Customer Reviews

Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America

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On p. 102, we find that the title of this book is part of a quotation of a sermon of Cotton Mather in 1713.

In general, i found this book loaded with insights surrounding the question of to what extent (very) the colonies were (Protestant Christian) religious prior to the Revolution, and how much this contributed to the onset of the events which brought about the Revolution (a lot.)

Two of these events were the possible advent of an Anglican bishop to the colonies, and the role of the Great Awakening as a spur to the Revolution. The colonists were mostly dissenters from Anglicanism, except for Virginia, and looked upon the imposition of a bishop as just another sign of the increasing domination from the mother country. The Great Awakening spoke to the individual's sense of faith, as opposed to its corporate dimension, and thus contributed to the proverbial American individualism.

On p. 72, Bonomi cites the fact that Congregational congregations tripled from 1700-1750, thus downplaying any suggestion of religious decline.

Reading Bonomi's anecdotes, the French proverb 'plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose' came to mind. So many of the trends which we believe are original to current church life, were present in colonial church life. Some of these were: not wanting ministers traveling around with no credentials, people in and out of church during the service, sleeping during sermons, almost every bride pregnant at the time of the wedding (p. 60,) and in the average congregation, 3/4 of folks in church were women.

This book is well worth your time, written in a pleasant style.

This book is very informative about religion and politics in the colonial period of United States history, up to the Revolution. It is very in-depth and contains citations for everything.

I'm sure this book is awesome. However, due to what looks like a really crappy scan its pretty hard to read.