The
1730s:
A
Survey of the Decade
Bryce
Asberg and Abraham Sullivan
REL
319: Eighteenth-Century Theology
February
17, 2021
The
1730s were years of transition, a connection between the world of the past and
the world of the future. While changes which would sweep the English-speaking
world in the ensuing decades were merely in their developmental stages, it was
during the 1730s that they began to sprout. This was especially true for New
England; but in order to understand the American experience, one must also
understand the British scene.
Since
New England was composed of British colonies, New England residents would be
keenly aware of developments in the home country, at least insofar as news made
the long journey across the Atlantic. The 1730s in Great Britain were largely a
decade of peace and continued development under the careful hand of Sir Robert
Walpole. Although his powers were a far cry from those of a modern British head
of government, his opponents attacked him as a “prime minister” after the
French style of parliamentary leadership because Walpole successfully
consolidated his power to an extent never before seen.[1]
He craftily developed a group of allied ministers within the government who
could fight alongside him. This inner circle eventually led to the idea of a
cabinet with corporate responsibility for policy decisions.[2]
As
Walpole was pioneering full use of the resources available to a cabinet
minister, he strove hard to keep Britain free from foreign entanglements.
Eventually the public perception of his pacifism would give his opposition the
support they needed to remove him. Nevertheless, Walpole was successful in
keeping Britain out of European wars for most of his tenure. Along the way, he
achieved significant diplomatic wins, namely “reconstruct[ing] the anti-French
coalition of William III’s reign and he had broken apart the Franco-Spanish
alliance which had been so threatening to British trade.”[3]
It is not surprising that Walpole’s tenure saw great growth in trade, due both
to foreign policy and financial reforms.[4]
Despite Walpole’s best efforts, however, he could not prevent the War of
Jenkin’s Ear from breaking out in 1739. This was a naval war with Spain that
did not go well for England and helped bring about Walpole’s political demise.[5]
Historians
debate whether the Church of England dominated public life in the early eighteenth
century, or whether the Church served as a means for political ends. This
question is difficult to answer due to the complicated relationship between the
church and the state, but it is certain that the government had great authority
over church leaders, even when it was not exercised for raw political purposes.[6] Data is imprecise, but it
appears that around this time church attendance, as well as the frequency of communion
administration, began to decline.[7] This lends some support to
the idea that the state-church union was weakening the Church of England.
New
England Puritans would be interested in these developments. For instance, they
would experience material benefits from Britain’s increased financial prosperity.
But Puritans were not exclusively, or even primarily, interested in material
matters, and they would see international conflict with spiritual significance.
British warfare against predominantly Catholic countries was inseparably tied
to the advance of the Gospel. Moreover, North American Puritans would see in
the Church of England a body that had been corrupted and was falling away from
effective Gospel ministry. Though the New England colonies were tied to
England, they were also trying to create something better.
This
blend of British heritage and the desire for something new
created a unique society in the New World. Of course, much of the legal
heritage the colonists used to establish their systems of government was
essentially British. But Massachusetts, and some of the other New England
colonies with her, put an emphasis on Biblical law which made them, in many
ways, the least like old England. For instance, while inheritance laws in other
colonies mirrored ancient British traditions, Massachusetts law followed Old
Testament precedent.[8]
Other laws forbade not only blasphemy but even the mocking of religion. For
instance, fines could be assessed for laughing during a sermon or mocking the
preacher as he left the building. Those who spoke “slightly of the ordinance of
baptism,” presumably including attacks on the prevalent practice of
paedobaptism, could also receive punishment.[9]
These religious laws were indeed invoked, including in a lawsuit against a man
who called Jonathan Edwards “as great an instrument as the Devil had on this
side [of] hell.”[10] Their active enforcement
shows that they were not merely token rules, but reflected beliefs deeply held
by New England society.
Other
laws meant to protect the poor resulted in an early modern welfare system. For
instance, illegitimate children of impoverished parents received funds from the
public treasury, as did the aged and infirm.[11]
And, though New England colonies allowed slavery, they “tended to treat
slaves…more humanely than did colonies farther south.”[12]
Early
Puritan settlements were very communal in nature, with the colony as a whole acting
as one body. Even church government reflected this, as early Congregationalists
regularly held synods which superintended colonial churches in an almost
Presbyterian manner. As the 1730s approached, however, the colony receded into
the distance as the town came to the fore.[13]
No longer did the colony vote as a whole on anything; rather, each town sent
its representative to the General Court.[14]
The
increased localization of politics did not necessarily mean an increased
individualization. Citizens still had to apply to town leadership if they
wished to transfer to a church in another district; local communities intervened
in familial matters to adjudicate disputes.[15]
Important decisions were settled by ballot in the town meeting, though Jonathan
Edwards himself found that a man could lose a vote simply by refusing to supply
the voters with punch, and the trusting spirit of the New England mind meant
that ballot fraud went unchecked and largely undetected.[16]
So the New England community was a local one, in which each man knew his
neighbors and was governed by them alone. This relative privacy of locale,
however, meant a reduction of privacy for the individual, who could do little
to escape the prying eyes of those who sat next to him in the pews or plowed
next to him in the fields.
