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dwellordream · 2 months

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“Like the Christians’ Eve, the Iroquois Sky-Woman had an insatiable desire to satisfy her hunger. At first she sought her husband’s guidance, but in time she struck out on her own. Her curiosity brought her to the sacred tree at the center of the Sky-World--a place where, as she soon discovered, the floor of the sky was very thin. Losing her footing, she slipped through a hole at the tree’s base and fell headlong ‘toward the great ocean far below.’

…Like her Iroquois descendants in North America, this first fallen Sky-Woman farmed the rich earths she created, gathered its fruits, and built a hut upon it to live in. After a time, her pregnancy ran its course and, legend says, she ‘was delivered of a daughter.’ The girl and her mother continued to look after their lands till one day, ‘when the girl had grown to womanhood,’ a man appeared. He stayed only briefly--just long enough to impregnate Sky-Woman’s daughter. When her time to deliver arrived she, like many women during the premodern period, died while giving birth. Her offspring survived: two boys who would come to rule the earth their mother and grandmother had made.

…Every native group had its own account of the world’s beginnings. For the Pueblo of the Southwest, human life began underneath the earth when a woman named Tsichtinako (Thought Woman) nursed two sisters: Iatikyu, the Mother of the Corn clan, and Nautsiti, the Mother of the Sun clan. The Ottawa, an Algonquian-speaking people living in the northern Great Lakes region, traced their origins to a male figure called the Great Hare and his younger brother.

…To the Protestants of New England, the followers of the teachings of the Swiss theologian John Calvin, the devotional practices of the Catholics in New France and the Spanish colonies seemed as alien as those of the Narragansets and Wampanoags who lived among them in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In turn, the faithful in Virginia and Maryland, who followed the orthodox traditions of the Church of England, considered New England’s Puritans to be overzealous reformers.

…Even in the most physical, tangible sense religion was a constant presence. From the stark clapboard spires that capped New England’s Congregational meeting houses, to the sturdy brick of Virginia’s Anglican churches, to the poles marking the underground kivas in which the Pueblo held sacred rituals, places of worship dotted the landscape. Each and every day, the English villages lining the eastern seaboard would have been alive with the sound of church bells.

…Every part of colonial America had its own rhythms of religious devotion--rhythms that helped women and men make sense of their lives. But nowhere did religion play a greater role than it did in early New England. Almost without exception, the leaders of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, New Haven, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island were dissenters from the Church of England.

…No matter whether they enthusiastically supported or dared to question the Puritan mission, all law-abiding New Englanders gathered in their local meetinghouses every Sunday, and often once during the week as well, to hear their preacher expound upon scripture. One perennially popular sermon topic was the nature of women. Between 1668 and 1735, women’s lives were the subject of no fewer than 75 printed treatises. Some of these tracts were funeral sermons that eulogized an especially pious female parishioner; others were more general “how-to” homilies dealing with marriage or mothering.

…Pious women were praised by ministers and neighbors alike. If they resembled any Old Testament figure, it was the industrious Bathsheba (the ‘virtuous woman’ described in Proverbs 31:10-31) rather than the perfidious Eve. Where Eve tempted, persuaded, and seduced, Bathsheba planted, prayed, and spun. Her every word testified to a womanly brand of piety: faith tempered with respectful submission. More than one New England minister echoed these verses from Proverbs, exalting the woman who ‘openeth her mouth with wisdom…in her tongue is the law of kindness.’ As the biblical passage suggested, such well-spoken women were indeed more priceless than rubies.

…In fact, New England’s ‘virtuous women’ may have been even more devoted to religious practice than their husbands and fathers. At the very least they were more dedicated churchgoers. At first, men and women joined the churches in equal numbers. Within a generation, however, women outnumbered men in many if not most of the churches in Massachusetts and Connecticut. By the mid-1700s, women comprised nearly three-quarters of many congregations.

…One of the more radical groups in the entire spectrum of dissenting English Protestantism, the Quakers granted female believers an extraordinary degree of autonomy and equality. …Converts of both sexes were encouraged to preach about their religious experiences, and one of the movement’s early and most prominent leaders was an English wife and mother, Margaret Fell. …Where Quaker women were concerned, Massachusetts authorities made the links between female preaching, rejecting ministers’ teachings, and worshiping the devil even more explicit.

