By linking the choice of new birth with his audience’s choice of a new American identity, British evangelist George Whitefield provided a common American experience that unified diverse colonists who lacked a common identity
That Asbury University’s chapel has become a “hot spot of sacramentality” {James K.A. Smith] would not surprise the founders of Christian higher education in America. The integration of revival and moral philosophy in the college chapel helped lead to what Mark. A. Noll calls “the great age of Christian higher education.”
While Asbury University’s current revival appears a modern anomaly, it is very much in keeping with the history of higher education in America.
Before we can learn anything from Jonathan Edwards, we first need to humble ourselves as he did on that fateful day in 1734, when he finally admitted that “business as usual” was failing his students.
The inciting event presents the hero with a decision: Shall I continue in the relative comfort of my business-as-usual life, or risk pursuing a new and more dangerous goal? A lot like Lent is designed to do…
Edwards is widely recognized as one of the most important American thinkers and religious figures and as a major figure in the history of Christian thought. The release of Edwards’ work comes at a moment of renewed interest in the preacher, especially among conservative evangelicals.
A Pulitzer prize-winning novelist writing of her intellectual debt to Jonathan Edwards in a major intellectual journal it is definitely worth a read:
“I have heard it said a thousand times that people seek out religion in order to escape complexity and uncertainty. I was moved and instructed precisely by the vast theater Edwards’s vision proposes for complexity and uncertainty…”-Marilynne Robinson
You’re invited to the first in a series of Webinars sponsored by Campus Renewal ministries. Tonight’s Webinar features Two Handed Warriors Senior Editor Gary David Stratton, Lead Faculty for Worldview Formation at Bethel University and Principal Consultant for the Hollywood Bezalel Initiative, a think-tank and fellowship supporting young filmmakers of faith.
Think the fiery Puritan who preached America’s most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of Angry God,” would threaten to dangle celebrities over the pit of hell? Think again.
Note: This paper was originally delivered at the 2012 Society of Vineyard Scholars in Minneapolis, MN. Jonathan Edwards placed the blame for Satan’s victory in the First Great Awakening on the failure of the stage-theory used by the pastors of…
Responses to THW’s #2 Blog Post of the Year–Paparazzi in the Hands of an Angry God–revealed the depth of angst out there balance the desire to maximize the potentialities of the electronic age without being drawn into the “dark side” of self-promotion.
It’s easier (and more pleasant) to absorb the latest tabloid headline about Kim Kardashian’s sex life than it is to consider a story about Saddleback pastor Rick Warren’s efforts to fight AIDS in Africa. -Chris Easterly, Television Writer