The New England Theology


Book Description

This collection draws together the key works of those who followed in Jonathan Edwards's theological footsteps, showing how one unique tradition shaped American theology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.




After Jonathan Edwards


Book Description

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 groundbreaking examination of the ways in which New England Theology flourished, how themes in Edwards's thought were taken up and changed by representatives of the school, and its lasting influence on the shape of American Christianity.




Religion and Domestic Violence in Early New England


Book Description

"This is an amazing study, a memoir which provides insight intofamily abuse in 18th century America.... a significant volume which enhances ourknowledge of social and religious life in New England. It is also a movingcontribution to the literature of spirituality." -- Review andExpositor "Students of American culture are indebted to AnnTaves for editing this fascinating and revealing document and for providing it withfull annotation and an illuminating introduction." -- American StudiesInternational "This is above all an eminently teachable text, which raises important issues in the history of religion, women, and the family andabout the place of violence in American life." -- New EnglandQuarterly ..". stimulating, enlightening, and provocative..." -- Journal of Ecumenical Studies Abigail Abbot Bailey wasa devout 18th-century Congregationalist woman whose husband abused her, committedadultery with their female servants, and practiced incest with one of theirdaughters. This new, fully annotated edition of her memoirs, featuring a detailedintroduction, offers a thoughtful analysis of the role of religion amidst the trialsof the author's everyday life.










Race and Redemption in Puritan New England


Book Description

As colonists made their way to New England in the early seventeenth century, they hoped their efforts would stand as a "citty upon a hill." Living the godly life preached by John Winthrop would have proved difficult even had these puritans inhabited the colonies alone, but this was not the case: this new landscape included colonists from Europe, indigenous Americans, and enslaved Africans. In Race and Redemption in Puritan New England, Richard A. Bailey investigates the ways that colonial New Englanders used, constructed, and re-constructed their puritanism to make sense of their new realities. As they did so, they created more than a tenuous existence together. They also constructed race out of the spiritual freedom of puritanism.




A History of New England Theology


Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ... chaetek vi. later discussions--new haven theology. New England Theology did not take into its embrace any new doctrines after Dr. Edwards, in 1785, made his clear and permanently adopted statements concerning the atonement. The theologizing tendency of the New England mind, however, by no means ceased at that time; on the contrary some of the warmest discussions were subsequent to that date, but the aim was either to defend the traditional theology or to give more discriminating expression to doctrines already under discussion. Unitarianism, New Haven theology and the publications of Dr. Bushnell, will at once suggest themselves in this connection. What has within the last few years been known as the new theology is not sufficiently developed to be assigned its exact place in religious history. Dr. Bushnell's various essays and treatises related to a large number of theological topics, but have not awakened permanent interest except upon the atonement. His views on this theme have, by anticipation, been already spoken of. The Unitarian movement was originally directed against the evangelical system as a whole, though the Trinity was made the prominent topic of dispute. The orthodox contention at this point was simply a defence of the traditional faith, with the exception, perhaps, of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. This discussion led, however, incidentally to a review, at a later date, of some points of Hopkinsianism and may be briefly noticed. The tendencies to liberalism appeared early in the 18th century, perhaps late in the 17th, and were fostered by the writings of Whiston, Taylor and other English authors whose names have already been given. The contrast between the liberals and conservatives was more clearly...




The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England


Book Description

The Science of the Soul challenges long-standing notions of Puritan provincialism as antithetical to the Enlightenment. Sarah Rivett demonstrates that, instead, empiricism and natural philosophy combined with Puritanism to transform the scope of religious activity in colonial New England from the 1630s to the Great Awakening of the 1740s. In an unprecedented move, Puritan ministers from Thomas Shepard and John Eliot to Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards studied the human soul using the same systematic methods that philosophers applied to the study of nature. In particular, they considered the testimonies of tortured adolescent girls at the center of the Salem witch trials, Native American converts, and dying women as a source of material insight into the divine. Conversions and deathbed speeches were thus scrutinized for evidence of grace in a way that bridged the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, the worldly and the divine. In this way, the "science of the soul" was as much a part of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural philosophy as it was part of post-Reformation theology. Rivett's account restores the unity of religion and science in the early modern world and highlights the role and importance of both to transatlantic circuits of knowledge formation.