…Black women and men brought a very different set of religious beliefs to the southern colonies. Their traditions concerning the supernatural were as diverse as the many African peoples from which they came. There were, however, important common threads; most West Africans believed in more than one God and made the veneration of ancestors an important part of their worship ceremonies.

…Until the 1730s, southern whites made little effort to convert their slaves to Christianity. But in the late 18th century, evangelical sects such as the Methodists and the Baptists appealed to blacks and poor whites alike. …Call-and-response hymn singing and joyful shouting are examples of African forms that influenced the style of worship practiced by both whites and blacks in many southern denominations.”

Jane Kamensky, “Daughters of Eve, Daughters of Zion: Women and Religion” in The Colonial Mosaic: American Women, 1600-1760

#colonialism #colonial #american #indigenous #history #religion #gender #christian #jane kamensky #the colonial mosaic

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officialyourdailyinspiration · 2 months

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Drawing from the profound sermons of John Calvin on Deuteronomy 27-28, "The Covenant Unveiled" presents a compelling exposition on the dynamics of God's covenant with His people, emphasizing the blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Calvin's insights, preached in Geneva during the heart of the Reformation, highlight the social, political, and spiritual consequences of our fidelity to God's law. This collection of sermons, translated into contemporary English, bridges historical theology with modern application, making Calvin's timeless message accessible and relevant. It's an invaluable resource for those seeking to understand the covenantal framework of the Bible and its implications for personal and communal faithfulness…

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sojourner-between-worlds · 1 year

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Do tell about John Piper! I don’t know much about him other than that Calvinists like him.

OKAY SO. Yeah, he's like the chief of 5-Point Calvinist Theologians. Really the only reason I've read much from him is because a friend (who shall remain nameless unless she chooses otherwise) was having huge issues reading his stuff and was asking me about stuff he'd written and if I agreed with it. I'm, like, a solid 3.5 Calvinist, myself, but that doesn't help me like him honestly, lol.

For the record: Sometimes he says good and helpful things. Sometimes I agree with him. Sometimes. Not that long ago he answered a question about how much jewelry is appropriate for women to wear. Given the title, I was very prepared to be absolutely incensed by his answer, but after reading it...sometimes the dude just needs to work on his titles because I did actually agree with this answer. (Which, if you wondered, he said there's nothing wrong with wearing jewelry; the title came from the question that was asked, which was very misleading.)

All that being said, he also sometimes says really stupid things -- and I'm not talking about things I disagree with from a theological (tenets of Calvinism) prospective. After all, we can still learn a lot by listening to or reading things from people we don't agree with. Rather, sometimes he makes it very clear he does not understand that not all brains work the same way, aka being neurodivergent.

I made that meme quite a while ago in response to a question he received from someone wanting to know how to encourage their autistic Christian friend. One thing he said in response was that the person should not use Scriptures like Psalm 139: 13-16 (the infamous "fearfully and wonderfully made" verses). His reasoning? That applies to everyone, even the most terrible people in the world, like Hitler. Therefore, it is not encouraging to hear that.

So let me tell you a little story about why that advice makes me so upset:

Back when I had just figured out I'm autistic, for some reason or another the #actuallyautistic tag here on tumblr was -once again- talking a whole lot about a ten-year-old ad from Autism Speaks titled "I am Autism" and how horrendous it is (and how we should never let them forget about it when they tried to bury it, which I agree, but that's another rant about how terrible AS is and why no one should support them). Curiosity got the better of me and I looked it up on YouTube. I couldn't even process it the first time. I was so shocked. So I watched it a second time, and then promptly broke down sobbing. (A friend of mine could only stomach watching about the first 30 seconds of it before she turned it off. That should tell you everything right there.) I had never felt so dehumanized in my entire life, and you wanna know what brought me comfort after watching that? Reading Psalm 139, particularly the above verses.

The thing Piper doesn't understand is this: the rest of the world is busy telling us that we're "put together wrong" or that we're "broken" and no one is telling us that's not true. Sometimes when we're struggling it's nice to hear someone remind us that we were created exactly as God intended us to be. (Another good passage, fyi, is Moses and the burning bush, where Moses says he's not good at speaking and God's rebuttal is "is it not I who created the blind and the deaf the way they are?" Yeah. That's a piece of my pastor's sermon from two years ago that still sticks with me, thank-you-very-much.)

That is why it makes me angry. Because people will follow his advice and start not telling us something that we need to hear simply because it's not something he has ever taken comfort in so apparently he cannot fathom anyone else taking comfort in it either.

