Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition and American Culture
Files
Document Type
Book
Description
As the charismatic leader of the wave of religious revivals known as the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) is one of the most important figures in American religious history. However, by the end of the eighteenth century, his writings were generally dismissed as remnants of a moribund Puritan tradition. Focusing on the publishing history and appropriation of Edwards's works by succeeding generations, Joseph Conforti explores the construction and manipulation of the Edwards legacy and demonstrates its central place in American cultural and religious history. Most of Edwards's writings were not regularly republished or widely read until the early nineteenth century, when he emerged as a prominent thinker both in academic circles and in the new popular religious culture of the Second Great Awakening. Even after the Civil War, Edwards remained a popular figure from the Puritan past for colonial revivalists. But by the early twentieth century, scholars had again reinvented Edwards, this time deemphasizing his influence. These contrasting constructions of the one man, Conforti says, reveal the dynamic process of cultural change.
ISBN
0807845353
Publication Date
11-8-1995
Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
City
Chapel Hill
Keywords
Jonathan Edward, colonial revival, Great Awakening, Puritan
Disciplines
American Studies | Religion
Recommended Citation
Conforti, Joseph A. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition & American Culture. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
