ABSTRACT
In evangelical romances, to quote an advertisement for the Heartsong Presents series, "Christian faith is the primary ingredient in a marriage relationship," and heroes and heroines see God as a full partner and active presence in their courtships and marriages. The contrast between Puritan texts and evangelical romances highlights both continuities and shifts in American Protestantism and its literature, including the legacies of eighteenth-century revivals, gendered patterns of Protestant religious experience, and the increasing importance of women as writers and readers from the nineteenth century onward. The differences between the grieving tensions of the Puritan narratives and the happy love triangles that conclude evangelical romances are partially explained by generic differences between Puritan minister Thomas Shepard's and Phillip Stubbes's "eulogistic appreciations" of their dying wives and the modern authors' fictional romances. Some interpreters of American religion have viewed emphasis on a loving God as "declension" from the Calvinism of American Puritans.
