Coming Into Communion: Pastoral Dialogues in Colonial New England

Explores the lives and religious imaginations of colonial women and the contributions they made to colonial religious discourse.

By exploring the interrelationship between elite and popular religious culture in colonial New England, Coming Into Communion shows that laywomen made active significant contributions, through the process of dialogue, to religious language and theology in the early eighteenth century. Case studies examine a variety of women, including the poet Jane Colman Turell, Sarah Edwards (wife of the prominent theologian), and a group of women whose voices are preserved in history because they were accused of killing their newborn babies. Henigman tells the fascinating stories of their interchanges with their ministers to show that these women subtly revised the language of the clergy, choosing different scripture texts and images to describe a more intimate relationship with God and a holistic sense of community.