“God stands this day and knocks”¹

It is a Sunday in 1661 in Newbury, a small town in Massachusetts Bay Colony. All go to the meetinghouse for worship. It has been three days since the Thursday lecture, since all were together. They gather early. Husbands peel off from their wives to sit to the minister’s right. Wives peel off from their husbands to sit to the minister’s left (Holifield, 1993, p. 557). Couples mirror each other in their seating; the main avenue of the meetinghouse, the aisle that all community members walk to find their seats, loudly affirming that here in this communion of saints, all believers, regardless of gender, must make any worldly position second to their role as brides to Christ (Bremer, 1995, p. 115). They come together and face God squarely, themselves unburdened by civil transactions such as marriage. And it’s this spatial configuration that illuminates the paradox of the Puritan identity: husband and wife sit separately, but mirrored. God considers souls individually, but the community conceives of its mission as an attempt at total utopia: a collection of saints. God judges each alone, but they are together in their aloneness.

The entire community is present, for fear of being fined or whipped (Holifield, 1993, p. 561). Children, indentured servants, enslaved Africans, Native Americans, and the poor shuffle into their own galleries at the back of the meetinghouse (p. 557). Those who are lucky enough to be members of the church - those who have offered a compelling conversion narrative to the church pillars attesting their conviction that they are one of the saved - are seated closest to the minister. These lucky few, these certain saints, can take part in the sacrament commemorating Christ’s Last Supper (Hambrick-Stowe, 1986, p. 125).

The service starts with a prayer from the pastor, improvisational in nature but conceived by a mind of astounding Biblical knowledge. Then comes a reading from the scripture, to which the pastor offers a sermon. And finally, the morning service ends with the congregation singing a psalm (Hambrick-Stowe, 1986, p. 103). It is cacophonous, as sacred music in 17th-century Massachusetts has yet to be regulated, its instruction standardized, by the religious community (Holifield, 1993, p. 564). The morning service lasts about three hours in total. Then, all attendees are released for an hour dinner (Old Puritan Sunday, 1860, p. 125). After a quick meal, the community returns for an afternoon service that ostensibly mirrors the morning. The meal acts much like the center aisle of the meetinghouse - a reconfiguration, a brief return to the mortal concerns of eating and family and home that each church-going Puritan balances against the knowledge that all will come back to the meetinghouse to examine the state of each of their souls individually.

And so, after eating, they gather again in much the same way.

The pews are made of hardwood. One must be silent and still while the pastor prays and sermonizes. In the summer it is hot. In the winter it is cold.²

Proceed to
The Dyeing of the Dress

¹A quote from Thomas Hooker’s Application of Redemption, First Eight Books (as cited in Hambrick-Stowe). 

²Works Cited