Election Sermon Research Articles

New England Election Sermons: A Model for a Public Pulpit

This article surveys the now largely foreign practice of election sermons delivered in colonial New England. The ultimate aim of the study is to provide a way forward for contemporary pastors: first, to challenge the modern bifurcation of the religious and the so-called secular in the public square; second, to chart a middle course between the extremes of blind partisanship and anemic passivity in commenting on public concerns. The content of election sermons also challenges prevailing evangelical notions of good government by presenting a more integrated sociopolitical life, emphasizing older priorities of the common good, justice, and prudence. KEYWORDS: Puritanism, New England, election sermons, preaching, public theology, church Iand state, politics, common good

The Saving Grace of America’s Green Jeremiad

By the late seventeenth century, Puritan leaders in colonial America were bemoaning what they perceived to be the betrayal of New England’s godly “errand into the wilderness.” In election sermons they mourned the community’s backsliding from its global mission as a “city upon a hill.” Such doomsday rhetoric echoed the lamentations of decline intoned by ancient Hebrew prophets such as Jeremiah. Yet this “Jeremiad” discourse characteristically reached beyond effusions of doom and gloom toward prospects of renewal through a conversion of heart. It blended warnings of impending catastrophe with hope for recovery if the erring souls it addressed chose to repent. This twofold identity of the Puritan Jeremiad, gradually refashioned into the American Jeremiad, has long resonated within and beyond this nation’s literary culture. Featured in creative nonfiction, jeremiad expression surfaces in various forms. And with rise of the modern environmental movement, a prophetic subspecies identifiable as “Green Jeremiad” has lately emerged. The essay reflects on how, especially in an Anthropocene era, Green Jeremiads dramatize the crisis of spirit and faith that undergird challenges to earth’s geophysical health and survival. What saving graces might temper the chilling reminders of imminent peril composed by authors such as Rachel Carson, Bill McKibben, Barbara Kingsolver, and Elizabeth Kolbert?

“That self was gone!” The Transformations of Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter: A Psychoanalytic Perspective

“That self was gone!” The Transformations of Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter: A Psychoanalytic Perspective David B. Diamond (bio) After his fateful encounter with Hester in the forest and nightmarish walk through town, Arthur Dimmesdale finally reaches his study where he experiences relief and refuge amongst his familiar surroundings. At the same time, he becomes aware of a momentous internal change that has decisively transformed him since he left his dwelling two days earlier: Here he had studied and written; here, gone though fast and vigil, and had come forth half alive; here, striven to pray; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies! […] He knew it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the Election Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone! Another man had returned out of the forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that! (Hawthorne, 1850/1962, pp. 222–223, emphasis added) The reader’s curiosity is aroused by these remarkable assertions: what is the knowledge, which hidden mysteries and what is the wisdom that Dimmesdale has acquired? What of himself, viewed as he is “standing apart” does he see? Who is this new man? The narrator, who has spared the reader no detail of Dimmesdale’s mental deterioration, is silent as to the mental processes involved in this transformation. Although this change is not expressed in words, it is revealed in The Reverend’s subsequent actions: the dismissal of Chillingworth as his physician, the delivery of an inspired and authentic Election [End Page 647] Sermon, a confession of guilt on the scaffold and the public acknowledgment of Pearl as his daughter. None of these actions, which are all contrary to the reader’s expectations, is possible under the aegis of his former passive and paralyzed self. That self is now truly gone. It is no secret that The Scarlet Letter is a psychological novel: word for word, chapter after chapter, scarcely a serious work of literature devotes itself more to the inner life and its conflicts than Hawthorne’s first romance. The small, claustrophobic Puritan colony, with its stark rules of conduct and abundant opportunity for voyeuristic zeal, provides a narrow, shallow, and brilliantly lit stage against which the inner lives of the intensely entangled, conflicted and tormented characters play out. Their secrets, always under pressure of exposure, set them apart from their community, from each other, and from themselves. Under the burden of psychic strain, each character is prone to forms of psychological deterioration. Although it is true of all the protagonists, Arthur Dimmesdale best exemplifies the judgment expressed in The House of the Seven Gables, “For, what other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!” (1851/1965, p. 169). Indeed, The Scarlet Letter details the exacting trials of a man who “above all things else […] loathed his miserable self!” (1850/1962, p. 144) but who ultimately finds release in his final scene where he “stood with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory” (p. 255). What is the psychology of this momentous transformation? It is a question that comes naturally to the mind of a psychoanalyst to whom psychological change is not only of interest but a desideratum of psychoanalytic treatment. Athough an analysand is not a fictional character, and Dimmesdale is not an analysand, a bridge between the wide differences in their species is created by the “truth of the human heart,” valorized in the Preface to The House of the Seven Gables, which is encoded in their respective psyches. A cross-disciplinary study which applies a psychoanalytic perspective to a literary work is only possible because Hawthorne provides an abundance of data for psychoanalytic inquiry, namely, the intricate interweaving of the character’s conscious and unconscious motivations and their vicissitudes. These data can be organized and sequenced [End Page 648] into a...

