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The Other Jonathan Edwards
Selected Writings on Society, Love, and Justice
Edited by Gerald McDermott and Ronald Story
Published by: University of Massachusetts Press
168 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.50 in, 5 b&w illus.
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Widely regarded as perhaps America's greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards still suffers the stereotype of hellfire preacher obsessed with God's wrath. In this anthology, Gerald McDermott and Ronald Story seek to correct that common view by showing that Edwards was also a compassionate, socially conscious minister of the first order.
Through a selection of sermons and primary writings, McDermott and Story reveal an Edwards who preached love toward all humanity regardless of belief or appearance; who demanded private and public charity to the poor; who criticized hard-hearted business dealings as impious and socially destructive; and who condemned envy and status-seeking as anti-Christian and anti-community. This "other" Jonathan Edwards preached about grace and the love of God but also about responsive constitutional government, the iniquities of hypocrisy and corruption, and the nature of wise leadership. He acknowledged the need for national defense but left room for popular revolt from tyranny. He anticipated a millennial age of peace and prosperity and believed that people should live in the world as they would live through grace in heaven.
Jonathan Edwards was, in sum, a worldly as well as spiritual reformer who resisted the materialistic, acquisitive, and individualistic currents of American culture. For these reasons, McDermott and Story think he may have lessons to teach us today.
Through a selection of sermons and primary writings, McDermott and Story reveal an Edwards who preached love toward all humanity regardless of belief or appearance; who demanded private and public charity to the poor; who criticized hard-hearted business dealings as impious and socially destructive; and who condemned envy and status-seeking as anti-Christian and anti-community. This "other" Jonathan Edwards preached about grace and the love of God but also about responsive constitutional government, the iniquities of hypocrisy and corruption, and the nature of wise leadership. He acknowledged the need for national defense but left room for popular revolt from tyranny. He anticipated a millennial age of peace and prosperity and believed that people should live in the world as they would live through grace in heaven.
Jonathan Edwards was, in sum, a worldly as well as spiritual reformer who resisted the materialistic, acquisitive, and individualistic currents of American culture. For these reasons, McDermott and Story think he may have lessons to teach us today.
Gerald McDermott is Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama, and coauthor of The Theology of Jonathan Edwards.Ronald Story is professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Jonathan Edwards and the Gospel of Love (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012). To view a video of Story's talk about Jonathan Edwards and climate change, please see http://bit.ly/1Y595mk
"A judicious and well-timed collection of primary sources, introduced well, which reveals for students, general readers, and interested Christian laity 'the other Jonathan Edwards,' that is, the one whose life was dedicated to sharing the love of God, preaching social justice prophetically, and promoting peace, harmony, and the welfare of the needy in his own local communities and the eighteenth-century Anglo-American world."—Douglas Sweeney, author of Nathaniel Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of Jonathan Edwards
"Theologian McDermott, a well-known Edwards scholar with no less than five major books on this most renowned of America's theologians, and historian Ronald Story, most recently author of the acclaimed Jonathan Edwards and the Gospel of Love (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), have teamed up in this little gem of a book to expand on a portrait of Edwards that is little known, and often overlooked. Herein are windows into Edwards as a social, if not public theologian (a topic on which McDermott first cut his scholarlyteeth three decades ago when he wrote one of the first dissertations and then books on this aspect of Edwards' thought), albeit approached from the perspective of Edwards as a reacher and even philosopher of the common good."—International Journal of Public Theology
"The editors' introduction to Edwards's ministerial and literary career is worth the price of the book. Highly recommended."—Choice
"The Other Jonathan Edwards provides a rich resource for exciting interest in eighteenth-century New England life. Professors McDermott and Story have selected writings of Edwards that present him in his role as an idealistic moralist. This Edwards can be studied as one of the great moral philosophers in the golden age of moral philosophy."—Early American Literature
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