Overview

Four hundred years ago, a group of men and women who had challenged the religious establishment of early seventeenth-century England and struggled as refugees in the Netherlands risked everything to build a new community in America. The story of those who journeyed across the Atlantic on the Mayflower has been retold many times, but the faith and religious practices of these settlers has frequently been neglected or misunderstood.In One Small Candle, Francis J. Bremer focuses on the role of religion in the settlement of the Plymouth Colony and how those values influenced political, intellectual, and cultural aspects of New England life a hundred and fifty years before the American Revolution. He traces the Puritans' persecution in early seventeenth-century England for challenging the established national church and the difficulties they faced as refugees in the Netherlands in the 1610s. As they planted a colony in America, this group of puritan congregationalists was driven by the belief that ordinary men and women should play the deciding role in governing church affairs. Their commitment to lay empowerment and participatory democracy was reflected in congregational church covenants and inspired the earliest political forms of the region, including the Mayflower Compact and local New England town meetings. Their rejection of individual greed and focus on community, Bremer argues, defined the culture of English colonization in early North America.A timely narrative of the people who founded the Plymouth Colony, One Small Candle casts new light on the role of religion in the shaping of the United States.

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9780197510049

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Reviews

Francis Bremer's definitive account of the high ideals of Plymouth Colony is a rich and moving narrative of the experiment in congregationalism that was the blueprint for a participatory democracy. In a masterly synthesis of existing scholarship, the eminent historian of New England cuts away myths about women's roles, relations with native Americans, and the links with other colonies. * Rebecca Fraser, author of The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America * There is no one better than Francis Bremer, after a lifetime of research on early America, to introduce an old story in an absorbingly new way. One of the great founding narratives of American life is here seen through the eyes of a scholar who leads us on a clear and accessible path and reminds us that this is a tale of two cultures meeting as much as it is an epic of Pilgrim Parents. * Diarmaid MacCulloch, University of Oxford * Francis Bremer's One Small Candle is a remarkable achievement. Drawing on the latest scholarship about the Native peoples of New England and centering his narrative on the Plymouth puritans' religiosity, Bremer replaces Americans' myths about dark-garbed 'Pilgrims' and the purported 'First Thanksgiving' with a well-crafted, historically accurate account of Plymouth Colony that should attract many interested readers. * Mary Beth Norton, author of Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society * This book shines a light on a period and a culture that contributed greatly to the formation of our best institutions, educational, political, and cultural. It is rare to see a historian treat the Puritans with real objectivity, allowing a generous acknowledgement of the contributions their democratic and reformist ethos made at a crucial time in our history. * Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead *

Author Information

Francis J. Bremer is Professor Emeritus of History at Millersville University and the Coordinator of New England Beginnings, a partnership formed to commemorate the cultures that shaped New England four hundred years ago. An eminent scholar of Puritanism in the Atlantic world, he is the author of the prize-winning John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father (OUP, 2003); First Founders: American Puritans and Puritanism in the Atlantic World; and Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, a Puritan in Three Worlds, among other titles.

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