The University's Pew Program in Religion and American History, an internationally competitive fellowship program supporting study of the role of religion in American history, has received a $1.7-million renewal grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The foundation has also presented a three-year, $400,000 grant for continued support of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Yale's critical edition of the theologian's writings. See related story at the end of this article.
In addition, The Pew Charitable Trusts is providing support for new fellowships specifically for Yale graduate students whose dissertation projects stress interrelationships between religion and American history in any era and region from 1600 to 1980.
The gift brings The Pew Charitable Trust's support for the Pew Program in Religion and American History to over $3.2 million. A grant of $1.5 million from The Pew Charitable Trusts funded the establishment of the program at Yale in 1993. The foundation has also been a major supporter of The Works of Jonathan Edwards since 1987.
The Pew Program in Religion and American History represents a major partnership between The Pew Charitable Trusts and Yale to provide national leadership to better understand the evolution of the vital religious, moral and ethical dimensions of American history, according to Jon Butler, the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies, and Harry S. Stout, the Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity, American Studies, History and Religious Studies, who co-direct the program. Since its inception, the Pew Program in Religion and American History has funded fellowships for 18 younger faculty members and 43 doctoral students from across the nation, as well as 17 Yale graduate students.
The non-sectarian and non-denominational program supports research on the diverse religions practiced throughout American history -- including native American, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and occultism. "We're particularly proud of the ecumenism and diversity of the projects chosen by fellows," Professor Butler says. "Only by probing the breadth of America's religious expression can scholars understand the dynamic interrelationships of religion and American society -- the many ways in which religion has shaped America and the ways in which America has shaped religion."
In the three years since the program began, Pew Fellows already have published six books, for which Yale has been the primary source of support. "Having that many books published is unusual in a program so young because there's generally such a considerable lag time between the start of a fellowship and publication," notes Professor Butler. "It demonstrates the success the program has had already."
Faculty and doctoral fellowships are awarded through an international competition covering North America . The fellowships and research grants are, in turn, supplemented by a substantial effort at mentoring, according to Professor Butler. "This mentoring, deliberately designed to accompany the financial incentives offered by the fellowships and research grants, creates a dynamic community of interests among major younger scholars who are likely to play central roles in American historical investigation in the first three decades of the 21st century," he says.
The new fellowships for Yale students include five Ph.D. dissertation summer fellowships of $5,000 and up to two one-year Ph.D. dissertation fellowships with a maximum of $12,000. The summer fellowships are available to graduate students at any stage of dissertation research and writing; students must have completed all pre-dissertation requirements. The one-year fellowships are available to both fifth- and sixth-year graduate students at the dissertation stage and are not necessarily considered "final-year fellowships." The deadline to apply for a fellowship is Wednesday, April 16. Applications and information are available from the Pew Program in Religion and American History, 320 Temple St.; the phone number is 432-2849.
For those seeking additional information about the Pew Program in Religion and American History, the program publishes a newsletter titled "Pew Notes," which can be obtained by calling project assistant James B. Bennett at the number previously listed. Alternatively, the program's e-mail address is pew.yale@yale.edu.
The Public and Private Puritan: The Works of Jonathan Edwards publishing project is revealing the many dimensions of the historic preacher
Here at Yale he is known for having a residential college named after him, but what many people most remember about Jonathan Edwards 1703-58 is that he was a "fire and brimstone" preacher who warned the disobedient and unconverted that God is filled with contempt for them and is just waiting for the right moment to unleash His fury. When that happens, said Edwards, God "will only laugh and mock" when sinners beg and cry for mercy.
Edwards' warning to his own congregation in the haunting sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" has long been a standard reading assignment in classes on early American history. The fame of that sermon, however, has resulted in an unfair characterization of the Yale alumnus and theologian who wrote it, according to editors of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Yale's multi- volume critical edition of Edwards' writings. See related story above this article.
In fact, it is the desire to create a more complete picture of Edwards that fuels staff members as they undertake the labor- intensive work involved in preparing the theologian's manuscripts for publication, according to Kenneth P. Minkema, executive editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards.
"As one of the better known of Edwards' writings, 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' has led many to stereotype him as a rigid and puritanical preacher whose contribution was to make plain the impending doom of sinners," says Mr. Minkema. "But he was not that one-dimensional. It is only through reading more of his writings that a fuller picture of this great historical figure emerges."
Edwards' place in the history books is undisputed. By age 17, he had graduated from Yale College, earning his M.A. here three years later. He was a minister and pastor at churches in New York and Connecticut before returning to Yale for two years as a tutor. During the next two decades, Edwards was pastor of a church in Northampton, Massachusetts. In 1737, he wrote an account of the religious revival that took place under his ministry; the document, "Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God," established Edwards as an expert on revivalism and became a "manual" on saving souls for ministers both in colonial America and Europe. Historians have thus credited him with being the leader of the 1740s religious revival known as "The Great Awakening."
"Edwards towers above his American contemporaries," says Mr. Minkema. "Many scholars put him on par with Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and Luther for original theological reflection. A brilliant defender and innovator of Reformed thought, he exerted a lasting influence on America and on Protestantism worldwide."
Today, nearly 300 years since his birth, Edwards is one of the most studied figures in American history, says Douglas A. Sweeney, associate editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Scores of historians and other scholars -- whose interests range from philosophy to education to linguistics to literature -- travel each year to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which houses about 90 percent of the theologian's extant writings. These include approximately 1,200 of his sermon manuscripts; 240 of his letters which scholars estimate are only a fraction of his output ; other letters written by family members or Edwards' descendants; over 1,360 writings on varied subjects, called "The Miscellanies"; and personal notebooks, as well as a bound manuscript called "The Blank Bible." The latter is a Bible in which Edwards hand-sewed the pages of some 10,000 of his commentaries upon specific scriptural passages. The archive was given to the Beinecke Library in 1901 by Edwards' descendants.
