Religion and Spirituality in American Literature
By Julia A. Keirns
I, starting up, the light did spy,
And to my God my heart did cry
To straighten me in my distress
And not to leave me succourless,
(Bradstreet, Upon the Burning of Our House)
Anne Bradstreet cried out to God in her distress. It was the first thing she did when she saw the fire burning down her house. She was just one writer of the Colonial Period who incorporated her religious beliefs into her writing. As a Puritan and a follower of John Calvin, she believed that God was sovereign and all powerful and chose people for either blessings or hardships. Everything that happened to her was God trying to tell her something. If she was healthy and doing well, she was on the right path. If hardships came along, such as fire or sickness, then she must have strayed away, and God was trying to bring her back to the right path. She didn’t want to be angry about her house burning down, so she prayed for God to help her understand and see the reason behind it. She believed God was preparing her for a better life, or that God was trying to tell her not to be so attached to worldly things. When she was sick, she wrote about it in her poem “Upon A Fit of Sickness.” She still did not blame God or be angry with him. She accepted whatever came her way as the divine plan of God. I believe that during this period in time, most of the Puritans were afraid of God’s punishment and lived their lives always trying to please God to stay in his good graces.
Move ahead to the Era of Enlightenment and Jonathan Edwards expressed his religious beliefs in his writings as well. In his Personal Narrative he writes about “two or more remarkable seasons of awakening” in his younger life. He tells about his first experiences with God as a child, and how his emotions became so strong for a time. He prayed fervently and spent much time with God during this time. Eventually the emotion of coming into a closer relationship with God wore off and he fell back into his sinful ways as a dog returns to his vomit. Edwards grew up to become a Puritan preacher and believed that his childhood experiences with God and sitting in his father’s congregation had a lot to do with his beliefs. There was more of an understanding of having a personal relationship with God during this era as opposed to fearing God as the Puritans did in the past and he was still trying to figure out what having that personal relationship with God meant so he could change the way his parishioners thought of God and their relationship with Him. In Edwards’ writings we can see growth in his relationship with God. People were coming to a new understanding that God loved them and just wanted what was best for them. They were learning to love God more and see him in nature. God as the creator of nature was a huge theme during the Enlightenment Era.
The third and final author I would like to discuss is Nathaniel Hawthorne from the Romanticism. His view of religion in his writings is much darker than the two previous writers I have discussed. I believe Hawthorne viewed religion as corrupt. Guilt, sin and evil were the main focuses of most of his writings. He believed there was a lot of hypocrisy in the religious sector. I don’t think he himself was a religious man or attended church of any kind, although I do not know this for sure, so his views of religion were from an outsider’s point of view. He was not an atheist, but he saw most religious people as corrupt and sinful and this is probably why he himself never became a religious man. In “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne shows how everyone is capable of sin and no one is exempt. In “The Minister’s Black Veil” he shows how everyone feels guilty and just wants to cover up their sin, even the minister. And finally, even in “The Scarlet Letter” his main theme is sin. Maybe since he himself was not a religious man, he saw those who did think of themselves as religious acting like they were better than everyone else. But deep inside he knew they were just as sinful as non-religious people. He knew it and he wanted the world to know it too.
Works Cited
“An Autobiography, A PERSONAL NARRATIVE, by Jonathan Edwards.” Reformed Theology at A Puritan’s Mind, https://www.apuritansmind.com/puritan-favorites/jonathan-edwards/biographical-writings/edwards-personal-narrative/
Bradstreet, Anne. “Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666 by Anne Bradstreet.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43707/verses-upon-the-burning-of-our-house-july-10th-1666
Stuart, John W. “Hawthorne’s Faith and Religion: Introduction.” Hawthorne in Salem, http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Literature/Faith&Religion/Introduction.html