A new book is coming out by a Bebbington student entitled: "Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine"
Here is the description of the book as listed in the Oxford University Press catalog:
Description
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.
Features
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
Product Details
352 pages; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
ISBN13: 978-0-19-977255-1
ISBN10: 0-19-977255-X
