The Cambridge Companion To Puritanism -- By: Randall J. Pederson

Journal: Puritan Reformed Journal
Volume: PRJ 01:2 (Jul 2009)
Article: The Cambridge Companion To Puritanism
Author: Randall J. Pederson


The Cambridge Companion To Puritanism

Randall J. Pederson

John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (New York: Cambridge university Press, 2008), hardcover, 386 pages.

This long-anticipated volume presents twenty of the finest essays on British and American Puritanism. Coffey and Lim enlisted a broad array of British and American scholars. Each essay concludes with a “Further Reading” section, which, though brief, is helpful for probing deeper into the subjects presented.

The word “puritan,” originally a term of contempt towards those reformist wings in the Church of England, has evolved over its four-hundred-year history to include all sorts of affectative attitudes and beliefs —“puritan” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism is more narrowly defined in its historic and theological sensibility. Described as a “distinctive and particularly intense variety of early modern Reformed Protestantism” (back cover, “Introduction”), Puritanism has regained academic and lay interest over the past fifty years and has prompted theologians and historians to explore such tenets as covenant, gender, literature, politics, and popular culture. Recent trends seek to explore Puritanism in its Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and European versions as well as English and American. The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism thus provides a holistic approach that is welcome and comprehensive. As intellectual and social historians battle for preeminence in the humanities, it seems that a broad, expansive analysis will undoubtedly become characteristic of both schools (for example, compare the methods in Richard A. Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics with John Spurr’s The Post-Reformation: Religion, Politics, and Society in Britain, 1603-1714).

Divided into four sections (English Puritanism, Beyond England, Major themes, Puritanism and posterity), The Cambridge Companion to

Puritanism includes essays by several prominent historians, including Patrick Collinson, Tom Webster, John Spurr, Anthony Milton, Francis Bremer, David D. Hall, Crawford Gribben, Margo Todd, David R. Como, Jeffrey K. Jue, Ann Hughes, John Coffey, and Peter Lake. These essays present a tour de force of the best in recent, early modern, Reformed scholarship. The worth of this collection cannot be overstated. For the most recent history of Puritanism and its lessons in historiography, one need only consult this fine Companion. From the growth of Puritanism in its genesis to the interaction of Puritanism with other Reformed cultures to the problem of Scottish Puritanism to the practical divinity of Puritan di...

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