What would a man do if he were suddenly visited by someone who had lived three hundred and fifty years ago? Someone he had "adopted" as his spiritual ancestor? Someone whom he had fantasized about, dreamed about, written about? Someone who, although she could not be X-rayed or photographed, was real enough to make love to, and who returned his affection with a vibrancy and lustfulness that made him sure that she was real and not just a spirit? When Anne Hutchinson, the first American religious dissenter and feminist, showed up on Bob Rimmer's doorstep, he was at first skeptical but soon succumbed to Anne's earthy charms. "The Resurrection of Anne Hutchinson" is the story of two weeks in 1985, when a woman who was banished from Massachusetts in 1638 came back to preach her ideas of freedom in love, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The irrepressible Robert Rimmer, author of "The Harrad Experiment," brings Anne Hutchinson back to life in modern-day Massachusetts, where she takes on the people and the government of a repressed United States in a way similar to her original attack on Boston in the seventeenth century. Her companion on a cross-country tour is Bob Rimmer, who embarks with her on a crusade to reach the American public with Anne's message of "repent and rebel." Rimmer's use of the available literature on Anne (from the diaries of the governor who banished her, John Winthrop, and from Anne's trials) is brilliantly used to evoke seventeenth-century America in a way no history book ever could.

Prologue: Anne Hutchinson and the Controversy -- The Puritan Experiment: Errors and Trials -- Helpmeets, Mothers, and Midwives among the Patriarchs -- Sectarian Mysticism and Spiritual Power -- Prophesying Women and the Gifts of the Spirit -- Gracious Disciples and Frightened Magistrates -- A Froward Woman Beloved of God.

Presents biographical profiles of American women leaders and activists, including birth and death dates, major accomplishments, and historical influence.

Harvard has often been referred to as "godless Harvard." This is far from the truth. Fact is that Harvard is and always has been concerned about religion. This volume addresses the reasons for this. The story of religion at Harvard in many ways is the story of religion in the United States. This edition will clarify this relationship. Furthermore, the question of religion is central not only to the religious history of Harvard but to its very corporate structure and institutional evolution. The volume is divided into three parts and deals withthe Formation of Harvard College in 1636 and Evolution of a Republic of Letters in Cambridge ("First Light", Chapters 1–5); Religion in the University, the Foundations of a Learned Ministry and the Development of the Divinity School (The "Augustan Age", Chapters 6–9); and the Contours of Religion and Commitment in an Age of Upheaval and Globalization ("Calm Rising Through Change and Through Storm", Chapters 10–12).The story of the central role played by religion in the development of Harvard is a neglected factor in Harvard's history only touched upon in a most cursory fashion by previous publications. For the first time George H. Williamstells that story as embedded in American culture and subject to intense and continuing academic study throughout the history of the University to this day.Replete with extensive footnotes, this edition will be a treasure to future historians, persons interested in religious history and in the development of theology, at first clearly Reformed and Protestant, later ecumenical and interfaith.

An illustrated A to Z reference containing over 600 entries providing information on the theology, people, historical events, institutions and movements related to Protestantism.

No era in American history has been more fascinating to Americans, or more critical to the ultimate destiny of the United States, than the colonial era. Between the time that the first European settlers established a colony at Jamestown in 1607 through the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the outlines of America's distinctive political culture, economic system, social life, and cultural patterns had begun to emerge. Designed to complement the high school American history curriculum as well as undergraduate survey courses, "Colonial America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History" captures it all: the people, institutions, ideas, and events of the first three hundred years of American history. While it focuses on the thirteen British colonies stretching along the Atlantic, Colonial America sets this history in its larger contexts. Entries also cover Canada, the American Southwest and Mexico, and the Caribbean and Atlantic world directly impacting the history of the thirteen colonies. This encyclopedia explores the complete early history of what would become the United States, including portraits of Native American life in the immediate pre-contact period, early Spanish exploration, and the first settlements by Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish, and English colonists. This monumental five-volume set brings America's colonial heritage vibrantly to life for today's readers. It includes: thematic essays on major issues and topics; detailed A-Z entries on hundreds of people, institutions, events, and ideas; thematic and regional chronologies; hundreds of illustrations; primary documents; and a glossary and multiple indexes.

This study provides a long-needed closer look at the trials of Anne Hutchinson, in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1637 and 1638. The book discusses the legal system of the times, and the Puritan doctrine that was at issue in both civil and church trials. By examining points not previously addressed by scholars, it demonstrates that the case against her was not proved, in either her criminal or her ecclesiastical trials. It provides an in-depth look at these important trials, and the setting in which they took place.

Inventive in its approach and provocative in its analysis, this study offers fresh readings of the arguments and practices of four seventeenth-century Euro-American women: Anne Bradstreet, Anne Hutchinson, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Marie de l'Incarnation. Tamara Harvey here compares functionalist treatments of the body by these women, offering a new way to think of corporeality as a device in literary and religious expressions of modesty by women. In doing so, Harvey explores the engagement of these women in ongoing religious, political, scientific and social debates that would have been understood by the authors' contemporaries in both Europe and America.