Ben Franklin's World Turns 300!

Congratulations to Liz Covart, creator of Ben Franklin’s World! The landmark early American history podcast sponsored by the Omohundro Institute launched its 300th episode last month. Liz recently asked past contributors to reflect on the following question: “What is the one aspect of early American history you wish people better understood? And why?”

Here’s my contribution, which comes at the very end of a fascinating lineup of short statements by nearly three dozen early American historians:

Here’s one thing I wish people better understood about early American history: religion was a difference-maker.

What do I mean by this? Two things. First, religion mattered to all people in #vast early America. Whether free or indentured Euro-Americans, enslaved African Americans, or sovereign Native Americans—religious institutions, beliefs, and practices, shaped their worldviews, work routines, interpersonal relations, politics, laws, economic practices, and private writings.

But more than that, religion was a difference-maker in that it also differentiated people from one another. Early American religions created divisions, clarified racial categories, fragmented communities, fomented violence, galvanized warfare.

We talked about the centrifugal pull of early American evangelicalism in Episode 182. My book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light, was published on Inauguration Day in 2017. Since then, I think we’ve learned a lot about the powerful ways religion divides people. Historians of religion in early America have an important role to play in reminding all of us of the potentials and dangers of such difference-making cultural practices.

Congratulations on the 300th episode of Ben Franklin’s World! Can’t wait to see what’s ahead!

Pale Blewish Lights: 20th Anniversary Edition

Frontispiece from Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus: Or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions (London, 1682). Image courtesy of the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

The Omohundro Institute recently reissued “‘Pale Blewish Lights’ and a Dead Man’s Groan: Tales of the Supernatural from Eighteenth-Century Plymouth, Massachusetts,” on their mobile app, the OI Reader. Originally published the William and Mary Quarterly in 1998, this essay has always been one of my favorites.

“Pale Blewish Lights” examines a richly detailed haunting incident. In 1733, tenants renting the Thompson Phillips mansion in Plymouth, Massachusetts, complained of strange lights and unusual noises, which they attributed to the specter of the recently deceased mariner. Phillips’s father-in-law, a civil magistrate and Indian missionary named Josiah Cotton, responded to the rumors by filing a slander suit against the loose-lipped tenants. The rich documentary record of the resulting lawsuits, which include trial depositions, Cotton’s memoirs and diary, and his unfinished essay, “Some Observations Concerning Witches, Spirits, & Apparitions,” provide a unparalleled opportunity to examine competing supernatural beliefs in eighteenth-century New England.

To access the article, install the free OI Reader from the App Store or Google Play and download the “Bancroft Prize 2018” file. In addition to “Pale Blewish Lights,” the download package also includes links to Part 3 of Darkness Falls on the Land of Light; my recent interview with Liz Covart, host of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast; and “Souls Filled with Ravishing Transport: Heavenly Visions and the Radical Awakening in New England,” which appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly in 2004. Many thanks to Nadine Zimmerli, Kim Foley, and the rest of the OI team for creating this exciting digital platform for my research.

DFLL on BFW

This week, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light was featured on Ben Franklin’s World, the popular early American history podcast hosted by Liz Covart and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Many thanks to Liz for this wonderful opportunity to share my thoughts on the state of religion in eighteenth-century New England!