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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY |
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Select: Introduction: Puritanism, the Quakers - William Penn - Samuel Johnson Jonathan Edwards |
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Puritanism: Early in the 17th century some Puritan groups separated from the Church of England. Among these were the Pilgrims, who in 1620 founded Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, under the auspices of the Massachusetts Bay Company, the first major Puritan migration to New England took place. The Puritans brought strong religious impulses to bear in all colonies north of Virginia, but New England was their stronghold, and the Congregationalist churches established there were able to perpetuate their viewpoint about a Christian society for more than 200 years. These Puritans insisted that they, as God's elect, had the duty to direct national affairs according to God's will as revealed in the Bible. This union of church and state to form a holy commonwealth gave Puritanism direct and exclusive control over most colonial activity until commercial and political changes forced them to relinquish it at the end of the 17th century. During the whole colonial period Puritanism had a direct impact on both religious thought and cultural patterns in America. In the 19th century its influence was indirect, but it can still be seen at work stressing the importance of education in religious leadership and demanding that religious motivations be tested by applying them to practical situations. The Quakers: The Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, is a body of Christians that originated in 17th-century England under George Fox. Quakers unite in affirming the immediacy of Christ's teaching; they hold that believers receive divine guidance from an inward light, without the aid of intermediaries or external rites. Meetings for worship can be silent, without ritual or professional clergy, or programmed, in which a minister officiates. Although their antecedents lie in English Puritanism and in the Anabaptist movement, the Society of Friends was formed during the English Civil War. Around 1652, George Fox began preaching that since there was "that of God in every man," a formal church structure and educated ministry were unnecessary. In colonial America, enclaves of Quakers existed in Rhode Island, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and western New Jersey. In Pennsylvania, founded by William Penn as a refuge for Quakers and as a "holy experiment" in religious toleration, Friends maintained an absolute majority in the assembly until 1755 and remained a potent force until the American Revolution. Between 1754 and 1776, Friends throughout America strengthened their commitment to pacifism and began to denounce slavery. After the Revolution, Friends concentrated on a wide variety of reform activities: Indian rights, prison reform, temperance, abolition, freedmen's rights, education, and the women's movement. Believing in a loving God who speaks directly to each penitent soul and offers salvation freely, Quakers found elaborate church organizations and ordained clerics unnecessary. William Penn (picture) was a prominent English Quaker and reformer and the founder of Pennsylvania. Penn's Puritan leanings led to his expulsion (1661) from Oxford, prompting his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, to send him on a continental tour. Returning to England in 1664, he joined the Quakers, while managing his father's estates in Ireland. He soon began to preach and write in defense of his new faith, and his unorthodox tract The Sandy Foundation Shaken (1668) resulted in his imprisonment. In jail until 1669, he composed No Cross, No Crown, a minor classic of religious devotion. During the next three decades Penn did missionary work in England and continental Europe and published voluminously on many subjects, including theology, religious toleration, and the history of the Quakers. Penn became one of the proprietors of West Jersey in 1676, and in 1681 he and 11 other Friends became the proprietors of East Jersey. Owing a debt to Penn's father, King Charles II gave the younger Penn a territory that was named Pennsylvania for Penn's father (1681). Penn's Frame of Government (1682) and the early laws he proposed for Pennsylvania guaranteed settlers an elective assembly and council, religious freedom for all believers, and traditional English liberties. The only capital crimes were murder and treason. On his first visit to America (1682-84), Penn helped plan Philadelphia, met with the Indians and established the basis for peaceful relations, and summoned the assembly. The early history of Pennsylvania was replete with quarrels among factions and disputes with Penn. The settlers proved hard to govern, the deputy governors whom Penn appointed were often incompetent, and Penn's desire for quitrent profits conflicted with his attempt to work with the settlers. Penn wanted the colony to be a "Holy Experiment," but its utopian quality soon faded. Though he supported Whig policies, Penn was a confidant of James II, who was deposed (1688) and replaced by William and Mary. Because of his friendship with James, Penn was accused of treason; his governorship was revoked in 1692, but it was restored 2 years later when he was cleared of disloyalty. Visiting again (1699-1701), Penn issued a new frame of government, the Charter of Privileges (1701), establishing a unicameral legislature as the dominant governmental organ. Mismanagement of his estates and his steward's fraudulent activities led to Penn's incarceration (1717-18) in debtor's prison. Quarrels with the colonists continued, and during negotiations with the crown to sell the rights of government of Pennsylvania, Penn suffered (1712) a stroke. He remained partially incapacitated until his death. Penn was religious perfectionist and a man of the world. He wrote with great clarity of his religious experiences, but his interests were not limited to religion and theology. Many of his works reveal great erudition. Religious tolerance was the cornerstone of his political system, in which fundamental and circumstantial laws are distinguished. He repeatedly emphasized that "the political union of loyal citizens does not depend upon unity of belief." Penn was no theoretician. His reasoning was grounded in keen observation, critical evaluation of human behavior, formation of convictions without prejudice, and solution of practical problems as they arose. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On the Internet
