A biographical study of an important early American theologian, educator, and writer.
Grandson of Jonathan Edwards, president of Yale University, writer, teacher, theologian, Timothy Dwight was a major figure in the Second Great Awakening of American Protestantism. He was dubbed by an admirer as "the most conspicuous man in New England," but biographers have struggled to grasp his life. Though a voluminous writer, Dwight left relatively few personal records and he has been seen, rather as the near-blind Dwight himself saw the world, only dimly, a figure of "lights and shades." For John R. Fitzmier, the key to imagining Dwight's life as a whole is to be found in Dwight's religious system, "godly federalism," which unified a seemingly disparate set of views and activities. Fitzmier's book presents at last an integrated portrait of Dwight. It is an illuminating biographical inquiry into the life of an important early American religious visionary.
John R. Fitzmier is Associate Dean of the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University.
Religion in North America--Catherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein, editors
January 1999
272 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 4 b&w photos cloth 0-253-33433-0 $ 39.95 s
September 29, 2000