This edition of the Pilgrims' psalter features a facsimile of the rare original edition plus a companion volume offering an academic study of the book's history and contents. Both books are presented in a single hardcover volume.

For the settlers who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, singing psalms in praise of God was a fundamental part of worship. Unsatisfied with existing translations (which they felt put more stake in poetry than piety) the pilgrims elected a panel of 30 clergymen, including well-known ministers Richard Mather, John Eliot, and Thomas Weld, to put together a new translation. In 1640, they produced The Bay Psalm Book-the first book ever published in the American Colonies. The authentic prose remains lyrical and lovely as it carries the Puritans' simple message of God's grace.

The first book written and printed in the New World, the Bay Psalm Book holds a unique place in our cultural history. A group of New England Clergy, believed led by Richard Mather, transcribed psalms into metered verse and, in 1640, printed it in Cambridge, Mass. Originals are extremely rare. With this reproduction of the first edition, the earliest book published in America will finally be available again to a modern audience.

Popular Measures examines the influence of Congregationalist church practices on poetry and poetics in early New England. It considers how the rejection of set prayers, and the privileging of more spontaneous oral forms (such as the plain-style sermon and the conversion narrative) in colonial churches influenced the style of locally written religious verse. The book consists of an overview of church practices and their implications for poetry, followed by a series of case studies focusing on texts written at different stages of the colony's development from 1640 to 1700: the Bay Psalm Book, Michael Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom, and Edward Taylor's Gods Determinations. The investigation concludes that colonial religious writers transformed the poetic conventions they had inherited from England in order to enhance the effectiveness of their verse in a culture that portrayed forms and formality as, at best, able to lead an individual only halfway on the journey towards salvation. --University of Delaware Press.

Religions of the United States in Practice is a rich anthology of primary sources with accompanying essays that examines religious behavior in America. From praying in an early American synagogue to performing Mormon healing rituals to debating cremation, Volume 1 explores faith through action from Colonial times through the nineteenth century. The documents and essays consider the religious practices of average people--praying, singing, healing, teaching, imagining, and persuading. Some documents are formal liturgies while other texts describe more spontaneous religious actions. Because religious practices also take place in the imagination, dreams, visions, and fictional accounts are also included. Accompanying each primary document is an essay that sets the religious practice in its historical and theological context--making this volume ideal for classroom use and accessible to any reader. The introductory essays explain the various meanings of religious practices as lived out in churches and synagogues, in parlors and fields, beside rivers, on lecture platforms, and in the streets. Religions of the United States in Practice offers a sampling of religious perspectives in order to approximate the living texture of popular religious thought and practice in the United States. The history of religion in America is more than the story of institutions and famous people. This anthology presents a more nuanced story composed of the everyday actions and thoughts of lay men and women.