Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early ... and the University of North Carolina Press)

by Douglas L. Winiarski

Parkman’s acquiescence to Andrews’s demands signaled the ascendancy of individual experience over corporate discipline. Church membership no longer related to parish boundaries, ecclesiastical order, or community expectations. Instead, as Cleaveland’s parishioners in Chebacco explained in a landmark series of votes, all individuals had the right to judge for themselves where to worship, regardless of “Lines drawn by the civil Majestrate,” and any church member could move from one congregation to another based solely on the “Principle of Edification.”