Jonathan Edwards

by George M. Marsden

Edwards' eighteenth-century Calvinistic evangelicalism is significant not merely as an early instance of a wider phenomenon, but also because it played a prominent role in subsequent American history. After the American Revolution, New England Calvinism with a deep Edwardsian imprint emerged as one of the most influential movements shaping the new American voluntary religious culture. Edwards' grandson Timothy Dwight was an early leader of resurgent evangelical Calvinism, and Lyman Beecher, progenitor of the famous Beecher family, was one of Dwight's most effective lieutenants. New England Congregationalists and their Presbyterian allies carried the evangelical Calvinist campaigns into the upper "west" (now upper Midwest). By the i83os their voluntary organizations for missions, evangelism, and reform had combined budgets larger than that of the federal government. Before the Civil War these heirs to the now-contested Edwardsian heritage or their near counterparts controlled most of the nation's leading colleges, including the state "universities." They were leaders in the reform movements, including temperance and antislavery, and were leading figures in the moral reform wing of the Whig Party and then in Republicanism.

Amazing what a movement can do to impact the culture!