Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:02:48.509Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Puritan Roots of American Universalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

K. R. Morris
K. R. Morris
Affiliation:
P. O. Box 7402, College Station, Durham, NC 27708–7402, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

If the Calvinism of America's Puritan forefathers is anything in relation to a belief in universal salvation, it is its opposite. The Calvinist's belief that Christ's atonement is restricted to effecting the salvation of a limited number of preordained saints is about as far as one can go in the opposite direction from universalism and still retain an aspect of grace and redemption for humanity. But in this essay I will argue that there was a direct link between the Puritan Calvinism of 17th century New England and the widespread movement toward universalism within New England churches in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , November 1991 , pp. 457 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Tkeolojp in A merica: The Major Protestant Voices from Puritanism to Neo-Orthodoxy, ed. Ahlstrom, Sydney (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1967), p. 27Google Scholar.

2 White, Eugene E., Puritan Rhetoric: The Issue of Emotion in Religion (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1972), p. 10Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 12.

4 White, op. cit., pp. 23–24.

5 Kuklick, Bruce, Churchmen and Philosophers: From Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 8Google Scholar.

6 Kuklick, op. cit., p. 9.

7 Miller, Perry, Errand Into the Wilderness, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 11Google Scholar.

8 Kuklick, op. cit. p. 12.

9 White, op. cit., p. 39.

10 Ibid., p. 37.

11 Ibid., p. 34.

12 Kuklick, op. cit., p. 13.

13 Edwards, Jonathan, ‘A Narrative of Surprising Conversions’, The Select Works of Jonathan Edwards (London: Banner of Truth Trusi, 1958), 1, 9Google Scholar.

14 Kuklick, op. cit., pp. 22–23.

15 Edwards, Jonathan, The Works of President Edwards (New York: G. & C. & H. Carvill, 1830), 1, 30Google Scholar, as quoted in Edwards, Rem B., A Return to Moral and Religious Philosophy in Early America (Washington: University Press of America, Inc., 1982), p. 2Google Scholar.

18 Kuklick, op. cit., p. 17.

17 Edwards, Jonathan, ‘The Mind’, Scientific and Philosophical Writings, ed. Anderson, Wallace E. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), p. 344Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., p. 375.

19 White, op. cit., p. 177.

20 Edwards, Jonathan, ‘Qualifications for Full Communion’, The Works of President Edwards (New York: Leavitt & Allen, 1856), 1, 90Google Scholar.

21 Edwards, Jonathan, ‘Distinguishing Marks’, as quoted in White, Puritan Rhetoric, p. 96Google Scholar.

22 Edwards, Jonathan, Works, I, p. 15Google Scholar.

23 Ibid.

24 Edwards, Jonathan, ‘Future Punishment’, as quoted in White, Puritan Rhetoric, p. 177Google Scholar.

25 Haroutunian, Joseph, Piety Versus Morality: The Passing of the New England Theology (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1932), p. xxiGoogle Scholar.

26 Rudisill, Dorus Paul, The Doctrine of the Atonement in Jonathan Edwards and his Successors (New York: Poseidon Books, Inc., 1971), p 20Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 9.

28 Ibid., p. 26.

29 Ibid., p. 130.

30 Kuklick, op. cit., p. 61

31 Rudisill, op. cit., pp. 44–45.

32 May, Henry F., The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976), p. 60Google Scholar.

33 Rudisill, op. cit., pp. 118–119.

34 Foster, R. H., ‘The Eschatology of the New England Divines’, as quoted in Allen, Joseph and Eddy, Richard, A History of the Unitarians and the Universalists in the United States (New York: the Christian Literature Co., 1894), p. 397Google Scholar.

35 Park, Edwards A., The Atonement Discourses and Treatises by Edwards, Smalley, Maxey, Emmons, Griffin Borge, and Weeks, With an Introductory Essay by Edwards A. Park (Boston: Congregational Board of Publishers, 1859)Google Scholar, as quoted in Rudisill, The Doctrine of Atonement, p. 40–41.

36 Frank, Douglas, Less Than Conquerors: How Evangelicals Entered the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdman, 1987), pp. 14–15Google Scholar.

37 Allen, Joseph H. and Eddy, Richard, A History of the Unitarians and the Universalists in the United States (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1894), pp. 386–387Google Scholar.

38 Eddy, Richard, Universalism in America, 1636–1800 (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1884), 1, 115Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., p. 125.

40 Allen, and Eddy, , History of Unitarians and Universalists, p. 391Google Scholar.

41 Ibid., pp. 392–93.

42 Ibid., p. 422.

43 Eddy, , Universalism in America, p. 223Google Scholar.

44 Eddy, and Allen, , History of Unitarianism and Universalism, p. 356Google Scholar.

45 Eddy, , Universalism in America, p. 223Google Scholar.

46 Eddy, and Allen, , History of Unilarianism and Universalism, p. 253Google Scholar.

47 Ibid., p. 411.

48 Eddy, , Universalism in America, p. 309Google Scholar.

49 Ibid., pp. 353–54.

50 Eddy, and Allen, , History of Unilarianism and Universalism, p. 436Google Scholar.