Scott D. Seay . Hanging between Heaven and Earth: Capital Crime, Execution Preaching, and Theology in Early New England . DeKalb : Northern Illinois University Press . 2009 . Pp. xi, 217. $36.00.

Abstract

This short book effectively blends intellectual and social history in a way that sheds important light on early New England religion, political culture, and the processes of crime and punishment. Examining these topics from the founding of Massachusetts to the early national period, Scott D. Seay surveys what preachers at public executions said about the sources of crime (human sinfulness), the possibility of criminal redemption, and the responsibilities of civil government in the punishment of crime. In a conclusion, the author seeks to identify what can be learned by exploring the questions early Americans asked about these issues and the answers that they gave. Seay begins with an excellent overview of the role that public education and execution sermons played in England and New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He explains the criminal procedure, the sentencing, and the rituals of the execution day and offers a clear analysis of such events as public spectacles that could draw as many as twelve thousand spectators, as was reported to be the case with a 1772 execution in Salem.