread through churches across the country, known today as Open and Affirming (ONA).

What was the catalyst that sparked an initiative for the passage the ONA resolution in the 1985 Synod of the United Church of Christ? rosi would say that it was about empathy. "It all started with the AIDS epidemic… People cared about people who [are] dying, people who are being discarded by others." At the time Marnie was an active member and deacon in the Church of the Covenant in Boston's Back Bay where rosi was a co-pastor. In 1984 very few people were out but their church had opened itself up, and as more members of the LGBT community got the word, it welcomed more. This brought sorrow as well as joy. Their congregation alone experienced the devastating loss of 13 members to AIDS. They asked the question "How does God accept them?" and answered by caring.

It was time to expand the work beyond the Church of the Covenant. They took their cues from the Presbyterians' More Light initiative but realized that the program needed to be tailored to the UCC culture. Confident that their cause aligned well with the UCC's tradition of social justice and its tenet that God is active in the world. On the political side, it was up to Marnie and rosi to gain acceptance on the state and national levels, and their strategy focused on UCC core beliefs; unlike today, few people were aware that "somebody they knew next door, or their niece or nephew (was gay)".

While many churches counted gay members among their congregations, non-discrimination was not enough, they were looking for acceptance. "We really wanted churches to open their doors, but we also wanted them to affirm who the people are," Marnie asserts.

Given the atmosphere in Massachusetts, it was the logical place to launch a resolution, recalled Marnie in a 2012 interview. Here a church could "put out the welcome mat and affirm lesbians and gays into the fullness of your life, whether as just a parishioner, ordination, being a deacon, whatever, the whole package." The progress was not without tense moments. At the 1984 Massachusetts Conference meeting, in what could be called Biblical one-upmanship, she describes a period of about an hour where rosi extemporaneously parried a barrage of biblical passages from delegates unsupportive of gays and lesbians by quoting other biblical texts. At the end of the day, they gained support and, with the spiritual guidance of Rev. Reuben Sheares, the resolution passed 2/3 to 1/3.

Then it was on to the 1985 Synod in Ames, Iowa, where the resolution calling for congregations to declare themselves "Open and Affirming" took place. Bishop Desmond Tutu spoke that year, as did Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, who addressed discrimination but failed to include gays and lesbians in a list of groups who suffered discrimination.

When procedural issues threatened the Open and Affirming resolution's way to the floor, it was up to Ann Day and the Coalition to shepherd it through the Synod bureaucracy to get before the delegates. There was a hearing where people told their stories. Ministers, both gay and straight, who pastored churches with gays and lesbians members, spoke out for the necessity of the resolution. In spite of promised confidentiality, a record of the session was played off-site and many of those who spoke felt that trust had been broken. But there was an unforeseen positive effect; people became aware of just how difficult it was for gays and lesbians to feel safe and true to their identity. And that swell of empathy helped turn the tide and moved the discussion forward.

rosi and Marnie paint the picture of the final vote. A key figure was Al Williams, conference minister from Massachusetts, who for the first time spoke publicly in favor with a consciousness of how people on both sides of the issue felt. Again it got down to that personal level and the need for collaborations and honest discussions. Williams's appeal was so persuasive that the question was spontaneously called from the floor and the vote was over 90% in favor of the resolution.

That was just the starting point for Ann Day and the Coalition. Ann's brilliant programmatic work gave the movement wings. She created discussion guides about the ONA process and took them directly to churches, growing grass roots support. She worked with churches and their congregations to adopt Open and Affirming covenants of their own. rosi remembers the importance of these sessions aimed at "exploring the kinds of things they had to do to love one another" from the bottom.

Today over 1200 congregations welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) members and others are in discussion to become ONA. Nearly 250,000 members of the United Church of Christ belong to ONA churches. While their progress over the last 30 years reflects shifting cultural attitudes, their work has been a catalyst for the change in society as a whole.

Marnie has been working over the last year archiving and preparing the records of the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns at the Congregational Library & Archives in preparation for this month's the UCC Synod in Cleveland where the 30th anniversary will be marked. While Marnie and rosi had planned to attend, rosi's recovery from a recent stroke will prevent them. I am happy to say that this did not impede her lively participation in this interview and I thank both of them for telling their stories.