Samuel Johnson was an American philosopher and clergyman. A Congregationalist minister, he became pastor of the Congregational Church in West Haven, Connecticut. Unfortunately, some disturbing modern ideas began to reach him across the ocean. Particularly powerful was the impact of Newton's speculations. He was greatly impressed by the picture of the universe in which natural laws of irresistible causes and effects account for the motions of all heavenly bodies. But while admiring the Newtonian philosophy of determinism in the field of natural phenomena, he was unable to reconcile the corresponding determinism in the official creed of his own Church -- the doctrine of predestination -- with his personal belief in freedom of the human will as the foundation of all responsibility. Finally he made his sincere doubts known, much to the consternation of his own congregation. A couple of months later he sailed for London (1722) where he was converted to Anglicanism and received ordination in the Church of England in 1723. As his new faith was not popular in his own country, he assumed the duties of a missionary at Stratford on his return and continued this humble and strenuous work for the following thirty years. He was, however, one of the founders of King's College (later Columbia University), New York City, and its first president (1754-63). A friend of George Berkeley, whom he met in 1729, he became the leading exponent of Berkeley's idealism in America. A long friendship and extensive correspondence developed between the two thinkers, both members of the same Church. With Berkeley, Johnson held that the sensible world is made up of the ideas people receive from God and that what is commonly thought to be matter is actually in the mind as passive ideas. Johnson's ideas were formulated early, while he was a college student, and all he subsequently did amounted merely to the elaboration, amplification and revision of these ideas. Though influenced by Francis Bacon, Newton, and Locke, he steadily maintained an idealistic point of view which could be described as Puritan Platonism. The key to his thinking may be found in his deep religious attitude. Whatever thoughts were of clear religious value were welcomed; everything else was dismissed. But his preaching and his writing were stimulating to his contemporaries, even when they bitterly disagreed with him. His principal works are Introduction to Philosophy (1731) and Elementa Philosophica (1752).
Jonathan Edwards (picture) was one of the most significant religious thinkers in American history. After graduating (1720) from Yale, he studied theology for almost two more years before entering the ministry. In 1726 he became assistant pastor to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Edwards became sole pastor after Stoddard's death (1729) and discharged his duties there until 1750, when disagreement with the congregation forced him to leave. Experiences during the "Great Awakening" convinced Edwards that allowing unconverted persons to participate in the Lord's Supper was wrong. After his congregation voted to dismiss him rather than abandon this custom, introduced by Stoddard, Edwards became a missionary to Indians at nearby Stockbridge and wrote four of his most profound theological works. Late in 1757, he was elected president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), but he died within months of his arrival in Princeton. Until the very end of the nineteenth century, Edwards was considered America's greatest philosopher. Only in later manuals of philosophy published in the United States were men like Charles Sanders Peirce and William James hesitantly acknowledged as his equals. Outside of the United States Edwards' philosophy remains virtually unknown; his name is mentioned only in the histories of American religious life. Edwards, who, in his early years, admired Locke and adopted the ideas of Cudworth and other Cambridge Platonists, lost interest in theoretical philosophy after was ordained a minister (1726) in the Church at Northampton. A persuasive preacher and devoted spiritual leader of his congregation, he was also very influential as the author of religious and theological treatises. His sermon Justification of Faith (1734) marked the beginning of "New England Theology" which dominated the congregationalism of New England until 1880. Edwards had revolted against Calvinism in his youth and initiated what has been called "Consistent Calvinism," "Strict Calvinism," or the "New Divinity." Edwards' thinking combined two intellectual traditions. He defended standard doctrinal categories of the Puritan tradition, but he did so by using contemporary ideas from the British philosophers who helped inaugurate the Enlightenment. Drawing upon John Locke, he argued that current psychology vindicated the doctrine of man's total dependence on God. Since man's mind is originally a tabula rasa ("blank slate") on which his practical experience records impressions, and since God controls the destiny of every individual, human understanding can be considered to be the product of what God determines a person should experience. Edwards' reading of Isaac Newton also supported traditional convictions about the supremacy of God and the helplessness of man in the face of causes that lie beyond human control. Blending his belief in the mystical nature of God with the logic of his day, Edwards also upheld the doctrines of original sin, lack of free will, the need for saving grace, and God's arbitrary choice in granting grace. His most famous works include the electrifying sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741), A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Works of God (1737), and Freedom of the Will (1754). In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On the Internet
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