Modern Puritan." That's an oxymoron, right? Puritans, with their ultra-serious obsession with getting every detail of the Christian life just right, seem an anachronism in today's free-and-easy America. In this world, religion has become, for many, an accessory—like the frontier town that supposedly distributed the advertisement for a new minister: "Wanted: A man who takes his religion like his drink—in moderation."

That's certainly not Jonathan Edwards.

This is the man who, as a boy, built little forts in the woods to hold—not settlers-and-Indians games, but prayer meetings with his friends. He is the precocious 13-year-old entering Yale University (then called the Collegiate School), who bucked a trend among the students away from the Puritan faith of the college's founders and towards an elite Anglican rationalism—affirming instead the Reformed orthodoxy of his forebears.

Later, in true Puritan fashion, Edwards made a long list of spiritual and moral "Resolutions," ...

FREE E-Newsletter Sign up for the ChristianHistory.net e-mail newsletter. Discover more about your Christian heritage with this weekly e-newsletter that features key people, topics, and events from the history of Christianity.      RSS Feed   RSS Help