"None Ought...Keep Fellowship With Devils"; Reverend Parris Returns

Join the congregation as Reverend Parris will lead a Puritan plain style morning service and preach the sermon that he delivered on March 27, 1692, soon after the outbreak of the witchcraft episode throughout Essex County.

Donald Friary, a Salem resident and historian of religion and architecture in early America, will appear in costume and in character as Reverend Parris.

Following the service, Friary will discuss the Puritan plain style in the service of worship, the sermon, meetinghouse architecture, and Puritan literature.

The entire program will last between 1.5 and 2 hours.

Tickets are $20 per person. Registration is required as there are only 50 spots available.

More information:

On Saturday, October 5 at 2:00pm, the Rev. Samuel Parris (1653-1720) will return to his pulpit in the Salem Village meetinghouse, now on the Rebecca Nurse Homestead campus on Pine Street in Danvers. Mr. Parris will lead a typical Puritan plain style service and preach the sermon that he delivered on March 27, 1692, soon after the outbreak of the witchcraft episode throughout Essex County. Donald Friary, a Salem resident and historian of religion and architecture in early America, will appear in costume and in character as Mr. Parris. He will read from The Sermon Notebook of Samuel Parris, 1689-1694 that survives in the library of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford and has been published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in print and online (www.colonialsociety.org).

Following the service, in which the audience will participate, Friary will discuss and respond to questions about the Puritan plain style in the service of worship, the sermon, meetinghouse architecture, and Puritan literature. It is called the plain style only in part because it is unadorned. More important to the Puritans was the plain style’s role as a direct communication between God and the congregation. Nothing could get in the way of God speaking to the individual Puritan through the Bible through the reading of scripture and the singing of psalms lined out by the church deacon. The minister, in behalf of the congregation, responded to God’s message in an opening prayer and a sermon based on scripture that followed a standard format that kept the minister closely focused on God’s message. The minister was clad in a long black gown with white Geneva bands, pointing to his face, from which the word of God was proclaimed.

Donald Friary has preached Puritan sermons for more than 50 years—at the First Church of Deerfield, at the Rocky Hill meeting house in Amesbury, and on Boston Common during the 350th anniversary of the founding of the city. Since moving to Salem in 2005, he has immersed himself in its history and can occasionally be seen walking the historic city’s streets and waterside wharves in the guise of the Reverend William Bentley (1759-1819). As Principal of History for Hire Mr. Friary is an independent consultant to museums and historical organizations. He offers walking tours of Salem through the international firm, Tours by Locals (www.toursbylocals.com).

Friary was President of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts from 2006 to 2020 and is an Honorary Trustee of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. A Boston native, he is a graduate of the Boston Latin School, Brown University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Ph. D. in American Civilization. In 2005 Mr. Friary concluded a forty-year career at Historic Deerfield, twenty-eight of them as the museum’s Executive Director, and is now Director Emeritus. He has taught at the State University of New York’s College at New Paltz, at Smith College, and at Gordon College. A member of the American Antiquarian Society and a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, he serves on the Public Humanities Advisory Board of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization at Brown University, as Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Bowne House Historical Society, and on the Massachusetts Historical Commission.

Host or Publisher Essex Heritage