I'm sure there are probably other articles he's written or answers he's given that have also gotten my goat, but the other big thing that gets me is his recently published book where he asserts that if you don't feel affection towards God then you aren't saved.

On the one hand, I do get his point: having a head-knowledge that God is real and the Bible is true is NOT the same as having saving faith.

But I have two problems with Piper's take on this: 1. Many ND folks (not all, of course, but I am in this category) don't experience emotions or feelings the same way as every one else. Which means affection -- especially the way Piper seems to be describing in his book -- can be a bit of a foreign concept. Speaking solely for myself, I do not feel affection -- at least not in the way you are supposedly supposed to, according to Piper. Having a head-knowledge of the Bible does not equal having faith but here's a crazy ND concept that escapes Piper: sometimes head-knowledge IS affection. I don't spend time on things I don't care about. I don't do deep-dives into topics on things I don't care about. I don't spend time on things that don't bring me joy. The knowledge I have shows where my affections lie, even if I don't experience affection as a feeling, the way Piper says you have to. 2. Affection does not equal love, and love is more important here. As an example: I love my husband very much. I don't always like him (sometimes he drives me nuts, that's just life, and I know I drive him nuts too, haha), but I do always love him. Comparatively, according to Piper, if I don't always feel affection (aka "like") my husband then I must not actually love him. And this is simply not true. Affection is a feeling; love is an action. I don't have to feel any one certain way in order to still love someone -- and that includes God.

I've said it once and I'll willingly say it as many times I have to: we can't rely on our feelings for assurance of salvation because (say it with me now!):

Feelings are Fickle.

And with this book, Piper has made salvation about feelings. So even from a neurotypical perspective, this book is a bad take. But it's even worse for ND folks who simply don't experience feelings the way NTs do. People are going to read this book and start thinking, "well, there's no way I'm saved because I don't feel the RIGHT way, the CORRECT way, the way PIPER is telling me I have to." And I don't think I need to explain further why that's damaging.

And these are just my personal gripes. Other ND friends (specifically the first one I mentioned) have all kinds of troubles reading his stuff, because of terrible wording or answers that aren't thorough enough or conflicting information from what he's said in the past compared to now.

He is, at best, a sincere but incredibly insensitive writer. But it doesn't matter how sincere he is because someone can be very sincerely damaging to other believers.

And someday he's going to have to answer for that.

#christianity #autistic christian #john piper #i'm sorry i wrote you a novel lol #thanks for the excuse though lol

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wickednesse-comic · 1 year

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A NOTE ON EROTIC LITERATURE IN 17th CENTURY NEW ENGLAND,

by P. Walter Jaffey, Exegetist

To those familiar with the well-documented correlation between social conservatism and sexual dysfunction, it should come as no surprise that a culture now synonymous with strict moral order was absolutely rife with out-of-control masturbators.

Don’t take my word for it. The only thing the Puritans seem to have indulged in more than avid "self-pollution” was confessing this sin in writing, through the fastidious journal-keeping that characterized their milieu. The museum basements of New England are veritably carpeted with 17th century masturbation diaries, each recounting a different man’s struggle with temptation (the inevitable capitulation, the sticky-handed prayer for absolution, great night’s sleep, etc.) By their own varied accounts, this cycle of self-abuse and self-recrimination seems to have been vicious indeed, and suffered widely*.

The war against basic human sexuality was such a cause célèbre in the colonial period that sermons on the subject were widely disseminated in print and were popular to such a bizarre degree that it reminds one of nothing so much as our own modern era, with its 12 Rules for Lifes and No-Fap Novembers. To wit, Cotton Mather’s The Pure Nazarite, Concerning an Impiety and Impurity Not Easily to be Spoken of (1723) was probably the best selling book of the late 17th and early 18th centuries**.

“I am told that it is an essay which there is more than a little occasion for.”

-John Phillips, Publisher of The Pure Nazarene and man whose stockings are only so stiff from kneeling in church.

Ironically (and perhaps predictably, since it relates to man’s favorite compulsion), tracts like Nazarite weren’t read solely for their didactic value. The latter belongs to an expansive historiographic metagenre: that which, by design or otherwise, was read for the purpose of sexual titillation. For those under the priggish heel of Calvinism, this was an expansive set. Everything from scientific treatises to geographical surveys could be mined by the Puritan for erotic energy.

