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The Economic Thought of Jonathan Edwards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Mark Valeri
Mark Valeri
Affiliation:
Assistant professor of religious studies in Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.
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Extract

On 16 March 1742, Jonathan Edwards's church in Northampton adopted a new covenant of faith. Written in the heat of the Great Awakening, the document began, predictably, by acknowledging “the blessed manifestations and fruits of [God's] gracious presence in this town” during the recent spiritual revivals. It then plunged into more worldly matters. It called on every church member to deal honestly and justly in secular business: they were not “in any matter” to “overreach or defraud” their “neighbor…and either willfully or through want of care, injure him in any of his honest possessions or rights.” The oath became more explicit. Debtors were to pay their creditors, so to avoid “willfully or negligently” wronging others. Indeed, debtors promised to forego “rest till … that restitution, or …that satisfaction” were effected. Likewise, creditors pledged to eschew “wordly gain, or honor, or interest…or getting the better” of their “competitors” as the “governing aim” of their business. Those who managed public affairs also were to forsake competitiveness. They agreed to relinquish their private interests for the sake of equity, especially “concerning any outward possessions, privileges, rights or properties.” Although the covenant dealt with other matters, it sustained its striking focus on commerce. Even as it neared its conclusion, it used economic metaphor to urge piety, presenting life as capital “to be laboriously spent in the business of religion: ever making it our greatest business.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 37 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1991

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References

author would like to thank Christopher D. Grasso and Kenneth P. Minkema for help with sermon transcriptions, the staff of the American Antiquarian Society for research ass, stance, and the National Endowment for the Humanities for funding.

1. Edwards to the Rev. Thomas Prince of Boston, 12 Dec. 1743, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, 1972), Vol. 4, The Great Awakening, ed. Goen, C. C., pp. 551–554.Google Scholar

2. Miller, Perry, Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1949), p. 210.Google Scholar The best overview of religion and economic ethics in eighteenth-century America contends that the Awakening led to “the erosion of a social frame of reference for criticism of economic activity,” since “the evangelical clergy was skeptical of the noflon that simple fulfillment of a social role which contributed to an objective public good like the prosperity of the community had a religious value”: Crowley, J. E., This Sheba, Self. The Conceptualization of Economic Life in Eighteenth-Century America (Baltimore, 1974), p. 66.Google Scholar A recent study of two of Edwards's opponents celebrates the social pragmatism of the liberal-rationalists and describes Edwards as an impractical visionary: Corrigan, John, The Hidden Balance: Religion and the Social Theories of Charles Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew (New York, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Several descriptions of eighteenth-century millennialism, such as Hatch, Nathan O., The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New England (New Haven, 1977), pp. 21–54,Google Scholar also posit an evangelical withdrawal from secular interests.

3. This Weberian theme has been played Out in several studies, although they mention Weber as infrequently as Calvin mentioned capitalism. See particularly Bushman, Richard, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967),Google Scholar and Weber, Donald, “The Recovery of Jonathan Edwards,” in Hatch, Nathan O. and Stout, Harry S., eds., Jonathan Edwards and the Amencan Experience (New York, 1988), pp. 50–70.Google Scholar Examples of broader perspectives of the relation of Calvinism to American capitalism are Bonomi, Patricia U., Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (New York, 1986),Google Scholar and Ziff, Larzer, Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New World (New York, 1974), pp. 286–312.Google Scholar

4. The classic statement here is Miller, John C., “Religion, Finance, and Democracy in Massachusetts,” The New England Quarterly 6 (1933): 28–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Bumsted, J. M., “Religion, Finance and Democracy in Massachusetts: The Town of Norton as a Case Study,” The Journal of American History 57 (1971): 817–831,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Nash, Gary B., The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 198–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Even the most perceptive analyses, which agree that Edwards was a populist but contend that he held a communitarian rather than individualist social ethic are not fully convincing because they fail to pinpoint his economic recommendations: Miller, , Jonathan Edwards, pp. 101–126, 307–330;Google Scholaridem, “Jonathan Edwards' Sociology of the Great Awakening,” The New England Quarterly 21 (1948): 50–77; and Heimert, Alan, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), pp. 55–158.Google Scholar

5. One school of contemporary fundamentalist Christianity, Christian Reconstructionism, takes this position to the extreme claiming that every orthodox Puritan from John Winthrop to Edwards explicitly promoted a modern free-market, commercial, capitalist economy: North, Gary, Moses and Pharoah: Dominion Religion Verses Power Religion (Tyler, Tex., 1985).Google Scholar

6. For the liberal perspective see Crowley, , This Sheba, Self, pp. 76–97,Google Scholar and Weber, Donald, Rhetoric and History in Revolutionary New England (New York, 1988), p. 120.Google Scholar

7. Trumbull, James Russell, History of Northampton Massachusetts from its Settlement in 1654, 2 vols. (Northampton, 1902), 2: 36–45.Google Scholar A thorough discussion of Edwards's career in the context of the social affairs of Northampton is provided in Tracy, Patricia J., Jonatlun Edwards, Pastor: Religion and Society in Eighteenth-Century Northampton (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

