It began as a trickle in 1792, but by century's end northwestern
Connecticut was awash in revival. In 1799 Edward Dorr Griffin wrote
that he could stand at his doorstep in Litchfield County and
"number fifty or sixty congregations laid down in one field of
divine wonders." Griffin was one of the leading ministers whose
electrifying preaching triggered the Second Great Awakening--the
subject of this award-winning study.
A Field of Divine Wonders focuses on the village revivals
sparked by Griffin and his fellow New Divinity ministers--the
theological heirs of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards died in 1758--long
before the rash of revivals in 1798--but he left an enduring legacy
that later generations of disciples followed. But it was the third
generation of Edwardseans, pastors such as Griffin, Asahel
Nettleton, and Bennet Tyler, who personified the theology of
revival. For thirty years, they successfully preached, counseled,
and defended the New Divinity message of salvation until the
mid-1820s when most of the leaders had passed from the scene and
New Divinity revivalism had lost its appeal. Nevertheless, there
remained a form of piety rooted in Edwards's teaching on
"affectionate" religion, which merged with other evangelical
traditions and has endured up to our own day.
Unlike previous studies focused chiefly on leaders or
institutions, or theology or converts, A Field of Divine Wonders
integrates the history of ideas with newer approaches in historical
research--collective biography, modes of discourse, gender studies,
social and quantitative history, and local community studies--to
supply the kind of "new religious history" that historians have
long called for.
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