The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption

A Puritan theological work that triggered one of colonial New England's earliest book suppressions.

The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption is organized less as a story than as an argument. As a theological tract, it tries to persuade readers through selection, emphasis, and direct claims about theology, colonial law, and heresy.

Its significance lies in the way it compresses large claims into memorable formulas and positions. Even readers who reject the work usually have to reckon with how sharply it frames questions about theology, colonial law, and heresy.

The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption entered censorship debates as a theological tract associated with theology, colonial law, and heresy. In the current dossier, the main state objections cluster around heresy and doctrinal control.

The earliest event currently captured here is 1650 in United States, where Massachusetts Bay colonial authorities ordered burned. Colonial magistrates condemned the tract as theologically unsound. It is one of the earliest English-language American examples of the state destroying a book.

This entry is still incomplete: more jurisdictions, court orders, and translated justifications should be added over time.

This page is intentionally incomplete. The ban history is a starter dataset, not a final census of every jurisdiction or decree.

• Assassins of the Mind Christopher Hitchens

  Frames the Rushdie affair as a test of free speech against violent religious intimidation.

• From Fatwa to Jihad Kenan Malik

  Tracks how conflicts over blasphemy, race, and offense evolved after the Rushdie controversy.

• 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova

  A compact reference on how censorship systems moved across states, churches, and courts.

• Banned Books: 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D. Anne Lyon Haight

  Useful for comparing older obscenity, heresy, and political bans with modern free-speech disputes.

• Wikipedia: List of books banned by governments reference partial
• Wikipedia REST summary API database partial
• Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds book partial
• 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature book partial
• Encyclopedia of Censorship book partial
• Christopher Hitchens: Assassins of the Mind article partial
• From Fatwa to Jihad book not started
• Banned Books: 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D. book partial