STUDYING THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM THROUGH JONATHAN EDWARDS: VERSIONS OF “AMERICA’S THEOLOGICAN” AT MID-CENTURY

Abstract

Primarily geared toward a European audience, this essay seeks to create an awareness of the significant potential of Edwards’s national and international reception histories as an interpretative lens for studying the diverse traditions and trajectories of American Protestantism. As an example, the essay revisits the beginnings of what is often called the “Edwards Renaissance” from the 1930s to the 1950s to demonstrate how much we can learn about these important decades in the religious and cultural history of the United States by examining closely the different appropriations of Edwards. The focus is on three major interpretative communities essential to the theological recovery of Edwards: the movement of neoorthodoxy, represented by H. Richard Niebuhr, the popular mainstream of the neoevangelical movement as embodied by Billy Graham, and the kind of “neoconfessional” evangelicalism advocated by John H. Gerstner.