Congregationalism was the religion the Puritans created when they came to the Eastern Woodlands in 1630, and for centuries Congregationalism has been studied as a purely English religion - except for brief mentions of missions to the Indigenous people of this place, such as that by John Eliot. But Congregationalism was not purely English. It was what people at the time would call a “mixed” denomination, embraced and evolved by Black and Indigenous people through church belonging.

This talk by independent scholar Lori Rogers-Stokes, likely well known to you as a brilliant moderator of PHB events and original and eloquent speaker, explored the active participation of Indigenous people in the making of Congregationalism.

As she explains in her new book, Gathered into a Church: Indigenous-English Congregationalism in Woodland New England, Lori uncovers the way that Indigenous Congregationalists were crucial in the most foundational aspect of the denomination: how to become a church member.

First, they broadened the English definition of “assurance” - what modern Protestantism calls “salvation” - based on their inherited practice of spiritual kinship. Then, they adopted the Halfway Covenant, an idea put forward by English ministers in 1662. The Halfway Covenant was originally focused on allowing people whose parents were church members to maintain their own membership. Indigenous adoption expanded its benefits to people who had no existing ties to a congregation.

Using Congregational church records that have been lost or unavailable to the public for centuries, Lori Rogers-Stokes will show how the Indigenous faithful played a powerful role in maintaining and strengthening the so-called " religion of the Puritans” over the century between 1650 and 1750. She’ll also show you how you can explore Congregational church records on your own, through the Congregational Library & Archives’ Hidden Histories project.

Lori Rogers-Stokes is an independent scholar, public historian, and contributing editor for New England’s Hidden Histories, a digital history project making thousands of pages of colonial-era Congregational church records available through digitization and transcription. She is the author of Records of Trial from Thomas Shepard’s Church in Cambridge, 1638–49: Heroic Souls (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Her new book, Gathered into a Church: Indigenous-English Congregationalism in Woodland New England, published by the University of Massachusetts Press, is just out. Lori studies the history of Woodland New England, particularly the founding decades of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when Indigenous people and English colonizers took actions that continue to shape our lives today.

Order your copy of Gathered into a Church: Indigenous-English Congregationalism in Woodland New England now, using this link: https://www.umasspress.com/9781625349071/gathered-into-a-church/ Use the code UMASS20 for a discount.

For more about Lori Rogers-Stokes, see https://www.loristokes.com/