-Cary Hewitt

We know that not everyone can make the trip to Boston to visit us in person. That's why our staff do what we can to come to you. If you're attending either of this month's denominational meetings, be sure to stop by the Congregational Library & Archives' table in the exhibitor spaces and say hello.

[]Our executive director Peggy Bendroth and digital archivist Sari Mauro will be at the NACCC Annual Meeting & Conference in Salt Lake City this coming weekend (June 19-23). Both will be leading workshops, and Sari will be manning our table and holding casual "office hours" in the lobby for individual questions about records stewardship or preservation. Their scheduled appearances are listed below, and attendees are always welcome to chat with them elsewhere. You can also find Sari on Twitter @ArchivistSariM.

Our archivist Jessica Steytler will be at the UCC General Synod in Cleveland next weekend (June 25-30) along with current and former board members Barbara Brown Zikmund and Virginia Childs. They will mostly be found in the exhibit hall and all three will be happy to chat about the work we do and answer any questions you might have. If you're looking for Jessica in particular, you can keep up to date with her whereabouts on Twitter @JessicaSteytler.

The latest addition to our New England's Hidden Histories program is a collection of papers from the Rev. John Rogers (1666-1745) of Ipswich, Massachusetts.

[]The bulk of this collection is a handful of Rogers's sermons. Unlike most sermon collections, however, we have what seem to be two different versions of each sermon on a given Bible passage. Some revisions are dated less than a month apart and composed for different audiences. The ways in which Rev. Rogers changed his text could be quite interesting for dilligent readers.

Other personal items included are a letter to Rev. and Mrs. Rogers from John Wise proposing a courtship between their children, and Rogers's unsigned will.

You can find out more about this collection by reading the finding aid, or go directly to the collection page and view the documents that interest you.

Our reading room will be closed to the public on Monday, June 1st for our board's annual meeting.

All of our online resources will be available as usual, and staff members will be in the office to answer questions over the phone or by email.

The Congregational Library and Archives will be closed on Monday, May 25th in observance of Memorial Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions for the staff, please send an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday.

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image of historical American flags courtesy of PBS.org

[]One of our board members, Norm Erlendson, has gifted us with an essay about Rev. Washington Gladden and his role in advocating for fair labor practices in 19th century America.

The old adage, "the more things change, the more they remain the same" is certainly true of the plight of the working poor and their struggle for a living wage in the present day, as well as in the Gilded Age. Then, as now, the call by workers for increased wages and benefits did not usually receive a sympathetic hearing by employers or the general public. Then as now, the power of labor was weak in comparison to the power of capital. In the 1870s and '80s the American Labor Movement began to gain momentum on a national scale around a list of demands to improve the lives of the millions of wage earning men and women across all trades and industries. Unionization was a response to cutthroat business practices which kept wages at rock bottom levels.

Read the full article.

photograph of child workers at the Washington Cotton Mills in Fries, VA (1911) by Lewis Hine, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration via Wikimedia Commons

Norumbega Harmony will be filling our reading room with twenty voices and sharing the tradition that they are keeping alive for the future. Don't forget to let us know if you'll be joining us for this free concert.

Sacred Song in Revolutionary Boston: William Billings and Oliver Holden

With names like Hatfield, Lynn, Walpole, and Woburn you would think that you'd be looking at a map of Massachusetts. Then you spot Maryland, Pennsylvania, Cortona, and Bethlehem and you are off on a trip around the world. Not always.

When these names appear on Sweet Seraphic Fire, Norumbega Harmony's 2005 album, they point to delightful short songs from early New England (often titled from the composer's hometown). The singing group's style is called Sacred Harp, and it performs works by America's earliest itinerant singing masters. Those masters' schools comprised the principle form of music education in the Republic's early days. From four-part hymns called "plain tunes" and lively "fuging tunes" with independent lines for each part, the music is complex and inventive, and world respected Norumbega Harmony know how to make them come alive.

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Stephen Marini, the singing master of Norumbega Harmony, is also the Elisabeth Luce Moore Professor of Christian Studies and Professor of American Religion and Ethics at Wellesley College. Professor Marini's research concentrates in three areas: religion in Revolutionary America, the history of sectarian religion, and the sacred arts in America.

