Sunday Services in "The Coffin"

"At least one meeting house in New England earned the name 'The Coffin' because its unpainted clapboards reportedly turned black under the effect of weathering." (55) --Peter Benes, "Sky Colors and Scattered Clouds: The Decorative and Architectural Painting of New England Meeting Houses, 1738-1834" in Peter Benes, ed. New England Meeting House and Church: 1630-1850

Appearing in a much happier color,
Colonial Meeting House, Cohasset, Mass.
(From: Wikimedia)

Picture in your mind a rural New England landscape with a church. Your mind is probably picturing that church with white paint. Mine does, anyway. But your mind's eye in that case would only be accounting for church decor from the 1830s onwards. The white color is a product of the Greek Revival architectural movement that arrived in New England around that time. Prior to this decade, New England meeting houses and churches could be seen in an amazing variety of colors in addition to white. The most popular paints for these public buildings in the 18th century were, in order of popularity: 1) yellow or light yellow, 2) white, 3) gray, 4) blue, 5) red, 6) orange, and 7) green. As unappealing as a black colored meeting house called "The Coffin" seems today, it must have had an even greater affective impact in a time when so many other churches were painted in brighter, happier colors.

Benes does not mention where this meeting house called "The Coffin" was located, so we don't know much about the theology of the preaching that was done there. However, consider the possibility of walking into "The Coffin" on a Sunday morning and hearing a sermon such as Jonathan Edwards's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"!

This World is One Big Heape of Dung

The historian Edmund Morgan describes a conversation between Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop and Roger Williams, the separatist and future resident of Providence, Rhode Island (after being banned from Massachusetts).

"[Roger Williams] did indeed think that the Lord had forsaken New England for failing to separate her churches wholly from the filthiness of English corruption. And to [John] Winthrop he offered the very advice that Winthrop could least willingly listen to. Where Winthrop had urged him to pause and consider whether everyone was wrong but him, he replied with an invitation to join him in splendid isolation: 'Abstract yourself,' he urged, 'with a holy violence from the Dung heape of this Earth.' Williams would not learn the lesson which Winthrop had taught himself so painfully before he left England, that there was no escape from the dung heap of this earth; and that those who sought one or thought they had found it acted with an unholy, not a holy, violence."

Roger Williams (From: Wikimedia)

Morgan explains a series of stages Williams passed through to purify himself by associating only with other righteous people. The final stage was Williams' conclusion that "he could not conscientiously have communion with anyone but his wife... He had effectively demonstrated the proposition to himself as he withdrew successively from the Church of England, from the churches of Massachusetts, and finally from everyone but his wife. What he saw at last was what Winthrop had tried to point out to him, that he was seeking an unattainable goal, that there was no escape from the dung heap of this earth."

After reaching this conclusion, Williams progressed to a radically new position of extreme tolerance. Or, as Morgan tells us, "since he could not escape the dung heap, he would embrace it."

Why did I share this with you? Because I am fascinated by the metaphor of this world as a heap of dung. No other reason (besides the fact that I enjoy early New England history)!

--quotes are taken from Edmund Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop, pp. 120-131