This book tells the story of the Rev. Benjamin Colman (1673-1747), one of eighteenth-century America’s most influential ministers, and his transatlantic social world of letters. Exploring his epistolary network reveals how imperial culture diffused through the British Atlantic and formed the Dissenting Interest in America, England, and Scotland. Traveling to and living in England between 1695-1699, Colman forged enduring connections with English Dissenters that would animate and define his ministry for nearly a half century. The chapters reassemble Colman’s epistolary web to illuminate the Dissenting Interest’s broad range of activities through the circulation of Dissenting histories, libraries, missionaries, revival news, and provincial defenses of religious liberty. This book argues that over the course of Colman’s life the Dissenting Interest integrated, extended, and ultimately detached, presenting the history of Protestant Dissent as fundamentally a transatlantic story shaped by the provincial edges of the British Empire.
Author(s): William R. Smith
Series: Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 293
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Networking in the British Atlantic and Colman’s Epistolarium
Outline of Chapters
References
Chapter 2: Benjamin Colman Travels to England, 1695–1699
Boston and the Post-Revolution Settlement, 1690–1695
English Dissent and the Collapse of the “Happy Union,” 1690–95
Embarking for London in the “Heat of King William’s War”
Colman Enters the Social World of English Dissent
The Urban Renaissance in England’s Non-Metropolitan Districts
Colman Returns to Boston
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Nonconformist Histories and the Rise of a Dissenting Narrative Identity
Colman’s Epistolary Network and Its Extension into Scotland
Memorializing Protestant Dissent from the Imperial Edges
Daniel Neal’s History of New England
“For the Glory of God, and the Cause of Religion and Liberty”: Wodrow’s History
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Empire of Books: Spreading Protestant Libraries in the British Atlantic World
Anglican Imperial Architects and the Creation of the Transatlantic Library Movement
Benjamin Colman’s Network of Dissenting Imperialists
Missionary Societies, John Sergeant, and the Realities of Empire
“You Shall Be as a Wall of Fire About Us”: SSPCK Missions in New England, 1730–1737
“The Necessaries of Life Are Dear in This Remote Part of the Country”: Sergeant and the Stockbridge Mission
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: The Dissenting ‘Ties of Political Friendship,’ British Union, and the Narragansett Property Conflict, 1720–1752
“Liberty and Union to All Succeeding Generations”: The Act of Union (1707) in America
“England is a Far Way Off”: MacSparran’s Controversial Early Ministry and the Beginnings of the Land Dispute, 1718–1732
“A Threatening Signal Set Up to Alarm”: The Mobilization of Dissenting and Anglican Transatlantic Networks, 1733–1738
“This Tedious Twenty Years Suit”: Localization, Fracture, and Defeat, 1739–1752
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: The Great Awakening as an Epistolary Event
“A Faithful Narrative,” Rumors, and Colman’s World of Transatlantic Letters
“The Wonder of the Age”: George Whitefield, Colman, and the Dissenting Interest
“Next to the Pleasure of Receiving a Letter from You, Is That of Writing to You”: Tracking Whitefield and Exchanging Revival News
“Mr. Whitefield’s Friends Have Been too Free with My Letters”: Division, Disorder, and Disintegration
War for Empire and the Defense of British Protestantism
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Samuel Davies Travels to England, 1753–1755
Samuel Davies and the Detachment of the Dissenting Interest
References
Index