By way of proof, the most popular book of this type was called Aristotle’s Masterpiece, and reads like [as it, in fact, is] a medical manual for midwives. The modern peruser would be hard-pressed to find anything at all arousing in the text, unless, of course, a dry—yet somehow moralizing—description of a man’s flayed seminal vesicle is to their taste.*** The so-called “captivity narrative” was another popular motif, in which an innocent (read white) woman is captured by “savages”—usually American Indians or Barbary pirates—and subjected to strange (read imaginary) moral frameworks outside the bounds and strictures of her own. Then there was a marginally more explicit undercurrent, evoked in the following real 17th century titles: The School of Venus, La retorica delle puttane (The Whore’s Rhetoric), Letters of a Portuguese Nun, A Ramble in St. James's Park, and the author’s favorite, for obvious reasons: Signior Dildo.

Such was the smut that would have populated the private bookshelf of the Puritan pervert, and a meager indulgence though it may seem, context reveals it for a blessing. As long as the Puritan was attending to his own tortured “yard” (as Aristotle’s Masterpiece insists on referring to the male sex organ), at least he wasn’t buggering his own livestock. There’s more than enough mention of that charming recreation in court records, a fact which Puritan thought leaders justified thusly (once more via Puritans at Play): that “the Devil [only] worked [so] unusually hard to snare sinners from among God's chosen people because he knew what a great victory it was to do so."

-PWJ

*It is possible that even women experience sexual gratification, though the author has never found evidence of such (in spite of much probation).

**Daniels, Bruce Colin. Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

***If it is, the Masterpiece’s single sentence acknowledging the fact of female pleasure is sure to send them right over the edge.

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walnutjuniors · 1 month

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Announcements Ask Anything: Fun or serious questions for Aaron and Tiff. Walnut Classroom: YouTube playlist featuring our podcast.

Features Q&A with Kevin: Personal questions, theology, church planting, and serving. Serving with Sharon, Tiff, and Kevin: How has God led you to serve him?

Giveaway and Reviews The Good Book Company Easter Family Giveaway Sermons on Ephesians by John Calvin What is Faith? by J. Gresham Machen Gospel Life by John Owen Gospel Ministry by John Owen

Recommendations 12 Tips: How to Read the Bible Better Listening Well to Preaching Is a Spiritual Discipline Atomic Habits and Bible Intake: How Tiny Changes Add Up

Schedule 3/24 Aaron (Envy/Jealousy) 3/31 Tiff (Envy/Jealousy) 4/7 Tiff (Special) 4/14 Aaron (Pride/Humility) 4/21 Tiff (Pride/Humility) 4/28 Aaron (Depression/Hope) 5/5 Tiff (Depression/Hope)

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walnutmusic · 1 month

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Announcement Children service log in, new password is: Godissogood

Features Q&A with Kevin: Personal questions, theology, church planting, and serving. Serving with Sharon, Tiff, and Kevin: How has God led you to serve him? Giveaway and Reviews The Good Book Company Easter Family Giveaway Sermons on Ephesians by John Calvin What is Faith? by J. Gresham Machen Gospel Life by John Owen Gospel Ministry by John Owen

Recommendations In Praise of Remarkable Mundanity and Immigrant Church Spaces Why the Church Is More Important than Any Other Christian Organization

Schedule: English (Children’s Worship) 3/24 Matt (Leslie) 3/31 Ian (Aaron) 4/7 Aaron (Danny) 4/14 Bambang (Ray) 4/21 Ray (Jen) 4/28 Matt (Aaron) 5/5 Bambang 5/12 Bambang 5/19 Ray 5/26 Matt (Aaron) 6/2 Aaron 6/9 Bambang 6/16 Ray 6/23 Matt 6/30 Ian (Aaron)

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battleforgodstruth · 1 year

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Contraception Is Monstrous - John Calvin

Contraception Is Monstrous – John Calvin

Contraception Is Monstrous – John Calvin ▶️SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/stack45ny▶️After subscribing, click on NOTIFICATION BELL to be notified of new uploads.▶️SUPPORT CHANNEL: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=RB72ANM8DJL2S&lc=US&item_name=stack45ny&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted My Primary Backup…

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#Christian #Christianity #God #Jesus Christ #John Calvin commentary #John Calvin Sermon #preacher #REFORMED AUDIO SERMON #reformed minister #reformed pastor #reformed preacher #reformed preachers #reformed sermon #reformed sermons #reformed theology

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andrewpcannon · 3 months

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On Salvation and Reprobation

From the debates between Paul and the Gnostics through the ancient dialogue between Augustine and Pelagius to the exchanges between Luther and Erasmus or Calvin’s disciples and those of Arminius to the more modern upheaval between the New Calvinists and Free Willists, the doctrine of election has dominated Christian discussion. Election is the doctrine that most prominently applies directly to…

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musicgoon · 1 month

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Book Review: Sermons on Ephesians, by John Calvin

What did Calvin find captivating about God's redemptive work in Christ? In Sermons on Ephesians, John Calvin exposits the great book of Ephesians.