Where was John Davenport's 1669 Massachusetts Election Sermon Printed?

Previous articleNext article No AccessBIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTESWhere was John Davenport's 1669 Massachusetts Election Sermon Printed?Keith ArbourKeith Arbour Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America Volume 97, Number 1MARCH 2003 Published for the Bibliographical Society of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/pbsa.97.1.24295805 Views: 4Total views on this site COPYRIGHT © 2003 THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICAPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Colonial New England Preaching on War as Illustrated in Massachusetts Artillery Election Sermons

Journal Article Colonial New England Preaching on War as Illustrated in Massachusetts Artillery Election Sermons Get access Jon A. T. Alexander Jon A. T. Alexander simply professed Cooperator Brother of the Order of Preachers Province of St. Albert the Great Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Church and State, Volume 17, Issue 3, Autumn 1975, Pages 423–442, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/17.3.423 Published: 01 October 1975

The Wall and the Garden: Selected Massachusetts Election Sermons 1670–1775. Edited with an Introduction by A. W. Plumstead. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968. viii+390 pp. $8.50.

The Wall and the Garden: Selected Massachusetts Election Sermons 1670–1775. Edited with an Introduction by A. W. Plumstead. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968. viii+390 pp. $8.50.

The Wall and the Garden: Selected Massachusetts Election Sermons, 1670-1775

The Wall and the Garden: Selected Massachusetts Election Sermons, 1670-1775

Drumfire from the Pulpit: Natural Law in the Colonial Election Sermons of Massachusetts

Drumfire from the Pulpit: Natural Law in the Colonial Election Sermons of Massachusetts

Boston's artillery election sermons and the American revolution

(1967). Boston's artillery election sermons and the American revolution. Speech Monographs: Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 43-50.

The Election sermon: Primer for revolutionaries

Rhetorical analysis of occasion, audience, speaker, and speech is applied to a type of speaking that was popular in America between 1763 and 1783. The resulting portrait provides background which can enrich the study of a particular election sermon. It demonstrates, moreover, that the annual sermons followed a distinct pattern, and that in so doing, they popularized and reinforced by repetition the major philosophical underpinnings of the Revolution.

Jonathan Edwards' Sociology of the Great Awakening

JONATHAN Edwards believed that in the Great Awakening of 1740 he was witnessing-that he had actually recalled to life-the same piety that had inspired the founders of New England. He was a close student of Thomas Hooker and Thomas Shepard, the preeminently evangelical writers of the first generation, whom he cited repeatedly, whereas he showed little interest in the more scholastic John Cotton. George Whitefield made no criticism of the opponents of the revival more stinging than that they and the Harvard faculty neglected Hooker and Shepard out of their preference for Tillotson. When the opponents rallied their forces and went over to the offensive, in 1744-1745, they scored most heavily by denying that the Awakening, with its enthusiasm and bodily effects, resembled the sober, controlled spirituality of the founders, which even in its most ravishing moments had always held firm to the vision of an ordered, disciplined society. Edwards and Charles Chauncy were the chief spokesmen for the two wings into which the New England Way divided during the fateful 1740's. It is striking testimony to the immensity of the silent revolution wrought in the New England mind between 1640 and 1740 that they conducted their great debate with practically no reference to any theory of society or any function of the state. The issue on which they joined was wholly one of psychology; in both Seasonable Thoughts and the Religious Affections, the individual exists in a social vacuum. In Chauncy's case we know from his famous election sermon and from other utterances that he did have an articulated philosophy of politics, essentially that of the Whig tradition which was soon to become the doctrine of the American Revolution.

