American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History<\/em><\/a> (Univ. of Notre Dame Press), which I co-edited with Darren Dochuk and Kurt Peterson.<\/strong><\/p>\nBiographers have put Jonathan Edwards\u2019s thought and life to many uses. Americans seemingly have an insatiable appetite for biography, and Edwards is in the second rank of our most popular and enduring American subjects (several Founding Fathers, as well as Abraham Lincoln, have commanded the interest of many more writers). Nevertheless, Edwards has consistently generated his share of attention since his untimely death in 1758. In recent years, scholarly interest in Edwards has seen quite a renaissance, capped by the completion of Yale University Press\u2019s monumental Works of Jonathan Edwards<\/em> series, the opening of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University and its online resource collection, and the publication of George Marsden\u2019s biography, Jonathan Edwards: A Life<\/em> (2003).![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www3.undpress.nd.edu\/covers\/P03132.png\")
<\/p>\nReligious biographers\u00a0almost always use their subject to advocate, at least subtly, for a contemporary issue or position. But that is not unique, as political and intellectual biographers often do the same, using significant life stories to frame a \u201cuseable past.\u201d Biographers of religious figures, and religious historians in general, do face a special quandary, however, as they contend with the theological truth-claims made by their subjects. Those theological precepts are viewed as irrelevant, impossible to verify, and out-of-bounds in academia by many scholars. Although Marsden himself has routinely encouraged historians of faith to operate within the rules of the \u201cguild\u201d and not write providential history, religious biography still implicitly pressures a writer to assess the views held by the subject.<\/p>\n
While there are many ways historians might assess theological beliefs, from relative silence to explicit evaluation, objective description no longer seems a tenable option. Professional historians still endorse the standard of fairness in their writing, but \u201cobjectivity\u201d is widely viewed as a rhetorical posture rather than an intellectual reality. When someone like Jonathan Edwards makes precise religious assertions, his biographer must, at some level, contend with whether he or she accepts the subject\u2019s ideas, and to what extent and purposes. The special character of theological knowledge puts this enterprise in a different category than, say, evaluating the merits of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s views on the Constitution. Although historians often do assess the social effects of religious beliefs, or the logical consistency of them, their ultimate veracity cannot be tested in conventional ways. Edwards, for instance, said that only people with faith in Christ go to heaven, but we cannot demonstrate whether this is the case. We can only believe so, or not.<\/p>\n
Because of the epistemological conundrums posed by the history of religion, recent Edwards biographers have become more sensitive to audience in a way that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers were not. Twentieth- and early twenty-first century religious biographers must negotiate in a particular way the tensions between an audience of the faithful and a scholarly audience, although there is always some overlap between the two. Academic Christian historians like Marsden gravitate toward subjects like Edwards partly out of religious interest and conviction, but in the \u201cpragmatic academy,\u201d like the larger public sphere, one can no longer promote Edwards on the basis that he brilliantly explicated the truths of revealed religion. The authority supporting that argument is not shared by much of the academic audience, but is widely accepted by the audience of the faithful.<\/p>\n
Historically, Edwards\u2019s biographers have mostly fallen into one of four categories: first, those writers who commended him as a man of faith and unique insight into scriptural truth; second, those who found Edwards and his Calvinism deplorable and regressive; third, those who admired some of Edwards\u2019s characteristics or the implications of his views, but who did not accept his Calvinist theology; and fourth, those like Marsden who believed that Edwards\u2019s theology best accounted for the human condition, implying (but not arguing) that the Calvinist system is likely to be true. The first two approaches, which we might call \u201cbiblicist\u201d and \u201cProgressive,\u201d respectively, have long since fallen out of favor in the academy. The third approach, which we might call \u201cneo-orthodox\u201d because of the theological movement that helped inspire it, chiefly generated the scholarly renaissance in Edwards studies. The fourth approach, which one might call \u201cReformed academic,\u201d has been pioneered by Marsden and other Christian historians who publish with mainstream academic presses. While these Christian historians have demonstrated that one need not hide one\u2019s faith commitments in the academy if one accepts the pragmatic rules of the scholarly game, Marsden\u2019s advocacy of Christian perspectives in the postmodern academy also opens new possibilities for bridging the gap between scholarly and religious audiences.<\/p>\n
Friends, you can\u00a0sign up here<\/a>\u00a0for my Thomas S. Kidd author<\/em>\u00a0newsletter.\u00a0<\/span>Each newsletter will update you\u00a0on what\u2019s happening in the world of American religious and political history, and current events. It will contain unique material available only to subscribers, and each will help you keep up with my blog posts, books, and other writings from around the web. [Your e-mail information will never be<\/em>\u00a0shared.] Thanks!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today\u2019s post is an excerpt from my essay on George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, and the Art of Religious Biography, from the recently-released book\u00a0American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History (Univ. of Notre Dame Press), which I co-edited with Darren Dochuk and Kurt Peterson. Biographers have put Jonathan Edwards\u2019s thought and life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1000,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[500,45,5],"tags":[1015,293,2813,2800],"class_list":["post-11655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-religious-history","category-jonathan-edwards","category-thomas-kidd","tag-biography","tag-george-marsden","tag-jonathan-edwards","tag-thomas-kidd"],"yoast_head":"\n
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