8. See Tracy, , Jonathan Edwards, Pastor, pp. 95–130.Google Scholar

9. Tracy, , Jonathan Edwaids, Pastor, pp. 127–129.Google Scholar For descriptions of economic development in towns of western New England, see Bushman, , From Puritan to Yankee, pp. 41–143,Google Scholar and Greven, Philip, Four Generatzons: Land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, N.Y., 1970).Google Scholar

10. Miller, , “Jonathan Edwards' Sociology,” p. 57.Google Scholar

11. Edwards, manuscript sermon on Isaiah 5:20, ca. 1730, Jonathan Edwards Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven. Unless noted otherwise, all Edwards sermons cited are from this collection; hereafter cited only by scripture text and date. I have modernized Edwards's spelling and added punctuation to the transcriptions.

12. See, for example, Mather's, Lex Mercatoria: Or, The Just Rules of Commerce Declared (Boston, 1705),Google Scholar and Theopolis Americana: An Essay on the Golden Street of the Holy City (Boston, 1710).Google Scholar The 1727 earthquake occasioned the printing of no less than seventeen fast-day sermons, many of which listed economic vices among the causes of God's displeasure. Edwards's sermon on the earthquake and the economic vices behind it was Jonah 3:10,21 December 1727.

13. Edwards, Proverbs 14:34, around 1729.

14. Edwards, James 3:16, around 1730.

15. Edwards, Acts 17:31, around 1730.

16. Edwards, Revelation 2:4–5, around 1730. For the rise of legal and political disputes between rival economic interests, see Tracy, , Jonathan Edwards, Pastor, pp. 104–108.Google Scholar

17. Edwards, , The Works ofJonathan Edwards (New Haven, 1989),Google Scholar Vol. 8, The Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, pp. 260–267.

18. For example, in his July 1736 sermon on Matthew 5:14, he told Northampton's public leaders that all of New England and even parts of England were watching them to ascertain the social worth of the revivals. Edwards eventually eulogized Stoddard by praising the colonel's social virtue in A Strong Rod Broken and Withered (Boston, 1748).Google Scholar

19. Tracy, , Jonathan Edwards, Pastor, pp. 157–159,Google Scholar documents Edwards's salary. A useful study of clerical salaries during the period of Edwards's career is Schmotter, James W., “Ministerial Careers in Eighteenth Century New England: The Social Context, 1700- 1760,” Journal of Social History 9 (1975): 249–267.Google Scholar

20. Edwards, Deuteronomy 15:7–11, January 1733, and his 1738 sermons series now published as The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, 1989), Vol. 9, A History of the Work of Redemption, transc. and ed. Wilson, John F., p. 484.Google Scholar Edwards had mused about Boston in his preaching on Matthew 5:13 around 1730. He advised the rich and the slothful in the third preaching unit of his sermon series on Matthew 25:24–28 around 1735 and in his 1734 sermons series on Ephesians 5:16. For a helpful application of Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to Anglo-American Puritanism, see Little, David, Religion, Order, and Law: A Study in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York, 1969), pp. 6–166.Google Scholar

21. Edwards, Deuterononmy 15:7–11. Edwards frequently emphasized the absolute duty of charity and the relativity of property rights; examples are his sermons on Proverbs 11:7, November 1739 and Exodus 20:15, July 1740.

22. Edwards, Deuteronomy 15:7–11, and Genesis 4:3–5, November 1743. His comments on giving to ministers are in 1 Peter 2:9, around 1732.

23. Edwards, Acts 6:1–3, 14 June 1739; Romans 12:4–8, 19 August 1739; Genesis 4:3–5, November 1743. For his attitudes towards the institution of the collection, see his sermon on I Corinthians 16:1–2, published as “The Perpetuity and Change of the Sabbath,” sermon 13 in Edwards, , Sermons on the Following Subjects, ed. Edwards, Jonathan the Younger (Hartford, 1780).Google Scholar

24. For a lucid analysis of Edwards on this point see Lee, Sang Hyun, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Princeton, 1988).Google Scholar

25. The problem of monetary deflation, the currency crises, and banking schemes are debated in a large literature. Two of the more accessible studies are Billias, George Athan, The Massachusetts Land Bankers of 1740 (Orono, Maine, 1959),Google Scholar and Brock, Leslie V., The Currency of the American Colonies, 1700–1764: A Study in Colonial Finance and Imperial Relations (New York, 1975), pp. 1–64, 130–151, 169–334.Google Scholar

26. Edwards, Exodus 20:15. For Edwards's contract, see the “Ministerial committee reports” of the town of Northampton, 1748, in Edwards manuscripts, Folder 46, Section 4, Drawer 4, Beinecke. Further comment on Edwards's salary is contained in Trumbull, , History of Northampton, pp. 50, 84–85,Google Scholar and Tracy, , Jonathan Edwards, Pastor, pp. 157–159.Google Scholar

27. Tracy, , Jonathan Edwards, Pastor, pp. 128–153,Google Scholar gives an analysis of the social changes in Northampton during the 1740s.

