The Irony of Clerical Professionalism
New England's Congregational Ministers and the Great Awakening
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2732729 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James W Schmotter (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1979 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 148 |
| Publication date | 1979-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2712305 |
| OpenAlex | W2317411726 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
England have turned away from the ministry to concentrate on lay participation in the revivals. Through quantitative methodology they have sought to determine who was converted in the 1740s and have hypothesized the reasons for these conversions.1 This approach has provided illuminating insights, but its success should not suggest that further study of the ministry cannot expand our understanding of the Awakening. Questions about the Congregational clergy's role in the revivals of the 1740s remain unanswered, largely because scholarship has neglected the issues that these ministers themselves deemed most important. What historians have missed is the fact that for most New England ministers the Great Awakening represented above all a professional crisis. The most pressing questions for Congregational pastors of the 1740s concerned the purposes and responsibilities of their calling. Ministers had to decide how to deal with popular preachers like George Whitefield and James Davenport, men who openly scorned the ministry's qualifications and standards. Clerical supporters of the revivals had to determine how to
Art · Christian ministry · Great Awakening · Irony · Literature · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Mormonism, Religion, and History · Public Administration · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,09 |
| Citation span | 1980 - 2004 (25) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |