The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England

The New England Soul is the first comprehensive analysis of preaching in New England from the founding of the Puritan colonies to the outbreak of the Revolution. Using a multi-disciplinary approach--including analysis of rhetorical style and concept of identity and community--Stout examines more than two thousand sermons spanning five generations of ministers, including such giants of the pulpit as John Cotton, Thomas Shepard, Increase and Cotton Mather, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Mayhew, and Charles Chauncy, as well a numerous lesser-known preachers. Stout reconstructs the full import of the colonial sermon as a multi-faceted institution that served both religious and political purposes, and explained history and society to the New England Puritans for one and a half centuries.