As the definitive historian of Unitarianism, Wilbur’s chapters on American Unitarianism are a must reading for a background in polity.…

A leading Unitarian minister catalogs complaints against revivals. Although written after the “revival issue” had quieted in New England, Thayer is obviously familiar with the main arguments lofted earlier. …

“Revivalistic Innovations” 

by C.C. Goen

in Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740-1800

Goen is professor of history at Wesley Theological Seminary. This reading highlights the reasons the Great Awakening became such a cleavage among New England churches.…

“The Declaration of a Number of the Associated Pastors Relating to the Reverend Mr. James Davenport and His Conduct”

by Benjamin Colman et al., (Boston, 1742)

[Peter Raible reproduces this text as it appears in The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740-1745 (Institute of Early American History & Culture), edited by Richard Bushman (see pages 50-51).…

The proposals with part of Walker’s commentary indicate how some issues would not lie fallow. After over 40 years, the proper admission to church membership and the privileges and rights thereunto attached were still not a settled matter.…

“Preface to the Result of 1662”

in Williston Walker’s The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism

(Pilgrim, 1969 – original 1893) pp. 301-13 and pp. 337-39

Admission to the colonial church in New England required (among other things) a religious experience, which had to be related in public as a sign of regeneration.…