The Bible in Early Transatlantic Pietism and Evangelicalism

A pioneering study of biblical interpretation among early “awakened” Protestant sects.

This collection of essays showcases the variety and complexity of early awakened Protestant biblical interpretation and practice while highlighting the many parallels, networks, and exchanges that connected the Pietist and evangelical traditions on both sides of the Atlantic.

A yearning to obtain from the Word spiritual knowledge of God that was at once experiential and practical lay at the heart of the Pietist and evangelical quest for true religion, and it significantly shaped the courses and legacies of these movements. The myriad ways in which Pietists and evangelicals read, preached, translated, and practiced the Bible were inextricable from how they fashioned new forms of devotion, founded institutions, engaged the early Enlightenment, and made sense of their world. This volume provides breadth and texture to the role of Scripture in these related religious traditions. The contributors probe an assortment of primary source material from various confessional, linguistic, national, and regional traditions and feature well-known figures—including August Hermann Francke, Cotton Mather, and Jonathan Edwards—alongside lesser-known lay believers, women, people of color, and so-called radicals and separatists.

Pioneering and collaborative, this volume contributes fresh insight into the history of the Bible and the entangled religious cultures of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

Along with the editors, the contributors to this volume include Ruth Albrecht, Robert E. Brown, Crawford Gribben, Bruce Hindmarsh, Kenneth P. Minkema, Adriaan C. Neele, Benjamin M. Pietrenka, Isabel Rivers, Douglas H. Shantz, Peter Vogt, and Marilyn J. Westerkamp.

Explores the Pietist and evangelical quest for “true religion” in early America through the lens of everyday use and reading of the bible.

Draws on primary sources and the works and words of both the well-known – such as August Hermann Francke and Cotton Mather – and lesser-known laypersons.

Examines the use of the bible among the entangled religious cultures of the broader eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

Ryan P. Hoselton is Instructor and Postdoctoral Research Associate at Heidelberg University. He is the author of The Love of God Holds Creation Together: Andrew Fuller’s Theology of Virtue.Sweeney Douglas A. :

Jan Stievermann is Professor of the History of Christianity in the United States at Heidelberg University and Director of the Jonathan Edwards Center Germany. He is the author of Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather’s “Biblia Americana” and coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards.

Ryan P. Hoselton is Instructor and Postdoctoral Research Associate at Heidelberg University. He is the author of The Love of God Holds Creation Together: Andrew Fuller’s Theology of Virtue.

Jan Stievermann is Professor of the History of Christianity in the United States at Heidelberg University and Director of the Jonathan Edwards Center Germany. He is the author of Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather’s “Biblia Americana” and coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards.

Douglas A. Sweeney is Dean and Professor of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University. He is the author of Edwards the Exegete: Biblical Interpretation and Anglo-Protestant Culture on the Edge of the Enlightenment and coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards.

Michael A. G. Haykin is Professor of Church History and Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the coeditor of A New Divinity: Transatlantic Reformed Evangelical Debates During the Long Eighteenth Century and coauthor of Being a Pastor: A Conversation with Andrew Fuller.