Preached on Sundays in Geneva in 1558-59 when he was 49 years of age -- this book is a significant part of Reformation history. While I have read The Institutes, this was the first book I can recall having read of Calvin's sermons. This series on Ephesians is exemplary.

Humility and Unity

Calvin is quick to comment on predestination in Ephesians 1, stating that "the Holy Ghost speaks it loud and clear." In Ephesians 2, Calvin calls his hearers to humble themselves, being bound to God by his grace, and in preparation for the good works that God would have them do. This theme of humility is repeated throughout, and I was struck by Calvin's constant application of it to his congregation.

Calvin speaks of enemies of the gospel during Ephesians 3, and I as a reader can't help but think about the opposition he faced in his own day. Ephesians 4 speaks of unity of the church body, and Calvin counts its importance especially in regards to humbling ourselves and holding fast to the head of Christ and his truth. To see Calvin cling to the Word with his work as a pastor was inspiring.

A Hallmark Work of Reformed Preaching

Living upright before men is discussed in Ephesians 5, and Calvin makes a memorable point by saying that as we are enlightened by the Lord, we should endeavor to give light to the unbelievers in this world. Calvin's exposition ends with Ephesians 6 and the Christian's armor to aid in perseverance. I am left with Calvin's hopefulness in the Lord - and Calvin's love for the church.

Written in a calm yet confident voice, this book transports you to the pulpit and pews of John Calvin. Straightforward explanation and insightful application are hallmarks of Reformed preaching -- demonstrated beautifully in this book. Calvin's work on Ephesians is of historical significance and remains wonderfully edifying.

I received a media copy of Sermons on Ephesians and this is my honest review. Find more of my book reviews and follow Dive In, Dig Deep on Instagram - my account dedicated to Bibles and books to see the beauty of the Bible and the role of reading in the Christian life. To read all of my book reviews and to receive all of the free eBooks I find on the web, subscribe to my free newsletter.

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cogitoergofun · 2 months

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Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Tom Parker was downright gleeful.

He quoted Genesis in his sermon — I’m sorry, his concurring opinion — in the Alabama ruling that turned in vitro fertilization on its head by defining frozen embryos as children.

He quoted 17th century Dutch theologian Petrus Van Mastricht. Ya know, good ole Van Mastricht. He quoted a 16th century Bible – because older is closer to God, maybe – and quoted the Sixth Commandment, thou shalt not kill.

He quoted Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin and one of Roy Moore’s old pals at the Foundation for Moral Law in Montgomery. He wrote of the “wrath of God.”

The people of Alabama, he said, decided all this was public policy.

“It is as if the People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, Before you were born I sanctified you.’”

Did I say it wasn’t a sermon? It was definitely a sermon.

To which the Alabama Supreme Court, with the exception of Justice Greg Cook, who dissented, shouted a half-hearted but still resounding amen.

Pausing fertility treatments across Alabama, and the hopes of couples struggling desperately to conceive.

Make no mistake about it. Alabama is a theocracy.

And Tom Parker, a guy who in 2006 berated his court colleagues because they chose not to defy a U.S. Supreme Court order barring execution of people convicted of crimes as juveniles, is its cleric in chief.

Parker has long campaigned on the notion that Alabama judges shouldn’t follow U.S. Supreme Court rulings they didn’t agree with. All that while calling out “activist liberal judges” for things he disagreed with – gay marriage, punishing his pal Roy Moore – and responding with blatant, moralistic activism.

Alabama is a dangerous theocracy.

He is self-anointed as the divine guide to interpret your laws through ancient religious texts and his own 17th century filter. You are subject to his delusions, his interpretation of God, his inner mandate, despite your pesky First Amendment right to believe your own religious truth, or to believe nothing at all.

