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

By the time John Brown was ordained in 1719, the practice of composing written relations had decisively transformed the meaning of church affiliation. Established during the years surrounding the Antinomian controversy of the 1630s, the test of a relation initially served to inoculate New England’s gathered churches against the revelatory claims of radicals such as Anne Hutchinson.