Our hymnal collection includes several rare tune books from the 18th century, including The Easy Instructor by William Little and William Smith, which popularized the shape note muscial notation method used by many 19th-century singing masters.

Wednesday, May 13th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through Eventbrite.

Read more about Norumbega Harmony and listen to samples of their music in the Winter 2013 issue of Common-Place.

Sweet Seraphic Fire is available digitally through iTunes and New World Records.

We have some new additions to our circulating collection. They are available for borrowing by our members.

[]A City That Hath Foundations : Congregationalism in Springfield, Massachusetts, 1635-2014 by Eric Wilbra Bascom

Initially, Springfield was not "city set on a hill", but sat cheek-by-jowl beside "the Grayte River in the West," more a village laid out in a swamp. William Pynchon bought it fair and square from the local Nipmucs -- and did much to ease their distresses. Its meetinghouse stored corn and was both church and town hall, but it rang with the convictions that would give all America its work ethic and moral backbone.

Locally written histories talk a lot about buildings; this is a book about ideas. When these people went to church, what did they hear? What were their hopes; what woke them in the night; what did they pray for? What can our cities do to build, and build again, upon secure foundations?

Eric Bascom writes, preaches, teaches, and tells stories, and lives in Springfield. The author of Up Where the House Burned Down and A Funny Thing Happened o the Way to the Pulpit has drawn on his fifty years ministry in this Pioneer Valley town to look at the roots of a major phenomenon.

[]Women, Dissent and Anti-slavery in Britain and America, 1790-1865 by Elizabeth J. Clapp and Julie Roy Jeffrey

As historians have gradually come to recognize, the involvement of women was central to the anti-slavery cause in both Britain and the United States. Like their male counterparts, women abolitionists did not all speak with one voice. Among the major differences between women were their religious affiliations, an aspect of their commitment that has not been studied in detail. Yet it is clear that the desire to live out and practice their religious beliefs inspired many of the women who participated in anti-slavery activities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

This book examines the part that the traditions, practices, and beliefs of English Protestant dissent and the American Puritan and evangelical traditions played in women's anti-slavery activism. Focusing particularly on Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian and Unitarian women, the essays in this volume move from accounts of individual women's participation in the movement as printers and writers, to assessments of the negotiations and the occasional conflicts between different denominational groups and their anti-slavery impulses. Together the essays in this volume explore how the tradition of English Protestant Dissent shaped the American abolitionist movement, and the various ways in which women belonging to the different denominations on both sides of the Atlantic drew on their religious beliefs to influence the direction of their anti-slavery movements. The collection provides a nuanced understanding of why these women felt compelled to fight for the end of slavery in their respective countries.

[]Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism : College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America by J. Brent Morris

By exploring the role of Oberlin — the college and the community — in fighting against slavery and for social equality, J. Brent Morris establishes this "hotbed of abolitionism" as the core of the antislavery movement in the West and as one of the most influential reform groups in antebellum America. As the first college to admit men and women of all races, and with a faculty and community comprised of outspoken abolitionists, Oberlin supported a cadre of activist missionaries devoted to emancipation, even if that was through unconventional methods or via an abandonment of strict ideological consistency. Their philosophy was a color-blind composite of various schools of antislavery thought aimed at supporting the best hope of success. Though historians have embraced Oberlin as a potent symbol of egalitarianism, radicalism, and religious zeal, Morris is the first to portray the complete history behind this iconic antislavery symbol.

In this book, Morris shifts the focus of generations of antislavery scholarship from the East and demonstrates that the West's influence was largely responsible for a continuous infusion of radicalism that helped the movement stay true to its most progressive principles.

[]Damnable Heresy : William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston by David Powers

Misunderstandings between races, hostilities between cultures. Anxiety from living in a time of war in one's own land. Being accused of profiteering when food was scarce. Unruly residents in a remote frontier community. Charged with speaking the unspeakable and publishing the unprintable. All of this can be found in the life of one man — William Pynchon, the Puritan entrepreneur and founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1636.

Two things in particular stand out in Pynchon's pioneering life: he enjoyed extraordinary and uniquely positive relationships with Native peoples, and he wrote the first book banned — and burned — in Boston.

Now for the first time, this book provides a comprehensive account of Pynchon's story, beginning in England, through his New England adventures, to his return home. Discover the fabric of his times and the roles Pynchon played in the Puritan venture in Old England and New England.

