Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine

by Jonathan Yeager

Overview

John Erskine was the leading evangelical in the Church of Scotland in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Educated at Edinburgh University, he learned to appreciate the epistemology of John Locke and other empiricists alongside key Scottish Enlightenment figures. As a clergyman, he integrated the style and moral teachings of the Moderate Enlightenment into his discourses and posited new theories on traditional views of Calvinism in his theological treatises.

While widely recognized as an able preacher and theologian, Erskine's primary contribution to evangelicalism was as a disseminator. He sent countless religious and philosophical works to correspondents like Jonathan Edwards so that he and others could learn about current ideas, update their writings, and provide an apologetic against perceived heretical authors. Erskine also was crucial in the publishing of books and pamphlets by some of the best evangelical theologians in America and Britain. Within his lifetime, Erskine's main contribution was as a propagator of an enlightened form of evangelicalism.

While there is a great deal of scholarship on Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, Yeager argues that it is time to expand the scholarship of eighteenth-century evangelicalism by turning to one of their lesser-studied colleagues. In this new biography of Erskine, Jonathan Yeager lays out the life and thought of a hitherto under-researched - yet, in his day, widely respected - preacher and gives Erskine the scholarly treatment that he so richly deserves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199772551
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2011
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Yeager earned a MCS and ThM in theology at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada and completed a PhD in history at the University of Stirling in Scotland. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in the religion department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: The Prospective Pastor
Chapter Three: The Enlightened Preacher
Chapter Four: The Orthodox Preacher
Chapter Five: The Enlightened Theologian
Chapter Six: The Controversialist
Chapter Seven: The Friend to America
Chapter Eight: The Disseminator
Chapter Nine: Conclusion
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"Clearly we are in Jonathan Yeager's debt. His chosen subject is one that should provoke us to think afresh about the appropriate stance for Reformed theology now... We should not miss, either, the role played by this influential Scot as the encourager and enabler of others." —Westminster Theological Journal

"...Yeager provides a superb biography which takes into account every aspect in the current resurgence of Evangelical studies." —Baptist Quarterly

"Jonathan Yeager's life of John Erskine is an informative and well-argued account of one of Scotland's neglected 18th-century ministers." —History Scotland magazine

"Yeager is alive to transatlantic common ground... a fine and welcome book." —The English Historical Review

"This monograph is a valuable contribution to our understanding of wider eighteenth-century religious thought."—Journal of Theological Studies

"Jonathan Yeager has produced an excellent study of the hitherto little known John Eskrine... there's much here that will repay careful reading and thought." —Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society

"Yeager's book will certainly become required reading for a number of scholarly audiences. Students of the transatlantic and American evangelical movements will find a wealth of welcome information here."—H-Net Reviews

"Jonathan Yeager provides a valuable account of a remarkable eighteenth century Scottish polymath preacher and writer who was a champion both of orthodox evangelicalism and of the rationality of the moderate enlightenment. John Erskine is often remembered as an avid correspondent and supporter of Jonathan Edwards, but in his own time he was one of Scotland's leading theologians and an innovative thinker in his own right." —George Marsden, author of Jonathan Edwards: A Life

"In this first modern full-length biography of the important but overlooked 18th-century Scottish religious leader John Erskine, Jonathan Yeager has shown us how Erskine served as a 'Popular preacher'—a disseminator of information to the growing transatlantic evangelical network—to insure that traditional Calvinism had a rigorous intellectual content. This work confirms that the Enlightenment was a movement of great religious intensity, a time of spiritual seekers and the renewal of religious traditions. Indeed, the Enlightenment itself was profoundly religious in many ways—an Enlightenment of the spirit as well as of the mind." —Kenneth Minkema, editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards and of the Jonathan Edwards Center & Online Archive, Yale Divinity School

"John Erskine, the best-known clergyman in his church's 'Popular Party,' he repackaged orthodox Calvinism to meet Enlightenment challenges—shedding new light and religious intelligence around the Western world through his extensive correspondence and bibliographical generosity. Yeager is to be thanked for this outstanding 'life and thought' of a leading conduit in what we might call (ironically) the Christian republic of letters." —Douglas A. Sweeney, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

"Jonathan Yeager is to be thanked for uncovering neglected manuscript sources and for reminding us of John Erskine's important and multifaceted career as a preacher and theologian, an antagonist of Methodists and Roman Catholics, and a tireless proponent of transatlantic evangelical Protestant culture during the second half of the eighteenth century."
—Richard B. Sher, author of Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment

Jonathan Yeager is to be highly commended...for setting a new standard for scholarly discusion of neglected evangelicals such as Erskine...." —Jeff Suderman, Mount Royal University

"Jonathan Yeager has produced an excellent study of the hitherto little known John Erskine." —Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society

"Jonathan Yeager in a well-researched 'life and thought' shows why Erskine should be regarded as one of eighteenth-century Scotland's most important intellectual forces."—Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society

"Yeager's study is lucid, engaging, and valuable for the light it sheds on Erskine's contributions to the emerging evangelical world of his day."—Eighteenth Century Scotland

"This is the first full length study for almost two hundred years of the Scottish Evangelical Calvinist minister John Erskine...Yeager spells out in fascinating detail Erskine's responsibility for publishing Edwards's works in Scotland."—The Journal of Ecclesiastical History

"A wonderful addition to other works that have skirted around the present subject matter but have never addressed Erskine in a suitable manner...the definitive work on Erskine... Through clear prose and strong research, Yeager brings to light Erskine's thankless endeavors during the early stages of evangelicalism." —Themelios

"In Erskine, then, we find the evangelical disseminator par excellence in the eighteenth century's republic of letters. Recommending and gifting books was a common practice of Edwards, George Whitefield, the Wesley brothers and other evangelical leaders, but no one went to the lengths of Erskine." —Scottish Journal of Theology

"Yeager provides a collection of documents which as to their geographic rangew and chronological sweep goes far beyond anything previously avaliable to us."— Kenneth J. Stewart, Scottish Bulletin of Evvangelical Theology"

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