28. One recent study of the legal system in Connecticut shows that indebtedness was a widespread problem during the 1740s: Mann, Bruce H., Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticut (Chapel Hill, 1987), pp. 11–136.Google Scholar

29. Edwards, Exodus 20:15.

30. Edwards, Sermon 8 [untitled], June 1749, in Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Grossart, Alexander B. (Edinburgh, 1865), p. 208.Google Scholar

31. Tawny's, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (1926; reprint New York, 1947), pp. 176–235Google Scholar is reflected in Crowley's argument that New Lights contributed to the secularization of economic life by divorcing religious from social concerns: Crowley, , This Sheba, Self, pp. 50–95.Google ScholarBushman, , From Puritan to Yankee, pp. 194–195Google Scholar and Tracy, , Jonathan Edwards, Pastor, pp. 189–193Google Scholar also use this argument.

32. Edwards, Ezekiel 22:12, 1747, emphasis added.

33. Edwards, Exodus 20:15, Ezekiel 22:12.

34. Edwards, Ezekiel 22:12.

35. Mandeville (1670–1733) was a Dutch moralist whose The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits (6th ed.London, 1729)Google Scholar was widely read in Anglo-American philosophic circles.

36. For the liberal-rationalist support of industry and the free market, see Chauncy, Charles, The Idle-Poor Secluded from the Brea.d of Charity by the Christian Law (Boston, 1752);Google Scholar on Cooper, see Weber, Donald, Rhetoric and Histoiy in Revolutionary New England (New York, 1988), pp. 120–121.Google Scholar Most studies of religion and the currency crisis find an alliance between New Lights and the land bankers: J.M. Bumsted, “Religion, Finance, and Democracy: Norton as a Case Study”; John C. Miller, “Religion, Finance, and Democracy”; Nash, Gary B., The Urban Crucible, pp. 212–225;Google ScholarStout, Harry S., “The Great Awakening Reconsidered: The New England Clergy,” The Journal of Social History 7 (1974): 21–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the Enlightenment notion of self-interest and political economy, see Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests: Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, 1976).Google Scholar

37. For Edwards's embarrassment at the behavior of the town leaders, see his preaching on Matthew 5:14 and A Farewel-Sermon [sic] Preached at the first Precinct in Northampton (Boston, 1751), pp. 32–33.Google Scholar His gloomy description of New England, from which this string of adjectives is excerpted, may be found in his letters to James Robe, 23 May 1749, to John Erskine, 5 July 1750, and to William McCulloch, 6July 1750, in Dwight, Sereno E., The Life of President Edwards (New York, 1830), pp. 297, 408, 411, 413.Google Scholar Edwards expressed deep disenchantment with the social morality of his people even before the affair of his dismissal in, for example, his sermon on Deuteronomy 1:13–18, June 1748.

38. Edwards took this quote as the central doctrine of his sermon on Luke 12:16–21, December 1749; Mather, , Bonifacius: An Essay upon the Good, Boston, 1710, ed. Levin, David (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 107.Google Scholar

39. Edwards, Ezekiel 22:12; a parallel argument is given in Edwards, Luke 12:16–21.

40. Edwards, Ezekiel 22:12. For the republican-opposition tradition, see Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).Google Scholar

41. Many previous Reformed thinkers also rejected a wholehearted alliance between Christianity and early forms of capitalism. As Simon Schama writes of the Calvinist preachers of seventeenth-century, mercantile-rich Holland, they concluded that “a truly Christian capitalism seemed to be a will-o'-the-wisp”: Schama, , The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (Berkeley, 1988), p. 331.Google Scholar Andrew Delbanco presents the English Puritans of the early seventeenth century in similar terms: Delbanco, , The Puritan Ordeal (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), pp. 59–80.Google Scholar

42. Kulikoff, Allan, “The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America,” William and Mary Quarterly 46 (1989): 120–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Economic historians give widely divergent dates for the emergence of “capitalism” in America. It is sufficient for this essay's purpose to note the presence of forces that indicated the incipient operation of a free market. Among such forces was the rise of an agrarian-market economy, with its attendant growth in commercial activity and wealth. See Main, Gloria L. and Main, Jackson T., “Economic Growth and the Standard of Living in Southern New England, 1640–1774,” The Journal of Economic History 48 (1988): 27–46,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rothenberg, Winifred B., “The Market and Massachusetts Farmers, 1750–1855,” The Journal of Economic History 41 (1981): 283–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In “The Emergence of Farm Labor Markets and the Transformation of the Rural Economy: Massachusetts, 1750–1855,” The Journal of Economic History 48 (1988): 537–566, p. 539,Google Scholar Rothenberg maintains that attempts (like Edwards's) to foster a “moral economy… testify like a thumb in the dike to [the free market's] presence, to its ‘latent threat.’”