He is not alone. He has a bunch of amens and a couple awomens on the court to back him up now, in ways that were unimaginable when fellow GOP justices, along with now-congressman Gary Palmer, lambasted him for judicial activism over the death penalty dispute in 2006.

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dwellordream · 2 years

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“...Scotland’s Protestantism was not England’s. Inspired by its clerical leaders’ experience in Geneva, it was Calvinist not only in doctrine but also in government. First in Lowlands towns, then in more rural areas, each parish set up its own consistory court, or “kirk [church] session,” to oversee the religious and moral life of the parish. The session was comprised of the minister and a dozen or so lay elders, chosen from among the merchants and craftsmen of towns, middling landowners in rural areas. These were men of substance but not great nobles and not clergymen. They were initially elected by the congregation, though they later became self-selecting; even then, the congregation had veto power and periodically subjected both elders and minister to a rigorous vetting to expose any faults in their doctrine or behavior.

By the 1580s, parish sessions would form a network in the new organization of presbyteries, whose representatives would in turn meet occasionally in provincial synods and in a national General Assembly to discuss matters of doctrine and discipline. The system was by no means democratic, but at the parish level it was certainly dominated by laymen and commoners rather than nobility. For the first time, laypeople not of high birth had a real say in how their church was to be run. It was run with great fervor and intensity. From their founding, sessions ran a campaign of Sabbath observance, catechism and examination, and close moral oversight that would put even the English Puritan agenda to shame.

Absentees from Sunday sermons were fined, and while elders in the kirk took attendance, others were designated “searchers” to prowl the parish during the service and detect absentees. Boys found playing golf were whipped; drinkers in alehouses paid heavy fines. Town sessions enforced attendance at weekday sermons as well, ensuring that the Protestant message became firmly embedded in the minds of the people. Parents were told to instruct their children in religion, supplementing the regular Sunday afternoon catechism in the kirk. A translation of Calvin’s Catechism was provided, along with John Knox’s Scots Confession, in the Book of Common Order published regularly after 1562; a Gaelic translation of this volume was published in 1567 for use in the Highlands and Isles.

And to ensure that the catechism took hold, the entire population of the parish underwent individual examination by elders before each communion. If they passed, they received a token that would admit them to the sacrament. If they failed, they would be “dealt with” by the session and fined for failure to communicate. Clinging to Catholic ideas was in Scotland an expensive proposition. Misbehavior cost even more—not just in money, but in public humiliation. Those “searchers” also made unannounced weekday visits to their assigned households to seek out fornicators, adulterers, drunkards, blasphemers, and quarrelers, as well as anyone who might be celebrating a forbidden holiday (including Christmas and Easter).

These unfortunates were then prosecuted and subjected to a distinctively Scottish form of public humiliation. In each parish church, a new piece of furniture appeared after 1560—the “stool of repentance,” where moral offenders were ordered to sit in penitential garb through the Sunday service. They stood on the stool after the sermon to confess their sins aloud, often holding some symbol of their offense. An abusive wife in Leith, for instance, had to appear in sackcloth holding both the staff with which she had injured her husband and the napkin used to staunch his wound; an Inveravon man had to hold a stalk of grain for “breach of the sabbath in shearing of corn.”

People who had slandered their neighbors followed their public confessions with a procession to the place where they had misspoken and apologized on their knees to their victims, who then shook hands or kissed them in token of reconciliation. Few would escape the elders’ rigor; those not found by the searchers were very often reported by their neighbors. Too often modern students conclude from the invasiveness of the sessions that they must have been unpopular. The challenge for us is to set aside modern notions of privacy and individual rights and to explain why communities in fact accepted—indeed, sponsored and actively collaborated with—the new discipline. This is a system that could not have worked at all without a great deal of popular cooperation.

And surviving minute books of sessions attest to the fact that it did work. We find in those books that some people voluntarily confessed to the elders sins that would otherwise go undetected—a married couple admitting sexual intercourse during a fasting season, for instance. Clearly, many perceived a value in public confession as a way of relieving guilt. The kirk’s discipline presumably also garnered popular support for its relatively even handed policies. There was, for example, no sexual double standard: male as well as female fornicators underwent punishment. Social status impinged rather more; still, lairds, lords, elders, and ministers can be found right along with their social inferiors and parishioners repenting from the stool.

