JEahW Day 4: Edwards’s American and Global Legacies
Thursday was the last day in the classroom, Friday being set aside for a field trip to various sites related to Jonathan Edwards in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
For our final discussions, the topic was Jonathan Edwards’s legacy. This is one of the most popular topics in Edwards scholarship today, and one that is still very open to inquiry and work. It’s amazing that there is still so little on this important aspect of American religious history, but hopefully that is beginning to change. Edwards’s legacy can be looked at from a number of different angles, the first being his theological legacy. The latter half of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century saw dramatic shifts in religion and theology, several groups forming rather quickly based largely on distancing themselves from other groups. Of course the first of these theologies are the Edwardsians or the New Divinity school. These folks defended revivalism, spoke in natural and moral ability/inability categories, championed a moral rigorism (largely through adapting Edwards’s Nature of True Virtue for their own ends), and sought to carry forward Jonathan Edwards’s ecclesiastical views, especially in repudiating the old Halfway Covenant.
In opposition to the New Divinity school, as mentioned in a previous post, were the Old Lights, or Old Calvinists, with their emphasis on social hierarchies and tradition-based practices. In addition to these, new opponents emerging from Scottish Common Sense philosophy began writing against the New Divinity movement. One of the more prominent men in this school was John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, president of the College of New Jersey (later, Princeton), and, incidentally, the only clergyman to have signed the “Declaration of Independence.” Witherspoon, taking his cues from philosopher Thomas Reid, despised the idealism and occasionalism that Edwards espoused, so much so that when he got to Princeton he formally removed all traces to Edwards whatsoever, in favor of a more pragmatist, or realist, approach.
Other new theologies cropping up were those of the Methodists and the Baptists, particularly in the southern colonies. Both of these groups generally spread after the Great Awakening, with ecclesiastical power shifting away from the gentried clergy to a more democratic system of everyman preachers and evangelists. The Methodists were especially characterized by an emphasis on disciplined spirituality, universal grace, and a certain brand of perfectionism.
Other areas in which Edwards’s legacy can be seen is the culture of the 19th century, particularly in women’s fiction, of all places! Authors such as Susan Warner, Maria Cummins, and Louisa May Alcott were greatly influenced by Edwards and those who followed him. The James family is also a prime example of this. Henry James, Sr. preached a socialized gospel that largely stemmed from Edwards’s Nature of True Virtue, the novels of Henry James, Jr. were influenced by Edwards, and William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience cites Edwards a number of times in looking at religious experience from a psychological point of view.
Other areas that Edwards has been prominent in is the revivalism that was a big part of the 19th and 20th centuries, and missions, Edwards’s Life of David Brainerd being immensely influential and beneficial for a variety of global Christian missions boards. Even today we see Edwards in the resurgence of Reformed Theology, particularly among young evangelicals, that TIME magazine deemed the #3 idea changing the world right now.
One of my favorite quotes about Jonathan Edwards comes from Ezra Stiles, president of Yale from 1778-95. He said, “The works of Jonathan Edwards in another generation will pass into as transient notice perhaps scarce above oblivion, and when posterity occasionally comes across them in the rubbish of libraries, the rare characters who may read and be pleased with them will be looked upon as singular and whimsical.” Clearly, not all men were born prophets.
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