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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1977 Jonathan Edwards, pastor: minister and congregation in the eighteenth-century Connecticut Valley. Patricia J. Tracy University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Tracy, Patricia J., "Jonathan Edwards, pastor: minister and congregation in the eighteenth-century Connecticut Valley." (1977). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1358. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1358 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. JONATHAN EDWARDS, PASTOR: MINISTER AND CONGREGATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CONNECTICUT VALLEY A Dissertation Presented by PATRICIA JUNEAU TRACY Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 1977 History JONATHAN EDWARDS, PASTOR: MINISTER AND CONGREGATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CONNECTICUT VALLEY A Dissertation Presented by PATRICIA JUNEAU TRACY Approved as to style and content by: Stephen Nissenbaum, Chairperson of Committee Gerald McFarland, Chairman Department of History i v ABSTRACT Jonathan Edwards, Pastor: Minister and Congregation in the Eighteenth-Century Connecticut Valley (September, 1977) Patricia Juneau Tracy, A.B., Smith College M.A., Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Directed by: Professor Stephen Nissenbaum Although renowned as a theologian, Jonathan Edwards was nevertheless a failure in the most essential task of the mini stry--persuading his congregation to share his vision. That failure illuminates the social history of the man, the community he served, and the problems of many eighteenth-century New England clergymen. Edwards was ill prepared for pastoral responsibilities by his training in philosophy and by the example of his father's vain life-long struggle for ministerial power. Succeeding his eminent grandfather in the Northampton pulpit, Edwards disciplin- found that Solomon Stoddard's reputation as an evangelist and especially arian made his own achievement of success more difficult— the traditional since the social evolution of the community was eroding frontier abundance of role of the church. As Northampton outgrew its abandoned submissi veness to the land, simplicity, and harmony, it also decay were rebellious will of the minister. Symbolic of social To restore piety and adolescents, who became Edwards' special concern. in the early 1730s preached old-fashioned communitarian behavior, Edwards V to the "young people" about the practical benefits of holiness. Even more successful were the 1734-1735 sermons on "justification by faith alone," which offered salvation as an escape from temporal dilemmas. For a brief period Edwards met the psychological needs of his flock and they met his, but the revivals of 1735 and 1741 did not provide Edwards with a permanent satisfactory role in the community. He fought declension with a new emphasis on behavior over emotion as the criterion for conversion. Unable any longer to lead the town through charisma, after 1742 Edwards battled his congregation for power—over money, discipline, and church admissions. By 1750 the community clearly rejected the central role for church and minister which was demanded by Edwards' vision of holiness, and he was forced to leave Northampton. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ESS! Prologue vii PART ONE: PREPARATIONS I. Jonathan Edwards: Preparation for the Ministry, 1703-1729 ... 1 II. Solomon Stoddard: A Frontier Ministry, 1669-1729 21 III. Northampton: The Rising Generation, 1700-1740 43 PART TWO: ACHIEVEMENT AND FRUSTRATION IV. Pastoral Strategies and Success, 1730-1735 79 V. Surprising Conversions, 1735 98 VI. Re-Awakening and Reassessment, 1736-1746 117 VII. Challenges, 1743-1749 145 VIII. The Failure of the Northampton Pastorate, 1749-1750 170 Notes 195 Appendices: I. Demographic Measurements 263 II. Measuring Wealth 267 III. Measuring Political Power 274 Maps: A. Northampton in the Connecticut Valley 278 B. The Western Massachusetts Frontier 278 C. Northampton 1654-1750s 279 Selected Bibliography 281 Vll PROLOGUE Shortly after Jonathan Edwards arrived in Northampton, Solomon Stoddard wrote the name of his grandson and colleague in the list of church members as, simply, "Jonathan Edwards." When Stoddard died two year later, Edwards added the word "Pastor" next to his own name. Stoddard's shaky hand reflected his eighty-three years, and his inscription of the name without a specific category of membership was a symbol of what he had accomplished in almost six decades as a minister. Edwards was twenty-five when he wrote "Pastor," his hand was vigorous and assertive, and the word that he inscribed symbolized all that he hoped to be— and all that he would fail to become. Edwards seems more interesting to me for his failure as a pastor than for his success as a philosopher— in part, because the philosopher has already been studied so extensively. At least since Van Wyck "low- Brooks' influential essay on "highbrow" (intellectual) Edwards and Coming of Age brow" (pragmatic) Ben Franklin was published in America's : "practical" life as in 1915, historians have tended to dismiss Edwards reminiscent unimportant and dull. That stance, however, is uncomfortably faculties must rule the of Charles Chauncy's position that the "higher" rejected. In his full- "lower" ones, a position that Edwards himself absorbed was [Edwards] in length biography, Perry Miller wrote that "so said that his external this interior logic that it may truthfully be subjective. 