The Religion & Culture Web Forum
February 2005
Commentary Footnotes
Footnotes for
'A place to go to connect with yourself': A Historical Perspective
on Journaling"
by Catherine A. Brekus
(University of Chicago Divinity School)
1 See Exodus 17:14; Jeremiah 30:2; Habakkuk 2:1-2.
2 John Winthrop, "Experience," in Life and Letters of John Winthrop, ed. Robert C. Winthrop (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864), 79-80. Charles Hambrick-Stowe explains, "in Puritan spirituality God did not come because someone engaged in a certain exercise; but if God was going to come, He would do so through the means of that exercise." Charles Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 45. Other good overviews of early spiritual memoirs are David Sanford Shields, "A History of Personal Diary Writing in New England 1620-1745," Diss. (University of Chicago, 1982); Jon Alexander, American Personal Religious Accounts, 1600-1980: Toward and Inner History of America's Faiths (New York: Edwin Millen Press, 1983); and Daniel B. Shea, Jr., Spiritual Autobiography in Early America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).
3 Shields, “History of Personal Diary Writing,” 72-73.
4 Edmund Morgan, ed., The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth 1653-1657: The Conscience of a Puritan (New York: Harper and Row, 1946), 13, 20, 21, 25; Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character of Miss Susanna Anthony (Worcester, Mass.: Leonard Worcester, 1796); Barbara E. Lacey, ed., The World of Hannah Heaton: The Diary of an Eighteenth-Century New England Farm Woman (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 56.
5 Sarah Osborn, Diary #20 (1 January 1757 – 7 May 1757), entry for 16 January 1757, p. 24, Newport Historical Society, Newport, Rhode Island. Jonathan Edwards, The Life of David Brainerd, ed. Norman Pettit, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 7 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 173.
6 See Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (New York: Knopf, 1977). Hopkins, The Life and Character of Miss Susanna Anthony, 19-20.
7 Michael McGiffert, ed., God's Plot: The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety Being the Autobiography and Journal of Thomas Shepard (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972), entry for 8 February 1641.
8Cotton Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1957), 119.
9 Samuel Shaw, The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness (1665; rpt., Boston: Rogers and Fowle, 1746), 147. Cotton Mather, Diary, Vol. 2, 253.
10 Erik Seeman, Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1999), 15. Tom Webster views "the phenomenon of diary writing as a 'technology of the self,' as a means by which the godly self was maintained, indeed constructed, through the action of writing." "Writing to Redundancy," 40. See also Margo Todd, "Puritan Self-Fashioning: The Diary of Samuel Ward," The Journal of British Studies 31, no. 3 (July 1992): 236-264.
11 Michael McGiffert, ed., God's Plot: The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety Being the Autobiography and Journal of Thomas Shepard (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972), 123.
12 Believe in Yourself: A Key to Life Guided Journal (White Plains, New York: Peter Pauper Press, 1998). The text in this journal is taken from Sophia Bedford-Pierce, The Key to Life (New York: Peter Pauper Press, 1995), and Beth Mende Conny, Believe in Yourself: A Woman's Journey (New York: Peter Pauper Press, 1994).
13 Kathleen Adams, Journal to the Self: Twenty-Two Paths to Spiritual Growth (New York: Warner Books, 1990).
14 See Jan R. Neubauer, Complete Idiot's Guide to Journaling (Alpha Books, 2000). Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). See also Robert C. Fuller, Spiritual But Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), and Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998).
15 Paula Farrell Sullivan, The Mystery of My Story: Autobiographical Development for Personal and Spiritual Development (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1991), 3; Eldonna Bouton. Journaling From the Heart (Whole Heart Publications, 2000).
16 Believe in Yourself: A Key to Life Guided Journal.
17 Janet Terban Morris, The Simplify Journal: A Workbook to Help You Regain Control of Your Life (New York: Peter Pauper Press, n.d.).
18 Evelyn McFarlane and James Saywell, If...Questions for the Soul (New York: Villard, 1998).
19 Neil F. Neimark, The Handbook of Journaling: Tools for the Healing of Mind, Body, and Spirit, Second Edition (R.E.P. Technologies, 2000); Christina Baldwin, Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest (Bantam, 1990), Kathy and Amy Eldon, Soul Catcher: A Journal to Help You Become Who You Really Are, 1. The emphasis is in the original.
20 Harry J. Cargas and Roger J. Radley, Keeping a Spiritual Journal (Nazareth Books, 1981), 74.
21 Francis Dorff, Simply SoulStirring: Writing as a Meditative Practice (Paulist Press, 1998), 1.
22 Janet Terban Morris, The Simplify Journal: A Workbook to Help You Regain Control of Your Life (New York: Peter Pauper Press, n.d.), 135.
23 Sullivan, Mystery of My Story, 6; Patricia D. Brown, From the Heart Journal: A Personal Prayer Journal for Women (Nashville: Dimensions for Living, 1999), 11; Linda H. Hollies, Sister to Sister: A Companion Journal for African American Women (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1999), back cover; and Bouton, Journaling From the Heart. Bouton's book includes three “workshops” that are designed to help people begin writing personal journals. Her first workshop is entitled, “Introduction to Journaling: Reconnecting with The Lost Self.” Besides writing books, Bouton leads journaling workshops.
24 T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture 1880-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
25 In Sister to Sister: A Companion Journal for African American Women, Linda Hollies writes: “My prayer is that you will purchase Sister to Sister, Volume 2: Devotions for and from African American Women.” But she also assures people that her journal can be used “all by itself as an aid to your inner healing and wholeness” (vi). According to the biography on her book, Hollies is the director of outreach for the West Michigan Conference of the United Methodist Church.
26 Sullivan, Mystery of My Story, 83. It is interesting to note that the authors of Christian journaling guides have a strong sense of their countercultural identities. In the Introduction to her book, From the Heart Journal, Patricia D. Brown explains, “this guided journal is different from many you'll find on the bookstore shelves because it reminds you that you are not alone. Its pages awaken you to the knowledge that you travel with God—your companion and guide, center and strength, wisdom and compassion” (11).
