Origin from 1734
Nineteen years after Antoine Court convened the first synod of the Church of the Desert in France in 1715, already recorded here, and fifty two years before Louis XVI signed the Edict of Toleration in 1787, also recorded here, a Massachusetts pastor's own congregation supplied Reformed Protestantism with its most influential account of revival. Beginning in late 1734 and continuing into 1735, the Congregationalist minister Jonathan Edwards, a strict Calvinist trained in the Puritan tradition, watched roughly three hundred of his Northampton parishioners, about a quarter of the town, undergo what he called surprising conversions. Edwards's own narrative of the awakening, published in London and Edinburgh in 1737 and reprinted across New England, carried the Calvinist doctrine of sudden, sovereignly worked conversion to a trans-Atlantic evangelical audience for the first time and set off the wider revival later called the First Great Awakening, recorded elsewhere on this map as its own general religious event alongside Edwards's own entry as a historical figure. The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University's own edition of the Faithful Narrative situates the Northampton awakening as the opening account of Reformed revivalism in America. George Marsden's Bancroft Prize winning biography of Edwards traces how the Northampton conversions reshaped Reformed theology's account of grace on both sides of the Atlantic.
Facts
Dates
StatusRevived marks Jonathan Edwards's Northampton revival, beginning in late 1734 and continuing into 1735, which carried Reformed revivalism to a trans-Atlantic evangelical audience and opened the wider First Great Awakening, a milestone between Antoine Court convening the first synod of the Church of the Desert in France in 1715, already recorded here, and Louis XVI signing the Edict of Toleration in 1787, also recorded here. Connections
Associated With
This source names Americas directly: "Nineteen years after Antoine Court convened the first synod of the Church of the Desert in France in 1715, already recorded here, and fifty two years before Louis XVI signed the Edict of Toleration..."
Source Faithful Narrative (1737), The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
This source names Congregationalists directly: "Nineteen years after Antoine Court convened the first synod of the Church of the Desert in France in 1715, already recorded here, and fifty two years before Louis XVI signed the Edict of Toleration..."
Source Faithful Narrative (1737), The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
This source names Jonathan Edwards directly: "1735, the Congregationalist minister Jonathan Edwards, a strict Calvinist trained in the Puritan tradition, watched roughly three hundred of his Northampton parishioners, about a quarter of the..."
Source Faithful Narrative (1737), The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
This source names Massachusetts directly: "in 1787, also recorded here, a Massachusetts pastor's own congregation supplied Reformed Protestantism with its most influential account of revival."
Source Faithful Narrative (1737), The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
This source names Protestantism directly: "own congregation supplied Reformed Protestantism with its most influential account of revival."
Source Faithful Narrative (1737), The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
Occurred In
Source Faithful Narrative (1737), The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
Spread Event Of
Adds a milestone in Calvinist history between Antoine Court convening the first synod of the Church of the Desert in France in 1715 and Louis XVI signing the Edict of Toleration in 1787, both already recorded here: Jonathan Edwards's Northampton revival, beginning in late 1734, which carried Reformed revivalism to a trans-Atlantic audience and opened the wider First Great Awakening.
Source Faithful Narrative (1737), The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
Sources
1. Faithful Narrative (1737), The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale University Press, 2003)
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