Old Age and Religion in the Writings and Life of Jonathan Edwards

In his Faithful Narrative of a Surprising Work of God, an account of the awakening of 1734–35 in his church at Northampton, Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards excitedly reported a considerable number of old persons among the several hundred converts. “I suppose,” he wrote, “there were … more than twent...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Minkema, Kenneth P. 1958- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2001
In: Church history
Year: 2001, Volume: 70, Issue: 4, Pages: 674-704
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
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Summary:In his Faithful Narrative of a Surprising Work of God, an account of the awakening of 1734–35 in his church at Northampton, Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards excitedly reported a considerable number of old persons among the several hundred converts. “I suppose,” he wrote, “there were … more than twenty of them above fifty, and about ten of them above sixty, and two of them above seventy years of age.” Edwards's evident self-satisfaction stemmed from the widespread belief that conversion among the elderly was unusual. “It has been a thing heretofore rarely to be heard of,” he noted, “that any were converted past middle age; but now we have the same ground to think that many such have in this time been savingly changed, as that others have been so in more early years.”
ISSN:1755-2613
Contains:Enthalten in: Church history
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.2307/3654545