In his new book, church historian Scott D. Seay traces the intellectual evolution of New England execution sermons from the 1670s through 1820s. In chapter 1, Seay organizes his background discussion of Anglo-American execution rituals and crime literature into a tripartite chronology that structures much of his subsequent analysis: Puritan (1623–1700), Provincial (1700–1774), and Early National (1775–1835). In chapter 2, Seay notes that Puritan explanations of criminality, grounded in original sin and natural depravity, tended to establish a moral equivalence between condemned criminals and ordinary members of the community. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the arguments of John Locke and English theologian John Taylor had undermined notions of “inherited depravity” and accentuated the view of people as “independent moral agents” (62) who acted on “individual choice” (49), encouraging Provincial and Early National preachers to perceive a new moral “chasm” (64) between criminals and the broader community. According to Seay, ministers were especially harsh in condemning African American felons for their presumed subservience to base “passions and appetites” (70), thereby reinforcing “prevailing racist stereotypes” (65).

In chapter 3, Seay argues that the Puritan theory of conversion, shadowed by the doctrine of predestination, led seventeenth-century ministers to downplay the probability that capital criminals could achieve salvation. By contrast, after 1700, a new “evangelical” outlook gave Provincial preachers greater confidence in their ability to lead the condemned to grace by arousing their “religious affections” (86); hence their sermons often emphasized criminal conversion, a pattern that continued into the Early National period. In chapter 4, Seay examines changing attitudes toward government and its authority to execute criminals. Whereas the Puritans saw magistrates as “ministers of God” (114) and justified capital punishment theologically, Provincial clergymen increasingly “blended” (126) those religious viewpoints with new Lockean emphases on the “social contract” (121) and “protection of property” (122). Early National preachers, however, fearing an upsurge of “anarchy and vice,” reverted to “traditional Puritan political ideas” (129). In chapter 5, Seay traces the emergence of a “new moral discourse” (138) on crime and punishment—linked to the Enlightenment, Quaker reformers, and a new republican-revolutionary ideology—that “effectively eroded the intellectual support for public execution and execution preaching” (163). By the time Massachusetts moved its executions behind prison walls in 1835, the gallows sermon genre had already expired. The conclusion of Seay's book discusses its relevance to current debates on capital punishment.

Though he organizes his material somewhat differently and devotes more (and useful) attention to underlying theological developments, much of Seay's sermon evidence and analysis tracks my own earlier published findings—something that nonspecialists would have little way of knowing. Seay occasionally cites the introductory chapter and conclusion of my 1993 book, mostly on contextual matters, but he does not provide a single citation to any of the four chapters that focus on the evolving content of execution sermons and closely related criminal conversion narratives (Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature and the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674–1860 [1993], 41–114). He also fails to engage occasional points of disagreement. For example, his suggestion that late eighteenth-century execution preachers expressed particular hostility toward African American criminals runs counter to my finding that their sermons typically did not emphasize racial issues and, in some instances, did not even mention the race of the condemned (“Social Injustice, Sexual Violence, Spiritual Transcendence: Constructions of Interracial Rape in Early American Crime Literature, 1767–1817,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 56 [July 1999]: 493–97). His claim that, prior to 1700, Puritan ministers downplayed the possibility of criminal salvation is belied by strong criminal-conversion themes in a 1686–87 execution volume (Cohen, Pillars, 49–54). His description of a clerical retreat during the Early National period to “traditional Puritan political ideas” seems inconsistent with a new, secular “legal-procedural” defense of capital punishment in several execution sermons of the late 1790s and early 1800s (Cohen, Pillars, 110–12). Finally, Seay probably overstates the impact of the “new moral discourse” in discrediting older religious conceptions of capital punishment, especially given the significant revival of scriptural justifications of the death penalty during the 1830s and 1840s. The point here is not that Seay's formulations are necessarily wrong, but that he might have constructed a stronger case—and his readers would certainly have gained a clearer sense of the field—had he chosen to grapple with contrary evidence and arguments.

Seay's book is also marred by other documentation problems, such as failures to provide citations for works mentioned in the text (e.g., 34, 181n29), along with occasional errors in the titles, dates, and authors that are cited. For example, he attributes an essay by historian Alan Taylor to Ann Taylor (182n42)—and later compounds the confusion by ascribing it to the eighteenth-century Presbyterian minister John Taylor (210). Despite various errors and omissions, however, Seay effectively relates changes in New England execution preaching to broader theological movements and controversies of the seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries.