This book presents a revolutionary new reading of manuscript records left by puritan minister Thomas Shepard in Cambridge, Massachusetts that have been studied for decades as his on-the-spot recording of oral relations of faith delivered by candidates for church membership. This book proves that these records are not relations, but Shepard's personal record of sessions of trial-meetings with candidates still working out their spiritual seeking. New transcriptions of the original manuscript records, and corresponding never-before-published writing by Shepard, dispel much of the confusion produced by the published transcriptions. Close-readings of the manuscripts, contrasted with the published transcriptions, set the stage for a new understanding of puritan spiritual preparation in Shepard's Cambridge church. The book concludes with a challenge to the negative reading of the women's records that is central to established scholarship, revealing their powerful, confident spiritual identities and voices.
1. Re-reading, Re-interpreting, and Recovering Priceless Texts.- 2. Close-Reading the Shepard Manuscripts.- 3. "Venture and Try": Women Taking the Ultimate Leap ofFaith.- 4. The Shepard Context.- 5. Heroic Souls: Reading the Cambridge Women's Records.- 6. Conclusion.
Lori Rogers-Stokes, Ph.D., is an independent scholar and contributing editor for New England's Hidden Histories. She studies the founding decades of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, during which forms of church and state were put in place that would shape American history for centuries to come.
"Most seventeenth-century Massachusetts churches required that prospective members tell the church convincingly of the working of God's grace in them. Few of these conversion narratives have survived ... . Records of Trials is an adventurous revisionist exploration of those Cambridge narratives." (Michael P. Winship, Church History, Vol. 92 (4), December, 2023)