The Congregational Library and Archives will be closed on Monday, April 20th in observance of Patriots' Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions for the staff, please send an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday.

We wish the best of luck to everyone participating in the 119th Boston Marathon.

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photo of the Lexington Minute Men relief (1948) by Bashka Paeff courtesy of user Daderot via Wikimedia Commons, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Our reading room will be closed to the public tomorrow, April 15, from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm for a meeting of our Advisory Circle friends group.

Staff will be on hand to answer questions by phone and email during that time, and all of our online resources will be available as usual.

April 15th Americans take a collective sigh and pay their fair share. But it wasn't always so.

[]"No taxation without representation" is one of the sentiments that ignited the American Revolution. So where did it come from? While the scholarship here proves to be a little shaky, many have credited Reverend Jonathan Mayhew. Known as a liberal theologian, the Martha's Vineyard native railed against tyranny from the pulpit and in print. And it was his A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers sermon in 1750 that is credited (some say by John Adams) with hatching the famous call against taxing citizens who have no legislative recourse.

Part politician, part pastor, Mayhew was asked by his congregation in 1766 to deliver his final sermon, The Snare Broken, after the repeal of the Stamp Act. Whatever the provenance of the taxation reference, one Mayhewism that historian Ola Elizabeth Winslow attested to in our Bulletin (Fall 1974) is "Kings are made by men, not God."

You can give your regards to Reverend Mayhew when you next visit the Congregational Library & Archives where his portrait hangs in our Reading Room. The likeness was painted by John Greenwood, one of the first American born portrait painters whose subjects included prominent merchants and clergy in mid-18th century Boston.

[]The Congregational Library and Archives will be closed this Friday, April 3rd, in observance of Good Friday.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions for the staff, please send an email or leave a voicemail, and we will get back to you when we return to the office next week.

We hope you have a lovely Easter weekend.

image of Springtime (ca. 1860) by Charles Jacque, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here at the CLA, we are privileged to hear our Executive Director Peggy Bendroth speak on historical topics frequently. If you would like to hear her, but can't make it to our events, we hope you can attend one of her other upcoming appearances. The next will be this coming Tuesday.

[]In the early 1880s, Mary Baker Eddy opened the Massachusetts Metaphysical College at 569 Columbus Avenue in Boston's South End. There she taught Christian Science, a new religious system she had recently founded. Only a few blocks away and a few years earlier, Boston's rapidly growing Catholic population embraced a new spiritual center, with the dedication at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Washington Street. Meanwhile the Congregational Church, descendant of Boston's Puritan founders, was reconfiguring its position in a city where it was once but no longer culturally dominant.

Please join us for an informal panel discussion with experts on Boston's religious history, to explore the cultural and spiritual dynamics of the city in the late 19th century.

The Panel includes:

• Dr. Christopher Evans (moderator), Professor of the History of Christianity and Methodist Studies at the Boston University School of Theology. Among his courses, he teaches a class on the religious history of Boston. He is the author of Histories of American Christianity: An Introduction (Baylor University Press, 2013).
   
• Dr. Margaret Bendroth (panelist), Executive Director of the Congregational Library and Archive in Boston, and author of many books, including Fundamentalists and the City: Conflict and Division in Boston's Churches, 1885-1950 (Oxford University Press, 2005).
   
• Dr. James O'Toole (panelist), Professor and Clough Millennium Chair in History at Boston College. Among his publications are The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America (Belknap Press, 2008) and Boston's Histories: Essays in Honor of Thomas H. O'Connor, co-edited with David Quigley (Northeastern University Press, 2004). Dr. O'Toole also served as Archivist, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, from 1978 to 1986.
   
• Judy Huenneke (panelist), Senior Research Archivist, The Mary Baker Eddy Library.

Tuesday, March 31st
4:00 - 5:00 pm

Christian Science Publishing House
200 Massachusetts Avenue
3rd floor conference room

This program is free and no RSVP is required. If you have further questions, please contact Jonathon Eder at ederj@mbelibrary.org or 617-450-7131.

Don't forget to let us know if you'll be joining us for this month's free event. Please note that it begins at a special time of 3:00 pm.

