What follows is not a critical book review of Stephen Foster's, The Long Argument. At the beginning, I do say a few things about the content and significance of the book. But for the most part, I'm simply writing about some of my reflections and curiosities as I was reading.
Foster, Stephen. The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of
New England Culture, 1570-1700.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Foster begins this fine, influential survey of Puritan history with a general
observation: American historians have written as though they assumed that
English migration to America represented a brand new beginning, something
separate from everything else before. Whenever these historians have
acknowledged transatlantic connections, invariably these have been connections
to England. Along this line, the author reminds us that the Spanish
established settlements in America at least as early as the English. Yet,
American historians have normally called those earliest Spanish settlements
“borderlands,” which are “peripheral by definition” (2).
Foster notes that Puritan studies have not avoided this common feature of
American historiography. Thus, the American chapter of Puritan history has
usually been isolated from its English parentage. This, says Foster, has
resulted in a number of misunderstandings and poor reconstructions of the past.
Without some longer view that fuses
the American and English histories of the Puritans and thereby locates enduring
commitments and points of accord in decade after decade of reverses, internal
divisions, and lamentations of decline the inevitable temptation has been to
single out as definitive some one characteristic or another of a much broader
movement and to tie the fate of a protean phenomenon to purely temporary
Given that set of circumstances, Foster issues the following prescription
and expectation: "Reassemble the English and American halves, examine the
result over time, and with a proper regard to its settings, and the rough
outline of the beast becomes visible enough" (5). With that, the author
takes the reader on a masterful tour that begins during the reign of Queen Elizabeth
I and ends with the First Great Awakening whose events so ruptured Puritanism
that by 1800 “there was no longer a movement” (290). In telling this longer
version of the story, Foster demonstrates the validity of what stands behind the main title of his book.
Near the end, he explains that The Long Argument does not refer so much
to disputes or even to a particular dispute, “but to the continuing narrative”
of at least 130 years of Puritan history (287).
Along the way, the author provides a
good number of important insights on his topic, as well as some significant
additions and corrections to the secondary literature. In what follows, I will
report a few of these (the ones that really struck me), and will also mention
some of the daydreams and questions that occurred to me as I was reading this
In Chapter 1, “The Elizabethan Contribution,” Foster says that one of the
early hallmarks of Puritanism was a tension according to which (a) an
individual must not live a life that is random. You cannot live as you want nor
do as you please. To state it positively, there must be a better, greater
purpose to a person’s life than simply pursuing one's own desires. But (b), said
the Puritans, the church and the secular powers are failing in their duties to
promote and enforce this ideal (9). I was especially interested in a related
section where Foster describes how English Puritans had a stock literary
character: the decent person who is really not engaged in religious matters. He
is disinterested and ignorant. Yet he assumes he has nothing to worry about.
After all, he’s really not much worse than anyone else (38-39).
I was intrigued by this because, looking back from the time of the Puritans,
the impulse just described appears to be a theme among the followers of John
Wyclif. I am aware that having studied a little about the Lollards, I am
susceptible to seeing their influence everywhere. Still, we have the following
statement from Foster himself:
The Lollards do merit a place in the
prehistory of Puritanism because they persisted as an exclusively popular
heresy for several generations after the authorities had frightened off the
movement's original university-based leadership and its knightly supporters and
because in some undetermined and perhaps indeterminable way they contributed to
the Reformation itself (7).
