Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely acknowledged to be one of America's most important theologians and considered a fountainhead of American evangelicalism. He not only played an important role in his own time but also influenced the generations that followed in profound ways. With more than four hundred entries, The Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia provides a wide-ranging perspective on Edwards, offering succinct synopses of topics large and small from his life, thought, and work. Summaries of Edwards's ideas as well as descriptions of the people and events of his times are all easy to find, and suggestions for further reading point to ways to explore topics in greater depth. Comprehensive and reliable, with contributions from the premier Edwards scholars in the world, this encyclopedia will be the standard reference work on one of the most extraordinary figures in American history.

The story of an ambitious family at the forefront of the great middle-class land grab that shaped early American capitalism American Aristocrats is a multigenerational biography of the Andersons of Kentucky, a family of strivers who passionately believed in the promise of America. Beginning in 1773 with the family patriarch, a twice-wounded Revolutionary War hero, the Andersons amassed land throughout what was then the American west. As the eminent religious historian Harry S. Stout argues, the story of the Andersons is the story of America's experiment in republican capitalism. Congressmen, diplomats, and military generals, the Andersons enthusiastically embraced the emerging American gospel of land speculation. In the process, they became apologists for slavery and Indian removal, and worried anxiously that the volatility of the market might lead them to ruin. Drawing on a vast store of Anderson family records, Stout reconstructs their journey to great wealth as they rode out the cataclysms of their time, from financial panics to the Civil War and beyond. Through the Andersons we see how the lure of wealth shaped American capitalism and the nation's continental aspirations.

Commonly acknowledged as Anglo-America's most popular eighteenth-century preacher, George Whitefield commanded mass audiences across two continents through his personal charisma. Harry Stout draws on a number of sources, including the newspapers of Whitefield's day, to outline his subject's spectacular career as a public figure. Although Whitefield here emerges as very much a modern figures, given to shameless self-promotion and extravagant theatricality, Stout also shows that he was from first to last a Calvinist, earnest in his support of orthodox theological tenets and sincere in his concern for the spiritual welfare of the thousands to whom he preached.

"Both the sources he employs and the scope of his study set his work apart from all that have precede it...The first study of New England preaching to span the entire colonial period...very important book." - Journal of American History "Simply breathtaking in scope. No one else has dared to grapple with the full sweep of Puritan preaching form the founding of New England through the American Revolution." - Nathan O. Hatch, University of Notre Dame "A massive achievement will stand as the definitive work on this important subject." - Reviews in American History "Impressive, imaginative, sensible, and lucid." - Donald G. Matthews, University of North Carolina and Chapel Hill "[Stout] has created a field of scholarship hitherto neglected - the manuscript sermon as a source of religious culture in colonial times. More than that, he has shown the extent to which sermon notes add to our knowledge of the times, notably for the period of the Great Awakening. And he has done so with great insight." - New England Quarterly "So soundly based on exhaustive research and so lucid in presentation, that even its most surprising conclusions carry conviction. An impressive achievement." - Daniel Walker Howe, author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 "One of the most impressive studies of Puritan New England society to appear in this century....Throughout the work, Stout enriches, supplements and revises much of the current knowledge about colonial New England. His language, which is both precise and playful, makes the volume a delight to read." -The Historian "Will surely become a benchmark in the study of early American history and culture." -Journal of the American Academy of Religion

The year 2003 marked the tercentenary of the birth of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the man perpetually hailed as "America's most original religious thinker." Edwards's impact, both on colonial religious life and on the Anglo-American world of his day, was internationally acknowledged, and his legacy for the century and a half and more after his death in 1758 has been profound. Even to this day, Edwards's life is studied and his writings consulted on a global basis more than any other American theologian. The most significant scholarly conference marking the Edwards tercentenary took place in October 2003 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The papers from that gathering are presented in this volume. They represent much of the best and most recent work being done on Edwards and reflect the wide diversity of approaches to his life, thought, and legacy.

The sixteen essays in this volume, all previously unpublished, address the little considered question of the role played by religion in the American Civil War. The authors show that religion, understood in its broadest context as a culture and community of faith, was found wherever the war was found. Comprising essays by such scholars as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Drew Galpin Faust, Mark Noll, Reid Mitchell, Harry Stout, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, and featuring an afterword by James McPherson, this collection marks the first step towards uncovering this crucial yet neglected aspect of American history.

The sixteen essays in this volume, all previously unpublished, address the little considered question of the role played by religion in the American Civil War. The authors show that religion, understood in its broadest context as a culture and community of faith, was found wherever the war was found. Comprising essays by such scholars as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Drew Gilpin Faust, Mark Noll, Reid Mitchell, Harry Stout, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, and featuring an afterword by James McPherson, this collection marks the first step towards uncovering this crucial yet neglected aspect of American history.

The eighteen essays collected in this book had their origin in a conference of the same title, held at the Wingspread Conference Center in October of 1993. Leading scholars were invited to reflect on their specialties in American religious history in ways that summarized where the field is and where it ought to move in the decades to come.

An interdisciplinary collection of comparative essays which look at aspects of the thought of Edwards and Franklin and consider their places in American culture.

Universally recognized as a seminal figure in American intellectual history, Jonathan Edwards has been the focus of considerable scholarly attention in a variety of academic disciplines, including religion, history, literature, and philosophy. Because these disciplines discuss him in relation to different intellectual traditions, Edwards scholarship remains segmented. This volume represents the first attempt to provide a synthetic vision of Edwards and his contributions to American culture. Its fifteen previously unpublished essays present the best contemporary literary, historical, theological, and philosophical thinking on Edwards, locating him in his full historical context and demonstrating the continuity of his influence. Together, they provide the fullest account to date of his role in the development of the American consciousness. This volume is the first attempt to provide a synthetic vision of Edwards and his contribution to the development of the American consciousness. Fifteen previously unpublished essays present the best contemporary literary, historical, theological, and philosophical thinking on Edwards, locating him in his full historical context and demonstrating the continuity of his influence.

A profound and timely examination of the moral underpinnings of the War Between the States

The Civil War was not only a war of armies but also a war of ideas, in which Union and Confederacy alike identified itself as a moral nation with God on its side. In this watershed book, Harry S. Stout measures the gap between those claims and the war's actual conduct. Ranging from the home front to the trenches and drawing on a wealth of contemporary documents, Stout explores the lethal mix of propaganda and ideology that came to justify slaughter on and off the battlefield. At a time when our country is once again at war, "Upon the Altar of the Nation" is a deeply necessary book.