1,1 But that is biography was virtually an adjunct to his and professional problems faced only part of the truth, for the practical of his theology. We can follow by Edwards were the building materials vin the "external" biography in the "subjective," as well as vice versa. Jonathan Edwards was a pastor--not just a professional "thinker" but a man whose vocation was to persuade others to share his own vision of divine glory and justice. How he conceptualized that spiritual insight is not more interesting than how he communicated it to his congregation, or how he failed to do so. The pastoral aspect of Edwards' ministerial career raises questions unanswered by the traditional analyses of his systematic theology. Why were his congregation "awakened" when he preached on "Justification by Faith Alone"? What is the significance of his special concern with the "young people" and his particular following among them? Why did his congregation approve his doctrines during the Great Awakening but refuse to do so just a few years later? These questions, moreover, reflect more than the particular circumstances of one life: they illuminate the eighteenth-century evolution of the relation between a minister and his Jonathan flock in the Congregational churches of New England. When serve as a lens through Edwards is seen as a pastor , his career can Winslow's which to examine the society in which he lived. Ola Elizabeth portrait. 2 excellent biography of Edwards began the task of a rounded in large part This dissertation aims to make it even rounder, and it is offered by recent commun- an attempt to synthesize a wide range of clues explorations of the history of ity studies, demographic analyses, and childhood in western society. the community context of the ministry Ity preoccupation with the social changes in New England in reflects a fundamental interest in century, which is still a "glacial age" the first half of the eighteenth I to historians. I had at first intended to write another "little commun- ity" study using Northampton as an example of a frontier town evolving into a commercial center. Something of that preliminary ambition remains evident in the present work, although much of the quantitative information has been left out because the numbers just did not answer most of the questions that seemed important. In my search for help in interpreting the numbers, I sought contemporary evaluations of life in eighteenth-century Northampton. Few letters and diaries from the com- munity survive, and so I turned to a source whose obvious biases had once rendered it unreliable in my eyes. In Jonathan Edwards' Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God I found traces of the direction of change in the community, and the perceptions of the author became objects of interest in themselves. From the Northampton church records and genealogies I was able to identify groups who joined Edwards' church during the revival, and Edwards' own sermons and personal documents provided the other components necessary The minis- for a study of the interplay between leader and followers. Timothy terial careers of Edwards' grandfather Stoddard and his father, further Edwards, provided parallels to Edwards' problems that pushed me ministry in the towards considering broader changes in the role of the enhanced my Connecticut Valley. The insights offered by ego psychology of the understanding of Edwards' personal/professional problems and Northampton and who young people who were his special constituency in communities. I have come to led the Awakening movement in most Valley more complex story of three see the history of Northampton as part of a problems of the clergy generations of ministers, and the professional psychological history of the demographic, economic, and as part of the region. full-scale social fails short of being a While this dissertation eschews pretending to a century, it also Mstory of two colonies over character of Jonathan possible approaches to the synthesize all the many complement to the traditional to serve as a Edwards. It is intended removed from ,ts pursuit of philosophy to others the toerica." I leave of non-theologian's understanding trust that my ,etic gualities, and I of that his congregation suggest the "message" Edwards . doctrines can was, In.

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