Abstract This chapter argues that consciousness of being part of a historical or chosen generation was one of the by-products of the English Reformations. It examines the implications of the biblical language of generations and seed in early modern thinking and investigates what this reveals about senses of group identity derived from a shared location in time. It explores the various ways in which religious change engendered senses of belonging to a particular cohort bound by common experiences and transformed how people understood their relationships with their ancestors and descendants. It demonstrates that generational awareness was a mode of subjectivity intimately connected with the workings of memory, but that it also gave expression to collective hopes and dreams about the future, especially in the mid-seventeenth century, when the concept of ‘generation work’ became prominent in contemporary discourse. The chapter also examines the pressing questions that devout people from all denominations faced about the spiritual fate of their dead relatives and about how to ensure the salvation of their children and heirs. It traces these dilemmas and debates across the Atlantic to New England, where the appealing notion that election was in some sense a birthright found expression in the Half-Way Covenant.

Category	Quartile
社会学	4
社会学, 老年医学	4

Generations and Seed

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