Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Review Of George Marsden, A Short Life Of Jonathan Edwards, Matthew C. Mccracken
Review Of George Marsden, A Short Life Of Jonathan Edwards, Matthew C. Mccracken
Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History
Historian George M. Marsden's piece on the life of American preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards offers a biographical account as rich in insight as it is convenient in succinctness. The biography explores religion in colonial America up to the eve of revolution, as well as social and political developments surrounding the First Great Awakening, all through the lens of the Edwards' experience and prolific influence.
The Second Great Awakening And The Making Of Modern America, Kerry Irish
The Second Great Awakening And The Making Of Modern America, Kerry Irish
Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics
In the decades before the Civil War which began in 1861, the Second Great Awakening was the most powerful social movement in America. It inspired the conversion of millions of Americans to faith in Jesus Christ. And that faith motivated many of those people to attempt to transform the moral habits of the nation. Slavery was ended, consumption of alcohol reduced, women’s rights, though often opposed by people of faith, were set on a path that would result in woman’s suffrage in the early Twentieth century. A host of other reforms, too many to list, were instigated. It is not …
The First Great Awakening: Revival And The Birth Of A Nation, Kory Ray Thomas Quirion
The First Great Awakening: Revival And The Birth Of A Nation, Kory Ray Thomas Quirion
Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History
The First Great Awakening left an indelible mark on the development of America. With roots stretching back to the Christian Reformation of the 1500’s, the Great Awakening swept the young colonies with the fires of evangelical fervor. The revival shook the very foundations of colonial society. Following in its wake was a rebirth of reformed philosophy and theology that planted the seeds of self-government and political autonomy in the fertile soil of the Americas. By 1776, that seed had blossomed into a vibrant revolutionary movement that questioned the very fabric of Old World society. This article explores the rich Christian …
Holy Children Are Happy Children: Jonathan Edwards And Puritan Childhood, Russell Allen
Holy Children Are Happy Children: Jonathan Edwards And Puritan Childhood, Russell Allen
Masters Theses
The eighteenth century is often considered the most important era in the history of childhood. Old Puritan conceptions of original sin and physical punishment gave way to Enlightenment concepts of childhood innocence and rationality. Jonathan Edwards was a central figure who stood in the midst of this intellectual change. Situated quite literally in the middle of the transitioning eighteenth century, Edwards’ attempted to bridge the gap between Puritan conceptions of childhood and new ideas made popular by John Locke. Sometimes the bridge held firmly, and other times it cracked widely. Edwards’ theological and philosophical understanding of childhood was at the …
The Beautiful Mystery: Examining Jonathan Edwards’ View Of Marriage, Russell J. Allen
The Beautiful Mystery: Examining Jonathan Edwards’ View Of Marriage, Russell J. Allen
Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History
In contemporary evangelical circles, Jonathan Edwards has gained wide popularity for his theological writings and vital role in the First Great Awakening. However, despite these often romanticized views, Edwards nonetheless stood in the midst of an eighteenth century society that began to develop new norms for sexual practice and new legal guidelines to support them. In order to combat what he saw to be a decaying moral culture, Edwards took a strong stance on marital issues, often to the displeasure of his congregation. What lay behind these convictions was a deep theological understanding of the sanctity of marriage. These views, …
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Ii: Relations, Professions, And Experiences, 1748-1760, Douglas L. Winiarski
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Ii: Relations, Professions, And Experiences, 1748-1760, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
The second installment of a five-part series presenting documents relating to the “Qualifications Controversy” that led to Edwards’ dismissal at Northampton, this article presents a series of “relations,” or lay spiritual autobiographies presented for church membership. These relations come from other Massachusetts churches, many of whose pastors were aligned with Edwards, and yet reveal some significant differences from the form and content that Edwards came to advocate for such relations.
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iii: Count Vavasor's Tirade And The Second Council, 1751, Douglas L. Winiarski
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iii: Count Vavasor's Tirade And The Second Council, 1751, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Jonathan Edwards’ fateful decision to repudiate the church admission practices of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, provoked a bitter dispute with his parishioners that led to his dismissal in 1750. Scholars have long debated the meaning of this crucial turning point in Edwards’ pastoral career. For early biographers, the Northampton communion controversy served as an index of eighteenth-century religious decline. More recent studies situate Edwards’ dismissal within a series of local quarrels over his salary, the “Bad Book” affair, conflicts with the Williams family, and the paternity case of Elisha Hawley. This essay is the first a series that reexamines the …
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy I: David Hall's Diary And Letter To Edward Billing, Douglas L. Winiarski
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy I: David Hall's Diary And Letter To Edward Billing, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Jonathan Edwards’ fateful decision to repudiate the church admission practices of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, provoked a bitter dispute with his parishioners that led to his dismissal in 1750. Scholars have long debated the meaning of this crucial turning point in Edwards’ pastoral career. For early biographers, the Northampton communion controversy served as an index of eighteenth-century religious decline. More recent studies situate Edwards’ dismissal within a series of local quarrels over his salary, the “Bad Book” affair, conflicts with the Williams family, and the paternity case of Elisha Hawley. This essay is the first a series that reexamines the …
After Edwards: Original Sin And Freedom Of The Will, Allen C. Guelzo
After Edwards: Original Sin And Freedom Of The Will, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
Book Summary: Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely regarded as one of the major thinkers in the Christian tradition and an important and influential figure in American theology. After Jonathan Edwards is a collection of specially commissioned essays that track his intellectual legacies from the work of his immediate disciples that formed the New Divinity movement in colonial New England, to his impact upon European traditions and modern Asia. It is a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the reception of Edwardsian ideas, with scholars of Edwards being brought together with scholars of New England theology and early American history to produce a …
Evolution Of Ideas: The American Revolution's Impact On Evangelicalism In America, Cooper Pasque
Evolution Of Ideas: The American Revolution's Impact On Evangelicalism In America, Cooper Pasque
Cooper Pasque
No abstract provided.
