Generations and Regeneration: “Sexceptionalism” and Group Identity among Puritans in Colonial New England

Abstract

A s P u ritan c o l o n is t s v e n t u r e d to North America, they expe rienced a set of obligations deeply connected to their identity' as English subjects. To the Crown they pledged the settlement of a new continent that would further promote the monarchy's growing empire. To God they vowed to be models of "Christian charitie" as they cared for each other in a harsh new environment.1 And for their own fulfillment they promised commitment to pure Christianity, extending the dissent that had led them to pursue distance from England as well as its church.2 While colonial New Thanks to my colleagues 333 334 Kathy J. C ooke Englanders denigrated the world they had left-they believed England's cor ruption would be punished by God-they experienced an internal struggle with regard to the authority of the Crown and their status as English sub jects. The trinity of obligation, combined with their ambivalence regarding England and their experience of a hostile and foreign environment, created for the Puritans a powerful and at times contradictory collection o f expec tations regarding population growth, identity, and reproduction-each related directly to sexuality.These New English settlers used notions of "generation" and "regen eration" to create a surprising, multifaceted discourse about sexuality that ultimately created a revised sense of group identity and continuity.* * 3 Unpack ing this trope, overlooked in the extraordinarily rich literature on colonial sexuality, reveals a prenational tribe that developed identity across generations partially, but significantly, through sexual expectations and behavior.4 In es sence, from the first to the second and third generations they redefined their reproductive and sexual imperative. To use Benedict Anderson's terms for nationalism, the Puritans show the "transforming of fatality into continuity" and "links between the dead and the yet unborn, the mystery of regenera tion"-but with religion intact and infused with sexuality. More precisely, Puritan continuity was expressed substantially in religious terms, and these terms were intimately bound up with sex and generation.5Recent historical scholarship has uncovered fascinating details about sex in colonial America while also suggesting new analytical approaches and subject matter. This body of work explores attitudes toward marital and heterosexual sex, as well as less common practices of homosexuality, bestial ity, and sexual violence, and it has distinguished everyday sexual lives and William Bradford and the Pilgrims found the Church of England too corrupt for redemption. Known as "separatists," these settlers had no intention o f returning. Despite this tradition, Bradford wrote that these "loyall subjects" sailed "for the glorie of god, and advancement of