The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism sheds new light on the nature of evangelical religion by locating its rise with reference to those consequential changes in Anglo-American society we now routinely acknowledge with the terms Modernity, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment. Bringing together a wide range of sources, the book makes meaningful connections between the Protestant evangelical awakening and the history of science, law, art, and literature in the eighteenth century. There was a profound turn toward nature and the authority of natural knowledge in each of these discourses and a more democratic public sphere available for debating contemporary concerns. In this modern context, evangelicals forcefully pressed their agenda for “true religion,” believing it was still possible to experience “the life of God in the soul of man.” The results were dramatic and disruptive. This book provides a fresh perspective, and presents new research, on the religious thought of leading figures such as John Wesley and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards, but it also traces the significance of evangelical spirituality for elites and non-elites across multiple genres including not only theology, but also natural and moral philosophy, poetry, painting, literature, and music. Viewing devotion, culture, and ideas together, it is possible to see the advent of evangelicalism as a significant new episode in the history of Christian spirituality.
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