Long dismissed as conventional and antiquarian, church records are actually unparalleled sources for historians offering information on a wide range of topics, such as the founding and evolution of churches, popular involvement in religious institutions and practices, modes of church governance, deviance, and resistance, and the interactions of churches--not to mention revealing information on significant moments in the lives of laity and ministers alike. This volume includes two of the finest sets of church records from the colonial era of Massachusetts history thus far unpublished. The Reading church records, in particular, are unique because they cover the entire period prior to the American Revolution, while the Rumney Marsh records cast light on the often-neglected period of 1715 through 1757. In addition, these records illuminate the otherwise unknown lives and activities of common folk, white and black, men and women, who debate, bicker, admonish, exhort, and uplift each other.

This study approaches the Puritan experience in church government from the perspective of both the pew and the pulpit. For ten years, James Cooper immersed himself in local manuscript church records. These previously untapped documents provide a fascinating glimpse of lay-clerical relations in colonial Massachusetts, and reveal that ordinary churchgoers shaped the development of Congregational practices as much as the clerical and elite personages who for so long have populated histories of the period. Cooper's new findings both challenge existing models of church hierarchy and offer a new dimension to our understanding of the origins of New England democracy.

This study approaches the Puritan experience from the perspective of the pew, rather than the pulpit. For the past ten years, James Cooper has immersed himself in local Massachusetts manuscript church records. From these previously untapped documents emerge individuals who henceforth will deserve mention alongside the clerical and elite personages who for so long have populated histories of the period. Cooper's new findings both challenge existing models of church hierarchy and offer a new understanding of the origins of New England democracy.