New books

The Awakening of the American Theatre. By Ben Blake. New York: Tomorrow, Publishers, 1935; pp. 63. $0.25. The Elements and Practice of Composition. By William Strunk, Jr. and Edward A. Tenney. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1935 ; pp. iv + 60 + 47 detachable practice leaves. Parts of Speech and Accidence. By George O. Curme. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1935; pp. xiii + 370. $3.50. 25,000 Words Spelled, Divided, and Accented. By Louis A. Leslie and Charles Earle Funk. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1935; pp. 249. Get It Right. By John B. Opdycke. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1935; pp. 673. $3.50. Let Us Recite Together. By Marguerite E. DeWitt. Poughkeepsie: Vassar Cooperative Bookshop, 1935; pp. 26. $0.85. James G. Blaine: A Political Idol of Other Days. By David Saville Muzzey. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1934; pp. 514. The New Book of English Verse. Edited by Charles Williams. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1936; pp. 828. $3.00. Shakespeare's Macbeth. Edited by George Coffin Taylor and Reed Smith. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1936; pp. xlvii + 144. $0.52. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Edited by George Coffin Taylor and Reed Smith. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1936; pp. xli + 155. $0.52. Modern American Poetry. Edited by Louis Untermeyer. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936; pp. xxv + 654. Modern British Poetry. Edited by Louis Untermeyer. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936; pp. xxii + 549. A Check List of New England Election Sermons. By R. W. G. Vail. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1936; pp. 36. $1.00. American Variations. By H. W. Horwill. New York: Oxford University Press, 1936; pp. 26. $0.85. Names, Designations and Appellations. By R. W. Chapman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1936; pp. 34. $0.85. Our Theatre Today. Edited by Herschel L. Bricker. New York: Samuel French, 1936; pp. xxvii + 427. $3.00. Three Pageants. By Josephine Wilhelm Wickser. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1936; pp. 48. $0.50. Moscow Rehearsals. By Norris Houghton. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936; pp. xv + 291. $2.75. So You're Writing a Play. By Clayton Hamilton. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1935; pp. 260. The History of Public Speaking. By Mabel Platz. New York: Noble and Noble, Inc., 1935; pp. 301. A Modern Reader. Edited by Walter Lippman and Allan Nevins. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1936; pp ix + 765. $2.50. Personality Maladjustments and Mental Hygiene. By J. E. Wallace Wallin. New York and London: The McGraw‐Hill Book Company, Inc., 1935; pp. xii + 511. $3.00. Child Psychiatry. By Leo Kanner, M.D. Springfield, Illinois, and Baltimore, Maryland: Charles C. Thomas Co., 1935; pp. xviii + 527. $6.00. Behavior Development in Infants, A Survey of the Literature on Prenatal and Postnatal Activity, 1920–1934. By Evelyn Dewey. New York: Columbia University Press for Josiah Macy, Jr., Foundation, 1935; pp. 321. $3.50. Modern Debating. By Egbert Ray Nichols and Joseph H. Baccus. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1936; pp. 432. $2.25. Bernard Shaw's Phonetics. By Joseph Saxe. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard; London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936, pp. 86. 6 shillings. Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America. By Harry R. Warfel. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1936; pp. xiii + 460. $3.50. The American Language, Fourth Edition. By H. L. Mencken. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1936; pp. xi + 769 + xxix. $5.00. Basic Principles of Speech. By Lew Sarett and William Trufant Foster. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1936; pp. v + 566. $2.50. Seventy Years of It. By Edward Alsworth Ross. New York: D. Appleton‐Century Co., 1936; pp. 333. $3. Electric Utilities: The Tenth Annual Debate Handbook, 1936–1937. Edited by Bower Aly for the Committee on Debate Materials and Interstate Co‐operation, National University Extension Association. Columbia, Missouri: Lucas Brothers, 1936; Vol. I, pp. 220; Vol. II, pp. 220. University Debaters’ Annual (1935–1936.) Edited by Edith M. Phelps and Julia E. Johnsen. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1936; pp. 442. $2.25. Freedom of Speech. Compiled by Julia E. Johnson. The Reference Shelf, Vol. X, No. 8. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1936; pp. 317. $.90. Government Ownership of Electric Utilities. Compiled by Julia E. Johnsen. The Reference Shelf, Vol. 10, No. 9. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1936; pp. 329. $.90. The Elements of Speech. By J. M. O'Neill and A. T. Weaver. London: Longmans, 1933; pp. x + 534. 12s. 6d.