Winship, Michael P.

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Winship, Michael P.

(Michael Paul Winship)

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Friends World College, bachelor's degree, 1983; Cornell University, Ph.D., 1992.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of History, University of Georgia, 212 Leconte Hall, Athens, GA 30602. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Academic and writer. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, visiting assistant professor, 1992–93; University of Georgia, Athens, assistant professor, 1993–97, associate professor, 1997–2002, professor of history, 2002–, E. Merton Coulter Chair of history, 2006–.

WRITINGS:

Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlightenment, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1996.

Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2002.

(With Mark C. Carnes) The Trial of Anne Hutchinson: Liberty, Law, and Intolerance in Puritan New England, 2nd edition, Pearson (New York, NY), 2005.

The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided, University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 2005.

Contributor of articles to various academic journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael P. Winship is a professor and historian whose scholarly studies focus on Puritanism, early American history, and early modern English history. Winship's first book, Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlightenment, discusses the Puritan theology of Providence and also their interpretations of unexplained, natural events. The study also includes a survey of the science, astrology, and witchcraft of the times, as well as detailing how Puritan thinking was influenced by Anglican and Whig scholars. Stephen Phillips's review of the book in the Journal of Church and State found both positive and negative aspects. Phillips felt that "Winship is not always as sympathetic to the Puritans as a study of this sort requires." He noted, however, that Winship "shows a thorough grasp of their ideas" and provides "a multitude of resources and critical interpretations" for the scholar.

Several years later, Winship published Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641. The book covers the Antinomian Controversy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which set orthodox and liberal interpretations of free grace within Puritanism against each other. This book is the first full study on the Controversy to be published since the 1960s. Reviews were mostly positive. Stressing its importance, Early American Literature reviewer Kristina Bross stated that "Winship's book should spark debate and lead readers to new approaches to the Antinomian-Familist-Free Grace controversy." Writing in the Journal of Religion, Marilyn J. Westerkamp found the book "dense" and "sometimes difficult to follow." Westerkamp did contend, though, that "Winship has produced a new interpretation of an old subject that will withstand challengers for many years to come." Amanda Porter-field also reviewed Making Heretics in the Catholic Historical Review. She stated: "In this highly readable book, Winship reconstructs events and motivations to the best of his considerable abilities, not oblivious to his own interpretive hand, but not interested in one theology or ideology either."

Borrowing heavily from the core of his previous book, Winship published The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided. This book details the life of Anne Hutchinson, a woman living in the Puritanical Massachusetts Bay Colony who dissented against mainstream religious credence, and others who disagreed with the orthodoxy of their society. With community and religious leaders fearing people would focus their beliefs on familism, or their own souls, rather than the Scripture, those dissenters, including John Wheelwright and John Cotton, were publicly attacked for their more liberal approach to religion. Hutchinson was eventually excommunicated and expelled from the colony and Wheelwright, her brother-in-law, was found guilty of sedition. While many scholars focus on Hutchinson as a protofeminist or civil-rights activist, Winship approaches her life not from a modern perspective, but rather, through her own times. Ken I. Kersch, writing in the Law and Politics Review, grouped the book with a "growing body of revisionist work on civil liberties that succeeds by taking a paradigmatically simple civil liberties morality tale, and complicating it." In the Journal of Church and State, Terry Lindley found instances of "several questionable statements" in the text. These included Winship's faulting the Massachusetts Bay Colony for not following Calvin's principles of separating church and state and his negative portrayal of Anabaptists in the German city of Munster. Lindley, overall, noted that The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson "is a must read for those interested in early Massachusetts society as well as those interested in the church's endless search for heretics." Kersch also declared the book a "first-rate work of history." "Clearly written," he wrote, The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson "does an excellent job of introducing readers to the politics and theology of the Massachusetts Bay colony."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Catholic Historical Review, January, 2003, Amanda Porterfield, review of Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641, p. 117.

Church History, March, 2006, Ariel Hessayon, review of Making Heretics, p. 206.

Early American Literature, winter, 2004, Kristina Bross, review of Making Heretics, p. 167.

Harvard Theological Review, October, 2002, David D. Hall, review of Making Heretics, p. 437.

Historian, spring, 2004, Bryan F. Le Beau, review of Making Heretics, p. 169.

History of Religions, August, 2003, W. Clark Gilpin, review of Making Heretics, p. 55.

Journal of Church and State, winter, 1997, Stephen Phillips, review of Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlightenment, pp. 157-158; summer, 2005, Terry Lindley, review of The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided, p. 630.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, April, 2003, Tom Webster, review of Making Heretics, p. 378.

Journal of Religion, January, 2005, Marilyn J. Westerkamp, review of Making Heretics, p. 127.

Law and Politics Review, September, 2005, Ken I. Kersch, review of The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson, pp. 824-833.

Law and Social Inquiry, fall, 2005, review of The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson, p. 860.