New Light Family Values: Sex & Salvation in Revolutionary New England

American evangelicals haven’t always been conservatives. Join award-winning historian Douglas Winiarski as we look back to the Revolutionary era in which the most radical evangelicals questioned everything: family structures, gender roles, sexual identities, and marital arrangements. In this illustrated presentation, Winiarski argues that the people called “New Lights” in New England—progenitors of the modern evangelical movement—experienced problems involving the dualism of mind and body with greater intensity than other kinds of Protestants. If the Whitefieldian new-birth experience engendered a sense of certitude among revival converts about the state of their elect, born-again souls, it also made them acutely aware of the persistent failings of their all-too-earthly bodies. Sexuality, marriage, and family structures thus became issues of deep and abiding concern for many lay men and women in Revolutionary New England. Solving the conundrum of immortal souls constrained by mortal bodies became a lifelong obsession. Douglas L. Winiarski is professor of religious studies and American studies the University of Richmond.

Members $10, General Admission $15