[]American author and historian John Putnam Demos's most recent book, The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic is another compelling recount from a long line of his investigations into early American life and practice.

As the young United States looked beyond its shores, a group of eminent Protestant ministers formed a grand scheme for gathering the rest of mankind into the "redemptive fold of Christianity and 'civilization'." Its core element was a special school for "heathen youth" drawn from their homes around the world, including the Pacific Islands, China, India, and, more and more, the native nations of North America. After graduating, the plan was that they would return to join similar projects within their native populations. For some years, the school prospered and enjoyed a wide reputation. However, when two Cherokee students courted and married local women, public resolve — and fundamental ideals — were put to a severe test. The school born with the ideal of universal "salvation" plummeted into a controversy that exposed American racial attitudes and set off a chain of events that lead to the Trail of Tears.

[]The Heathen School has been nominated for the 2014 National Book Award. Demos was previously awarded the prestigious Bancroft Award for his book Entertaining Satan and the 1995 Francis Parkman Prize for his book The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story From Early America. Other books include A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony, The Enemy Within: A Short History of Witch-hunting and Past, Present, and Personal: The Family and the Life Course in American History.

Several of Demos's books are available for borrowing to members of the Congregational Library and Archives.

Wednesday, March 25th
3:00 - 4:00 pm

Free.
Register through EventBrite.

Lemuel Haynes 1753-1833, Freed 1774

As I was reading about the remarkable Lemuel Haynes, I could have thought that his story was set in the 20th century rather than the two hundred years earlier. Abandoned by his African American father and Caucasian mother, Lemuel Haynes achieved many firsts, as a former indentured servant who rose to become a celebrated preacher and internationally popular author, he was outspoken on issues of liberty and justice and completely dedicated to his Calvinist and Federalist beliefs.

[]Primarily self-educated, he was offered a place at Dartmouth College but opted to stay in his native Connecticut to study with successors of Jonathan Edwards. He served in majority white churches in Granville, MA; Rutland, VT; and later in Granville, NY. Like many of his profession, he married one of his flock, but it was Elizabeth Babbitt who, according to one source, proposed to him in 1783. Their interracial marriage produced 10 children who went on to live productive and prominent lives.

A popular figure known for a caustic wit, Haynes was recognized by preachers, civic leaders and academics through his prolific writings and poetry. It was his preaching that affected his congregations; one of his parishioners wrote: "I never heard a sermon from my minister without gaining something new."[1]

What pastor would not like to win this praise?

-Cary Hewitt

Read more about what others say.

Find more that is available on the Congregational Library & Archives site and in our catalog.

[1] "January 1, 1837". Sketches of the Life and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes, A. M.: For Many Years Pastor of a Church in Rutland, Vt., and Late in Granville, New-York by Timothy Mather Cooley

[]Our reading room will be closed on Monday, February 16th in observance of Presidents' Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question for the staff, send an email or leave a voicemail, and we will get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday.

portrait of George Washington by Rembrandt Peale, ca. 1850, courtesy of the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, via Wikimedia Commons

[]Due to weather and the suspension of MBTA rail service, the library will be closed Tuesday, February 10th.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office.

We will keep you updated if our planned schedule changes.

We hope all of our local patrons are safe and warm.

snowflake ornament image courtesy of Petr Kratochvil via Wikimedia Commons

We are pleased to announce the availability of two new collections in our New England's Hidden Histories (NEHH) program.

The first collection comes from First Church in Newbury, Massachusetts, and is part of Series I. It contains an 1853 copy of minutes from a 1669-1670 Ecclesiastical Council called by the church to render an opinion on the church's desire to change their style of governance by dismantling their Elder system. The Council advised against the proposal strongly, but by 1683 First Church in Newbury had no ruling elders. To learn more about this collection, visit the finding aid or view the item online.

[]
letter written by Jonathan Edwards to Esther Burr, 1757

The second collection, found in Series II contains a single letter written by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) to his daughter, Esther Edwards Burr (1732-1758), seen accompanying this blog post. The letter is dated November 20, 1757 and was written shortly after the death of Esther's husband, Aaron Burr, Sr. (1715/16-1757). You can view the letter online via the collection page.

The Congregational Library & Archives will open at 10am today due to yesterday's weather. As always, our online resources are available to you and we would be glad to repsond to any email or voicemail messages.