So I wonder: in the Puritan trope identified above, are we looking at
something that is at least in part a vestige of Lollardy? In his informal
heresy trial before Archbishop Thomas Arundel, for example, the Lollard priest
William Thorpe laments what “a great pity and sorrow” it is “that many men and
women do their own wayward will; nor busy them not to know nor to do the
pleasant will of God” (103). Later, Thorpe complains to Arundel that religion
in England is so confused that those regarded to be out of the faith are really
in, and vice versa. Remarkably, at least in this part of the examination,
Thorpe does not distinguish the two groups along the lines of propositional
truth. Instead, his accusation against people who are wrongly considered true
members of Christ’s Church has more to do with their neglect of the things that
matter most. According to Thorpe, these people “neither know nor have will to
know nor to occupy their wits truly and effectuously in the right faith of Holy
Church” (122). [The text used here is found in Alfred W. Pollard, FifteenthCentury Prose and Verse (New York: Cooper Square, 1964), 101-67]. Of
course, it would take much more than this to demonstrate a line of historical
influence. But to my ears, Foster’s description and Thorpe’s accusation sound
Moving forward from the time of the Puritans, I think about some of my own
experiences growing up going to church. A minor theme in the sermons I heard
back then was, if you’re going to be God’s person, then you must necessarily
rise above the ordinary. The world being what it is, to be average is to be
displeasing to God. More frequently, I heard that sincerity is not enough. One
can be sincerely wrong. And, balancing bad deeds with good will not work. Good
deeds are not the antidote to sin.
In Chapter 2, “Continuity and Ambiguity, ‘The Gospel Doing,’ 1590-1630”
Foster tells us about Robert Cawdry, a radical Puritan of the late sixteenth
century. Cawdry produced and refined “the first monolingual English dictionary”
as a means of helping the common people to learn more from the sermons they
heard (66). Clear definition, he believed, was basic to growing in knowledge.
There is a lot of truth to that, of course. But here’s what really struck me as
I read about Cawdry’s project: In the sermons I heard growing up, the
dictionary was almost as likely to be quoted as the Bible. Not as often, of
course. Usually, if the dictionary (almost always, Webster’s) was cited in a
sermon, then that citation came at the beginning (much in the way of debates,
where defining terms was a basic part of the first speech). In my experience,
some theological definitions were mentioned so often, we came to memorize them.
The first mention of “grace” almost always came with the reminder that this
word means “unmerited favor ” (a definition that, strangely, is true enough
while not really getting to the heart of the Christian message, which offers
forgiveness in spite of demerits). And then there were these sort of
folksy definitions that weren’t really accurate. But because they were so
memorable, so preachable, ministers found them irresistible. For example,
“justified” meant “just as if I’d” never sinned. Break up the word “atonement”
and you get “at one ment,” and so on.
When reading about Cawdry and his dictionary, I also thought about Sherman,
Texas, during the first half of 1904. That was the scene of T. B. Larimore’s
gospel meeting that lasted six months. Larimore preached at two services every
day, and three times on Sunday: fifteen sermons a week. David Lipscomb, then
editor of the Gospel Advocate in Nashville, took an interest in the
extraordinary meeting and wrote to Larimore asking him to report. Larimore’s
reply includes this tidbit: “What books do I consult? The Bible, Webster's
Dictionary, and the Bible--these three, and no more.” For more about this
famous Churches of Christ episode, see an earlier blog post of mine.
In Chapter 5, Foster describes the circumstances in New England which led to
the so-called Halfway Covenant. This is an example of where a longer treatment
can be significantly more revealing. I say this because, although Edmund Morgan
discusses the same episode in his book Visible Saints, he does not
describe the particulars, at least not to the extent that Foster does.
Foster makes the case that at least two things led to the development of the
Halfway Covenant: First, in New England, the descendants of the Puritans who
migrated to New England did not have the same volume and quality of religious
sources that their forefathers had had in England; not as many pamphlets,
books, sermons, etc.
Second, as the population in New England grew larger, it grew younger. The
percentage of very young people, all of them born in America, and all of them
without the benefit of the religious “means” known in England, was remarkably
high. To their parents and grandparents, they seemed hopelessly irreligious.
Foster explains that the Halfway Covenant,developed in 1656-57, essentially said that these young people who had come of
age (16 or older) were still members of the church. However, until they could
convince their congregations that they had had the experience of saving grace,
they were not considered in communion with the church. Therefore, they could
not participate in the Lord’s Supper and were not permitted to vote. And he
makes it a special point to say that “all of the seventeen clergymen at the
assembly were English-born; all but two were English-educated and had come to
America as adults” (187-88). Foster’s description went a long way in helping me
to get a feel for what was to Puritans of the time a situation that had to be