Church admission testimonies, or “relations” as they were called, form the bedrock of my argument in Darkness Falls on the Land of Light. They afford one the best means of gauging broad changes in popular religious experience in early New England. I’m always on the lookout for examples of this distinctive genre of puritan devotional literature. Recently discovered by a researcher at the Congregational Library, the 1757 relation of Lydia Bourk of Boston’s First Church opens up some intriguing research questions.
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