Municipal codes were enforced by the
most respected men, who acted both as elders in the church and as legal experts.
Lesser offices were available to any man who wanted them, and did not remain
within a close circle of the elites; “a substantial portion of the male
population had the opportunity to participate in the lower levels of the town
government from time to time.”[17]
But the main offices, those which carried the most weight, were reserved to a
few patriarchs of the town – sometimes, as in the case of powerful ministers
William Williams and Solomon Stoddard, the pastor among them.[18]
The New England town, then, though
governed on a local level, represented a traditional and hierarchical system.
When, for instance, the Northampton meeting house had to be rebuilt during the
late 1730s, Jonathan Edwards found that the most difficult factor in
construction was deciding which families would be able to sit near the front of
the church in the new building.[19] Most
people took their societal class very seriously. The Great Awakening, however,
would cause widespread disruption to this traditional social order, and divide
New England clergy amongst themselves.
The
Great Awakening first manifested itself in Northampton, under the direction of
Jonathan Edwards. The roots, however, can be found earlier. Cedric Cowing
traces the revivalist line of thought back to Solomon Stoddard, predecessor to
Jonathan Edwards at the Northampton congregation. Stoddard, who became so
influential that he was known as the “pope” of his region, developed a style of
preaching which was extemporaneous and “searching.” He declared, “The Word is
as a hammer and we should use it to break the Rocky Hearts of men.”[20]
Because of this, Stoddard’s preaching emphasized a sort of revivalism, an
urging of his hearers to believe in Christ and be saved.
Jonathan
Edwards continued this deeply searching style of preaching, even increasing an
emphasis on conversion and outward manifestations of the inner work of God.
While he certainly did not believe that outer signs could infallibly point to
the inward work of the Spirit, he did believe that some things were evident. And
like so many adults in any generation, Edwards was especially concerned that
the youth failed to show these manifestations.
That
is why Edwards was shocked when, “at the latter end of the year 1733, there appeared
a very unusual flexibleness, and yielding to advice, in our young people.”[21]
This was the spark of awakening in Northampton, and it soon spread to the
entire town. All manner of people engaged in discussion of religious topics,
almost to the detriment of worldly pursuits. But the effects were more
pronounced than mere discussion. The awakening extended to being “gone
through,” or converted. Soon, the church had around 620 members, almost the
same as the adult population of the town.[22]
This represented an impressive increase of 300 members.[23]
Edwards
was thrilled at this increase in religious interest and wrote a detailed
account which contained many themes that would dominate the rest of his public
ministry. In an echo of his most famous sermon, Edwards wrote that the revival
made it “a dreadful thing amongst us to lie out of Christ, in danger every day
of dropping into hell.”[24] Beyond
fear, those experiencing awakening exhibited a focus on the excellency of
Christ, paralleling a sermon Edwards gave around this time entitled “The
Excellency of Christ.”
As
Edwards went on to argue, “many are, doubtless, ready to date their conversion
wrong, throwing by those lesser degrees of light that appeared at first
dawning, and calling some more remarkable experience they had afterwards, their
conversion.”[25] This theme is repeated in
his teaching on justification by faith alone, where Edwards attributes a
justifying role to all acts of faith, desiring Christians not to search vainly
for their initial act of faith.[26] Edwards
even gives passing mention to his church’s practice of admitting adults to the
Lord’s Supper without a vetted confession of faith, an issue that would become
incredibly controversial later in his career. Through these examples it becomes
clear that the Great Awakening was a formative period in Edwards’ theological
development and his writings on the Great Awakening relate to many of the
themes of his ministry.
Edwards
had high hopes for the continuation of this revival and he was keenly
interested in what he thought would feed fuel to the fire of awakening.
Throughout New England, revivals were spurred on by news of God’s work in
others’ hearts, and the desire to be a part of sharing this news led him to
publish his A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, the overseas
publication of which launched Edwards’ international fame.
