The historical literature on colonial America is extensive and wide-ranging. Those works which deal with seventeenth-century New England in particular describe a society in which the church was an institution of overwhelming importance, and religious concerns were closely integrated with all aspects of life. Even in the diversifying and more secular picture of the eighteenth century, religion continued to occupy a central position in society, and the historiography of the period reflects this reality. Many attempts to trace the origins of the American Revolution are laced with the religious dynamic, and the influence of ministerial leadership is considered significant. In Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, religious issues and the clergy are prominent in the unfolding political struggle.1