An Appeal to the Learned

OLOMON minister of the First Congregational of Northampton, Massachusetts, from i669 to I729, is considered one of the most important ministers of early England, and the reasons for his importance are fixed firmly in the minds of students of the period. It is generally believed that by 1700 his personality, ecclesiology, and theology dominated the laymen and clergy of western Massachusetts and much of Connecticut. Moreover, it is argued that among a clergy obsessed by church discipline, and especially Congregationalism, Stoddard's Presbyterian-like Instituted Church with its converting ordinances and open communion represented a radical alternative to the Puritan New England Way and did much to cause its destruction. Finally, it is believed that grandfather of Jonathan Edwards, formulated many of the evangelical notions which led to the Great Awakening.' flaws in this portrait are many. idea that Stoddard dominated the Connecticut Valley stemmed from the research of Perry Miller, the scholar most responsible for modern interest in Stoddard.2 *Mr. Lucas is a member of the Department of History, Indiana University, Bloomington. 1 Some of the more important treatments of Stoddard are Perry Miller, Solomon i643-I729, Harvard Theological Review, XXXIV (0940), 277-320, as well as his England Mind From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Mass., I953), hereafter cited as From Colony to Province (I have used the i96i paperback edition published by Beacon Press); Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: History of a Puritan Idea (New York, i963); Norman Pettit, Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (New Haven, Conn., i966); Robert G. Pope, Half-Way Covenant: Membership in Puritan England (Princeton, N. J., i969); Thomas A. Schafer, Solomon Stoddard and the Theology of the Revival, in Stuart C. Henry, ed., A Miscellany of American Christianity: Essays in Honor of H. Shelton Smith (Durham, N. C., i963), 328-361; and James P. Walsh, Solomon Stoddard's Open Communion: A Reexamination, England Quarterly, XLIII (1970), 97-II4. Some of the ideas presented in this article were outlined in Paul Lucas, The River Gods: Mr. Stoddard's Valley, i650-I730 (a paper delivered at the meeting of the American Historical Association, Dec. 30, i967, Toronto, Canada). 2For example, see Miller, Solomon Stoddard, Harvard Theo. Rev., XXXIV (I94I), 277-285, and Miller, From Colony to Province, 23I-245

Appeal · Art · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Psychology

• Jonathan Edwards's Change of Position On Stoddardeanism

  Open Access•John F Jamieson•Harvard Theological Review•1981

  Add to list

• Origins of the Eighteenth-Century Evangelical Revival

  Open Access•Michael J Crawford•Journal of British Studies•1987

  Add to list