And what better way to reconcile quarrels and reduce the violence level of a still-feuding society than public chastisement of the troublemaker? The sessions were run by the common people, at the most local level; they were therefore quickly responsive to the needs of the community. They provided a range of useful social services designed to build a more orderly society. They administered poor relief, schools (for girls as well as boys), and fostering of orphaned or abandoned children. They intervened in domestic violence, requiring abusive spouses and parents to mend their ways, and they forced absent fathers to support their children and adult children to sustain their aged parents.

They rescued the reputations of the slandered, and they mitigated violence by offering binding arbitration of quarrels. However distasteful modern people might find their prying and punishing, they served early modern communities much as the police and welfare agencies of the modern state do. The lay governors of the Reformed kirk also broadened its appeal by exercising some flexibility in discipline. The clergy might rail against dancing and festivity, for instance, but the elders in fact punished it lightly, reserving their sterner penalties for high-priority offenses like Sabbath breach. They were no fools. They knew that if their priorities were set on sermon attendance and catechism, the transformation of hearts and minds would be accomplished more efficiently, and “superstitious” festivals would die off in due course.

As to popular magic, sessions did sometimes initiate the charges of witchcraft that give early modern Scotland such a bad name. But the witch craze was most vehement when the circumstances of the community were most dire—in times of local disasters like dearth or pestilence. Popular healers carried on for years without being troubled by the authorities; only when their potions ended in otherwise unexplained deaths, or the community fell prey to diseases of cattle or crops, did their neighbors begin to associate them with new, clerical theories of diabolic witchcraft. Until then, we find elders and even ministers acknowledging a parallel cosmology of amoral sprites and fairies, the Gaelic tradition of “second sight,” natural magic and healing charms, running alongside their rigorously Calvinist system.

John Aubrey called the same phenomenon in England “the remains of gentilism,” and David Hall has shown us that New England’s Puritans believed in similar “worlds of wonder.” We ought to bear in mind that early modern belief was multifaceted and more syncretistic than we generally suppose. The Reformation succeeded best where its converts were allowed a bit of room to accommodate the competing cosmologies of their experience. It was a tacit negotiation between evangelical clerics and ordinary folk that helped to ensure the ultimate success of the cultural change demanded by Protestantism. The negotiation took a different form in the Gàidhealtachd, the Gaelic-speaking, clan-based society of the Highlands and Isles.

In those sparsely populated regions it was more difficult to organize kirk sessions than in the towns and villages of the Lowlands and eastern coast; there were probably very few until after the turn of the century. But the reformers had met the challenge of evangelizing across language and cultural barriers with characteristic flexibility. They adapted to Gaelic culture, rather than trying to change it, by first recruiting the support of powerful chieftains and of the “learned orders”—the poets, bards, and sennachies (historians) who maintained the oral tradition of Gaelic learning (and were equally conversant in Scots and Latin).

The fifth earl of Argyll, chief of Clan Campbell, was particularly influential in the process. With this base, Protestant bishops in Galloway, Orkney, and Argyll distributed Bishop Carswell’s translation of the Book of Common Order and recruited Gaelic-speaking preachers and readers. The latter translated the scriptures into the language of the people as they read weekly in parish kirks to a nearly universally illiterate population best attuned to oral transmission of ideas. By the time Franciscan missionaries finally showed up to reconvert the Highlands in the 1620s, they found a population won over by decades of fervent Protestant preaching and catechizing.

Modern estimates of Catholic survival at the turn of the century for all of Scotland are around 2 percent—no mean achievement. Finally, in Scotland as in England, the perceived political threat of popery cemented popular affiliation with Protestantism, so much so that any hint of a return to “popish superstition” inspired violent popular protest. This was particularly true after the 1605 Gunpowder Plot— a conspiracy of Catholic radicals to blow up both houses of the Westminster parliament on its opening day on November 5, when King James would be present, and replace him with a Catholic monarch. Catholicism was by the seventeenth century perceived as treason in both realms.

In Scotland, where the set liturgy had been abolished at the Reformation, popular antipopery was most strikingly displayed when James’s successor, Charles I, tried in 1637 to impose an English-style liturgical service on the kirk. Like the English prayer book, the structure of the service was based on the Mass; unlike the English, the Scots would have none of it. All sorts of people—not just clergy or Puritans— protested the book. The bishop of Brechin reportedly had to read it holding a pair of loaded pistols aimed at his angry congregation, and in Edinburgh’s Saint Giles parish both women and men, humble and well-off alike, protested by throwing their stools at the dean reading the despised service.”

- Margo Todd, “A People’s Reformation?” in Reformation Christianity

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