Freedom Of The Will, Allen C. Guelzo
Freedom Of The Will, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
The exact nature of the human will is, like the nature of human consciousness, a question so subjective and so interior that no one is ever likely to arrive at a satisfactory judgment about how it functions or even what it is-which may be the best proof that philosophy is not a science, and the best evidence that those social sciences which try to measure, quantify, and control aspects of human consciousness are not sciences either. Still, there is no denying that we are aware of a power or an impulse within us which transJates thought into action, or at …
The Return Of The Will: Jonathan Edwards And The Possibilities Of Free Will, Allen C. Guelzo
The Return Of The Will: Jonathan Edwards And The Possibilities Of Free Will, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
If certain national cultures seem to own certain great problems of the mind, then freedom of the will seems to be the American problem. This is not just because of the sheet stupifying bulk of what Americans have written on this problem over the past 300 years, from Benjamin Franklin to Daniel Dennett, from Quaker prophetesses in Vermont to prairie lawyers in Illinois. In the most fundamental sense, freedom of the will has been an American possession because it forms a cognate philosophical discourse to that most fundamental of all American ideas, that if political and civil liberty. To speak …
God's Designs: The Literature Of The Colonial Revival Of Religion, 1735-1760, Allen C. Guelzo
God's Designs: The Literature Of The Colonial Revival Of Religion, 1735-1760, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
In December of 1990, after the completion of a section on Jonathan Edwards at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in New York City, a dozen or so of mostly younger scholars of Jonathan Edwards swept around the corner from the convention hotel and settled themselves down to a staggering repast at a posh north Italian restaurant. In the midst of some very un-Edwardsean consumption, I offered a question to everyone around the table: What is the most important book which you've ever read on the Great Awakening? With only one exception, the Young Edwardseans gave the palm …
Oberlin Perfectionism And Its Edwardsean Origins, Allen C. Guelzo
Oberlin Perfectionism And Its Edwardsean Origins, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
An impression has very generally prevailed," wrote James Harris Fairchild toward the end of his twenty-three-year presidency of Oberlin College, "that the theological views unleashed at Oberlin College by the late Rev. Charles Grandison Finney & his Associates involves a considerable departure from the accepted orthodox faith." It was an impression that Fairchild believed to be inaccurate, and he would probably be horrified to discover a century later that the prevailing impression the "Oberlin Theology" has made on historians of the nineteenth-century United States continues to be one in which Oberlin stands for almost all the progressive and enthusiastic unorthodoxies …
Calvinist Metaphysics To Republican Theory: Jonathan Edwards And James Dana On Freedom Of The Will, Allen C. Guelzo
Calvinist Metaphysics To Republican Theory: Jonathan Edwards And James Dana On Freedom Of The Will, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
The Reverend Mr. James Dana, the pastor of the First Church in Wallingford, Connecticut, had never before attempted to pick a quarrel with his old friend and ally, Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale College. But in the winter of 1782 what was happening at Yale passed all the bounds of propriety and friendship. "I have understood that Mr. Edwards's book on fatality was laid aside some years since at your university," Dana wrote (not stopping to add what he surely must have thought, and good riddance too); but now, "it gave me pain to hear lately" that the …
The Spiritual Structures Of Jonathan Edwards, Allen C. Guelzo
The Spiritual Structures Of Jonathan Edwards, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
Thomas Chalmers once wrote in admiration of Jonathan Edwards that "I have long esteemed him as the greatest of theologians, combining in a degree that is unexampled the profoundly intellectual with the devotedly spiritual and sacred, and realizing in his own person a most rare yet more beautiful harmony between the simplicity of the Christian pastor on the one hand, and, on the other, all the strength and prowess of a giant in philosophy. And yet, despite Chalmer's insistence on balancing Edwards's intellectial eminence with his spirituality, the spiritual structures of Jonathan Edwards remain very much an unexplored territory. Although …