the
Quickening - monograph, published by Marianne Boesky Gallery NY
and Arndt & Partner, Berlin/Zürich
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a
spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is
dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks
upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire."
-Jonathan Edwards, excerpt from his sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God (1741)'
The shadow of Puritanism still lingers, like a baleful curse, across the
cultural landscape of the United States, with New England as its
traumatic epicenter. The Puritan God was an angry God, all-powerful and
punishing, the patriarchal father of a vast dysfunctional Family of Man.
Puritans believed in the doctrine of predestination, which held that man
was inherently sinful and depraved and it was only through arbitrary
divine grace that he could be saved from damnation. Belief in Jesus and
participation in the sacraments did not guarantee salvation; that was
determined by God's sovereignty alone. After the Fall, God chose an
elect group for salvation; indeed, it was predestined from birth if one
was chosen for Heaven or condemned to Hell. In spite of this, the 17th
century Puritan colonists thought of themselves as the Chosen People of
God, destined to found a New Jerusalem in the harsh isolation of the New
World. Their only weapon against darkness was the study of the Bible,
an obsessive practice that necessitated education for all. Grammar
schools and colleges were established early on and ironically it was
this very literacy that led to their downfall, as greater knowledge led
to greater freedom of choice for their descendants.
The psychic topography of New England is dotted with troubling
historic events and individuals who perhaps cracked under the strain of
extreme Calvinist Protestantism. The assertive Anne Hutchinson was
deemed heretical for a dissenting voice that posed a threat to the male
authority of the church hierarchy. Accused and tried for blasphemy in
1637 she was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and in 1643 met
a violent end in East Chester, New York at the hands of Indians. Some
fifty years later women were again at the center of controversy in
Salem, Massachusetts. Here it was the unexplainable public outbursts of
a group of girls, otherwise trained to be subservient, that led to a
diagnosis of bewitchment; probably influenced by the recent publication
of Cotton Mather's work Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts
and Possessions (1689). At the end of the infamous Salem Witch Trials
of 1692, fourteen women and six men were executed while scores more were
imprisoned.
One of the most famous sermons ever delivered in
Puritan New England was in 1741 by the American Congregational preacher
Jonathan Edwards. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" was a fiery
evangelical warning, delivered in a monotone to great effect. The
introduction focused on Deuteronomy 32:35, "Their foot shall slide in
due time," in order to emphasize that each person should continually
seek God's grace in order to fight against indwelling sin. Audience
members were found crying out, weeping, swooning, and going into
convulsions so great was the emotion stirred up by Edwards. Copies of
the sermon were printed and distributed to a wide audience which helped
to usher in the First Great Awakening, a movement among American
colonial Protestants that made religion intensely personal, creating a
deep sense of spiritual guilt that desperately sought redemption.
By the nineteenth century Puritanism had all but died out in New England
in a literal sense, but an aura of horror and the preternatural still
clung to the region. In 1892 the murder trial of Lizzie Borden, accused
of hacking her parents to death with an ax, enthralled the nation with
its sensational bloodiness. With its intimations of incest, lesbianism,
and feminine sexuality run rampant, Fall River, Massachusetts today
remains a site of fascination and Lizzie Borden's home has been turned
into a popular Bed and Breakfast. In the early twentieth century
Providence, Rhode Island gave us that master of supernatural literature,
H.P. Lovecraft. Under the spell of his Puritan ancestry, Lovecraft
wrote haunting tales of a New England under the attack of an unseen,
invasive evil. Forbidden knowledge, revealed to a weak humanity
secretly controlled by nonhuman entities from other worlds was a
favorite theme, with obvious parallels to earlier Puritan fears.
Stephen King of Maine, Lovecraft's literary heir, continues to keep us
in thrall under a prolific avalanche of horror fiction.
The uncomfortable and still unresolved relationship between our
Puritan past and present is best exemplified by the pathetic yet germane
tourist trap, The Salem Witch Museum. Visitors are ushered into a dark
cavernous space and forced to stand on an illuminated red pentagram
inscribed on the floor, as if part of a satanic ritual. Stacked floor
to ceiling are wax tableaux narrating the events surrounding the Salem
witch trials. Decrepit and dusty, they light up in chronological order
to deliver a series of corny and didactic accounts meant to exonerate
the innocent. But the underlying message delivered to a willfully
susceptible audience is: What if the Devil truly did walk among them,
and what if he still does, today ...?
"The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as
his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; he has
their souls in his possession, and under his dominion."
-Jonathan Edwards, excerpt from his sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God (1741)'