But the Northampton revival did not
last. Just as the town became famous in Great Britain for the mighty works of
God taking place there, Edwards found himself disappointed as the townspeople
returned, perhaps not to immorality, but to bickering and pursuit of wealth.[27] He
aired his sorrow in a letter to Benjamin Colman, the minister who had helped
him publish A Faithful Narrative: “I am ashamed, and am ready to blush,
to speak or think of such an appearance of Strife, and division of the People
into parties as there has been, after such great and wonderful things as God
has wrought for us.”[28] It
seemed that Edwards’s hopes for ushering in the millennium had been unfounded.
The end of the decade, however, saw
a renewal in revivalism. This time, the work of the Spirit would not only
affect Northampton, but would spread like wildfire across all of New England.
The catalyst for this surge was the coming of George Whitefield, a British
itinerant preacher, to America in 1739. Whitefield, whose powerful voice and emotive
tone could stir even the hardest of hearts, brought with him a fiery emphasis
on personal conversion which frequently took aim at the established clergy. Even
more so did a host of other preachers who sprang up in imitation of Whitefield.[29]
Whitefield preached to huge crowds of people, urging them not only to believe
the doctrines of the faith but also to be transformed in the inner man.
Eventually, Whitefield’s message of Holy Spirit-driven Christianity would
transform the United States. Along with this transformation would come the
rupturing of social order and the destruction of traditional church hierarchy.
As Old Lights, who resented these new ways, clashed with the New Lights, who
welcomed such preaching, New England was turned into a battleground. It would
be a battle which split denominations, and one which also turned the huge
forces of the Williams-Stoddard clan against Edwards for good. Perhaps the Great
Awakening was Edwards’s greatest achievement, insofar as he was its spark in the New World; but it was also his undoing.
Bibliography
Cook,
Edward M. The Fathers of the Towns: Leadership and Community Structure in
Eighteenth-Century New England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1976.
Cowie, Leonard W. Hanoverian England: 1714-1837. New York, NY: Humanities Press, 1967.
Cowing,
Cedric Breslyn. The Great Awakening and the American Revolution: Colonial
Thought in the 18th Century. Chicago, I.L: Rand McNally, 1971.
Edwards, Jonathan. A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God. Jonathan-Edwards.org. Accessed February 16, 2021. https://www.jonathan-edwards.org/Narrative.html.
———. Jonathan Edwards: Writings from the Great Awakening. Edited by Philip F. Gura. New York, NY: Library of America, 2013.
———. “Justification by Faith Alone .” Biblebulletinboard.com. Accessed February 16, 2021. https://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/justification.htm.
Jarrett, Derek. Britain, 1688-1815. London: Longmans, 1965.
Kidd,
Thomas S. The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in
Colonial America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
Marsden,
George. Jonathan Edwards: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2003.
Nelson,
William E. The Common Law in Colonial America. Volume III, The
Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008.
O'Gorman, Frank. The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History, 1688-1832. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
Zuckerman,
Michael. Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.
[1] Leonard W. Cowie, Hanoverian England: 1714-1837 (New York, NY: Humanities Press, 1967), 251-252.
[2] Ibid., 255.
[3] Derek Jarrett, Britain, 1688-1815 (London: Longmans, 1965), 188.
[4] Cowie, 258.
[5] Ibid., 265.
[6] Ibid., 116.
[7] Frank O'Gorman, The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History, 1688-1832 (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 167-68.
[8] William E. Nelson, The Common Law in Colonial America, volume 3, The Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 97.
[9] Nelson, 100.
[10] Nelson, 101.
[11] Nelson, 109.
[12] Nelson, 122.
[13] Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 10-16.
[14] Zuckerman, 19.
[15] Zuckerman, 146-147.
[16] Zuckerman, 173 (Edwards) and 181 (ballot fraud).
[17] Edward M. Cook, Jr., The Fathers of the Towns: Leadership and Community Structure in Eighteenth-Century New England (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1976), 27.
[18] Cook, 37.
[19] George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 186.
[20] Cedric B. Cowing, The Great Awakening and the American Revolution: Colonial Thought in the 18th Century (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1971),
[21] Jonathan Edwards, “A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God,” A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (International Outreach Inc.), accessed February 16, 2021, https://www.jonathan-edwards.org/Narrative.html.
[22] Marsden, 160.
[23] Ibid., 160.
[24] Edwards, Faithful Narrative.
[25] Edwards, Faithful Narrative.
[26] Jonathan Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone ,” BibleBulletinBoard.com, accessed February 16, 2021, https://www.biblebb.com/files/edwards/justification.htm. See especially Section III.
[27] Marsden, 189.
[28] Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Edwards: Writings from the Great Awakening, ed. Philip F. Gura (New York, NY: Library of America, 2013), 656-57.
[29] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 49.