(Ebook) The Spice of Popery : Converging Christianities on an Early American Frontier by Laura Chmielewski ISBN 9780268076948, 0268076944

(Ebook) The Spice of Popery : Converging Christianities on an Early American Frontier by Laura Chmielewski ISBN 9780268076948, 0268076944

The title for this work comes from the Puritan minister Increase Mather, who used the colorful metaphor to express his concern about the state of English Protestantism. Like many New Englanders, Mather's fears about the creeping influence of French Catholicism stemmed from English conflicts with France that spilled over into the colonial frontiers from French Canada. The most consistently fragile of these frontiers was the Province of Maine, notorious for attracting settlers who had one foot out the door of New England Puritanism. It was there that English Protestants and French Catholics came into frequent contact. The Spice of Popery: Converging Christianities on an Early American Frontier shows how, between the volatile years of 1688 to 1727, the persistence of Catholic people and culture in New England's border regions posed consistent challenges to the bodies and souls of frontier Protestants.