I’m currently reading Doug Sweeney’s new book, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought, and came upon this quite helpful description of the type of worship service that one could expect in an 18th century colonial American church. Sweeney describes,

After an Old Testament reading (usually at least a chapter in length), the minister “gave the sense” of the text, offered a New Testament lesson (typically lectio continua, continuous reading, week by week, of major sections of Scripture) and then explained that text as well. The people sang a metrical psalm. The pastor led a corporate prayer of public confession and intercession. Then he preached a massive, exegetical sermon (usually one to two hours in length). After another corporate prayer, often lasting half an hour, the congregation sang another psalm and heard the benediction (which was usually from the Bible).

One could absolutely conclude, as Sweeney does, that worship services in colonial New England were thoroughly centered and grounded upon the Scriptures. One could even go farther, stepping outside the narrow, ecclesiastical context, to claim that much of everyday life in the colonies was centered around the Scriptures. Religion touched every aspect of one’s life (social, familial, vocational, etc.), and and this is one of the biggest keys to understanding early to mid 18th century American society (things drastically change in the latter part of the century largely due to Enlightenment influences and movement toward revolution and independence). This, of course, is largely foreign to us in the 21st century and results in a good deal of misrepresentation of our colonial forebears.

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