Jeremiads

Named for the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, whose spiritual and political leadership helped his countrymen survive disasters, jeremiads were political sermons delivered by Puritan ministers that assessed the state of the community’s covenant with God. Considered the first distinctively American literary genre, these ritualistic and formulaic sermons were intended to guide an imperiled people toward their divine destiny. They were denunciations, usually delivered in thunderous tones, of moral corruption and spiritual degradation that reinforced the conception of a divine plan for the community, described the consequences of transgressions from the terms of the covenant, and advocated a reformed relationship with God on the part of the individual and the community.

Sermons of this type had been used for centuries in Europe to elicit good behavior from the people through threats of divine punishment. But American Puritans adapted the message of the jeremiad to their unique situation as God’s servants in the New World. In the generations after the original colonization of New England, when the society seemed to be falling away from God, Puritan ministers used jeremiads to denounce the colonists for their sins and bemoan their loss of piety, yet they still promised that God would renew the covenant with them if they repented. Instead of being simply prophesies of doom, Puritan jeremiads were decidedly optimistic, reinterpreting divine punishment as a sign of favor from God. As with a strict but loving father, God’s punishments were an indication to Puritans that they were indeed God’s chosen people and attested to the promise of success in their endeavor to establish a city of God. In the 17th and early 18th centuries jeremiads were delivered to commemorate important public occasions, such as days of prayer, fasts, or elections. Among the earliest and best known of these is John Winthrop’s A Model of Christian Charity, delivered in 1630. They served an important function in early New England by establishing behavioral norms and delineating the contours of the community. Later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the genre continued to flourish. The influence of jeremiads expanded beyond New England and contributed significantly to early conceptions of American national structure and identity as they were used to define national purpose and garner public support at such critical junctures in the country’s history as the American Revolution and the Civil War.

Further reading: Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978).

—Jane E. Calvert