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Biography:
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a Congregationalist minister who became pastor in
Northampton, Massachusetts in 1724, the same church his grandfather lead until 1729.
Here he exerted considerable influence on the religious development of the early
American colonies, partly because of his dynamic style and partly because it was the
most important Massachusetts pulpit outside of Boston.
Scholars generally consider his preaching to have been the spark which lead to the first "Great Awakening" (1735-1735), a grassroots religious revival movement which redefined American religion for decades to come. Edwards was very dogmatic and conservative in his Calvinist beliefs; however, his commitment to traditional Calvinism was not an unthinking loyalty - over many years he had struggled with objections to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, for example, although he did finally reach a conclusion which satisfied him.
For Edwards, the principle enemy appears to have been Arminianism - a theological perspective to which the English colonists were susceptible because of their enterprising spirit and seemingly boundless optimism. These attitudes minimized the power of Original Sin and, for him, falsely increased the power of Free Will - as a result, religion became less a matter of relying on God and more a matter of simply promoting simplistic moral dictums.
One result of this was the growing belief that participation in the Eucharist required not simply a knowledge of church doctrines and upstanding moral behavior, but rather a conversion and genuine acceptance of the faith of the Congregational Church. For Edwards, true religion was not a matter of simply accepting particular doctrines but instead an experience of God which takes complete possession of the individual. This was not the tradition of the churches in the area, including his own, and thus the church members grew dissatisfied with Edwards' changing ideas.
As a result, on June 22, 1750 he was officially dismissed from his job and on July 1, he gave his "Farewell Sermon." Although personally defeated, Edwards' position on this matter was ultimately the one which would take hold and come to define Congregationalism. In 1751 he became pastor of a frontier church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and in 1758 the accepted the position of president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). His son-in-law, Aaron Burr, had been the previous president, but Edwards himself only served a month before dying of smallpox contracted after taking an early, experimental smallpox vaccine.
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