Coming into Communion

Laura Henigman earned her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. Her teaching and writing focus on the religious and political discourses of early America.

"Coming Into Communion tells a compelling story about significant early American texts and the people whose lives they represent. Each case study illuminates the subject in many ways, bringing fresh insights and perspectives to bear on familiar issues, while recovering voices that have not received as much attention or that had been covered by the voices of their interlocutors, in their own times and by the critical tradition. The book will cause scholars in many areas to reexamine critical assumptions." — David H. Watters, University of New Hampshire"This is a well-written, well-researched treatment of the dialogic relationship between women and their ministers in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England. The great strength of the book is its detailed readings of primary sources in a little-explored archive. We learn a great deal more than ever before about Jane Coleman Turrell and about the numerous 'criminal' women of the seventeenth century." — Janice Knight, University of Chicago

• Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction Chapter One. To Love And Make A Lie: Narratives Of Infanticide Clerical Anxiety and the Execution Sermon"One Word": Sexuality and SeparationCompeting Communities and the Erasure of MaternityThe Pastoral Encounter: Maternity and Community in the Sermons of John RogersThe Passion of Esther Rogers: "Freedom of Spirit, and Liberty of Speech"A Note on the Negro Lad"To Prevent Lives Being Lost": Community Responsibility and the Bastard Neonaticide ActJuries of WomenLessons of Caution for Young Sinners: Silencing a "Child of the Town""A Witness against Myself": The Challenge of Reconnection through Maternity Chapter Two. On Wedlock And The Birth Of Children: The "Pious And Ingenious" Jane Colman TurellPiety or Ingenuity?Piety and Ingenuity: Jane Colman Turell and the Tradition of Women's Religious Poetry"The Voice Leisurely Ascends": Jane Colman Turell and Psalm ParaphrasingCome to the MarriageBenjamin Colman and Marriage: "Union by Vision"Tho'ts on Matrimony": Jane Turell at MedfordComing into Communion: Jane Colman Turell and the Travailing WomanAftermath Chapter Three. Flowing And Reflowing: Dialogic Emanations The Danger of NarrativeThe Body EnspiritedSarah Edwards in Northampton Epilogue Notes Works Cited and Consulted Index