Some Phases of Sexual Morality and Church Discipline in Colonial New England

Charles Francis Adams turns his keen historical eye onto the moral machinery of Colonial New England, excavating the records of the First Church of Quincy to reveal what actually happened behind the respectable facade of Puritan society. This is not the story the Puritans told about themselves. Adams meticulously traces how church authorities navigated the treacherous waters of sexual transgression, forced confessions, and community accountability, uncovering a gulf between public profession and private behavior that would have shocked the godly. The cases he examines range from fornication to spectral evidence, from public shaming to spiritual manipulation. What emerges is a portrait of a society that wielded sin as a tool of social control while its own members quietly transgressed. Adams writes with the detached precision of a historian and the skepticism of a man who understood how power disguises itself as righteousness. For readers interested in the gap between a culture's ideals and its actual practices, this remains a bracing, unflinching work.