The varied items in the Beinecke's collection provide a fuller picture of the man, say the Yale scholars. His letters, for example, reveal Edwards in his role as a loving father and husband. In one, to his daughter, who suffered from a painful ailment, Edwards describes in great detail how to create a medicinal stew out of rattlesnake. In other writings, he ponders the nature of happiness or of virtuous love, or describes his awe of the natural world and its beauty. In some letters and writings, Edwards chides himself for his own lack of faith in God or his lack of diligence in fully serving Him.
"There's the private Edwards and the public Edwards, and our goal is to make both of them accessible to scholars and the general public," says Mr. Sweeney.
Yale's project to publish The Works of Jonathan Edwards began in 1954. Thus far, 14 of an anticipated 26 volumes have been published by Yale University Press. The editors hope to publish the remaining 12 volumes by 2003, the tercentenary of Edwards' birth. It is only in the past decade, however, that the volumes have been coming out at a more steady pace, says Harry S. Stout, the Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity, American Studies, History and Religious Studies, who serves as the general editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards.
"In the early days of the project, there was a reliance on outside editors to get the books published, and these people did most of the work on their volumes themselves," says Professor Stout, who is also master of Berkeley College. Recently, however, "with the help of outside funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts and other sources which provided support to hire full-time staff members , we've essentially become an in-house Edwards 'factory.'"
In a central office at the Yale Divinity School, Mr. Minkema, Mr. Sweeney and editorial assistant Kyle P. Farley are involved in the day-to-day work of readying Edwards' documents for publication. One of the most difficult tasks is transcribing the manuscripts, which are written in Edwards' small, barely legible handwriting and laced with the theologian's own abbreviations and shorthand, explains Mr. Farley. In fact, deciphering the theologian's handwriting is "a lot like detective work," adds Mr. Sweeney, noting that the goal is to eventually transcribe all of Edwards' writings.
Jeff Hensley, a 1993 graduate of the Divinity School who is now a doctoral student in religious studies, is one of a handful of graduate students who help transcribe Edwards' works. These students receive training from staff members, who familiarize them with Edwards' script by comparing original texts to already printed manuscripts. Mr. Hensley's assignment focused on the theologian's sermons in the late 1720s and early 1730s.
When Mr. Hensley first started, he thought he had taken on an impossible task. "My first day on the job I said 'I can't do this,'" says Mr. Hensley, who worked on the Edwards project 1991-96. "And though I stuck it out, it took a whole eight hours for me to go through just one paragraph." Over time, the doctoral student was able to pick up speed. Instead of spending a whole workday on one paragraph, he can now transcribe a clearly written, moderately long sermon in about 25 hours. In Edwards' day, it might take the preacher up to two hours to deliver a sermon, notes Mr. Hensley.
Rachel Wheeler, a doctoral student in history, is currently helping to transcribe the sermons from Edwards' Stockbridge period. In 1751, a year after Edwards was dismissed as pastor of the Northampton church mainly because of his strict views about church membership, he became a pastor and missionary to Indians in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He stayed there until shortly before he was appointed president of the College of New Jersey now Princeton University in 1758. Later that same year, Edwards died from an infected smallpox vaccination.
"I find it a fascinating situation to have New England's foremost theologian living on the frontier," says Ms. Wheeler, who first became involved in the project through her own dissertation research on Indian and mission history.
Like Ms. Wheeler, Mr. Minkema also believes that the Stockbridge period is one of the most interesting, albeit least studied, times in the theologian's life.
"People are sometimes surprised to discover Edwards' relatively forward-thinking ideas about Indian education," he says. "And while he was a person of his time in his belief that English was best, he viewed heathen Indians as no worse than heathen English. On a political level, he was forward enough to recognize that making positive ties with the Indians was important, and he was a real advocate for them when English land speculators were trying to take over more and more of the Indians' lands."
It is also noteworthy that, at a time when few questioned the ethics of slavery, Edwards -- who owned slaves and whose receipt for the purchase of a slave named Venus is among his papers at the Beinecke -- condemned the buying of more slaves from Africa. The letter draft in which he stated this controversial view was an exciting discovery for Mr. Minkema, who literally put together like a puzzle fragmented pieces of the document.
Still, "Edwards was no democrat," admits Mr. Minkema. "He certainly would have had to adjust to the notion of an egalitarian society." Edwards was also much more focused on the divine than his contemporary, Benjamin Franklin, whose extant writings are being published by Yale under the title The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. And compared to James Boswell, the 18th-century man-about-town who is the focus of another Yale publishing project, "well, there's not much of a comparison," notes Mr. Minkema.
"Unlike Boswell, there's nothing that's scandalous when it comes to Edwards, who was pretty much a straight arrow," he comments. "Although I do wonder if Edwards would think it scandalous that we are here today sifting through all of his private writings and publishing them."
The next goal of the editors of The Works of Jonathan Edwards -- the digital publication of his complete corpus -- might shock the theologian even further. This project is being spearheaded by Jon Butler, the Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of religious studies, who is a member of the edition's executive committee.
"The letterpress edition will contain only half of Edwards' output," says Mr. Minkema. "The calls for more and more of Edwards' writings can only be answered by making available all that he wrote. When this goal is achieved, Edwards will be the first American religious thinker to be available in toto in digital, searchable form -- a landmark in scholarship."
-- By Susan Gonzalez