In this insightful and original new book, D. Bruce Hindmarsh situates the rise of the evangelical movement within the broader context of “momentous cultural changes in eighteenth-century society” (ix). Evangelicalism, he argues, emerged amidst the rise of modernity itself, and played an important role in the transformation of English society. Its adherents in both Britain and its American colonies were active participants in not only the theological and ecclesiastical debates that marked that transition, but also those in the fields of science, law, philosophy, and art. Hindmarsh's analysis of evangelical activity in each successive field offers a fresh interpretation of the movement's beginnings in the English-speaking Atlantic world.
The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism is arranged into two sections. The first three chapters situate evangelicalism's beginnings in John and Charles Wesley's Holy Club in the 1730s and across the Atlantic Ocean among divines in Puritan New England. Offering close readings of George Whitefield's journals and letters, the poetry and hymns of Charles Wesley, and several other, lesser-known texts, Hindmarsh traces the sources of inspiration that influenced early evangelicals, ranging from Anglican divines and Puritan Nonconformists to German Pietists and even some continental Catholics. Fusing these diverse sources together into a broadly coherent theology, evangelicals utilized decidedly modern means of communicating their message. They hosted large, outdoor revivals that democratized religious space and organized converts into small, intimate settings to further nurture their religiosity, then forged connections across vast distances through the means of itinerant preachers and inexpensive print media. In both the seemingly simultaneous spread of evangelical devotion on both sides of the Atlantic and the creation of a new sense of self, evangelicals embodied the transition from the to the modern world.
The book's second section, encompassing chapters 4 through 8, examines more closely evangelical participation in the scientific, legal, literary, and artistic transformations of the era. Shifting attention from explicitly devotional writings to evangelical responses to Newtonian science, moral philosophy, changing legal institutions, and artistic aesthetics, Hindmarsh makes a number of interesting observations. While John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards easily incorporated scientific discoveries about the physical world into their devotional cosmology, they and other evangelicals were “much more sharply at odds” with the emerging scientific consensus surrounding moral philosophy and human ethics. Meanwhile, evangelical understandings of divine law and judgment occurred against the backdrop of England's adoption of the rule of law, shaping both the content and the reception of revivalist preaching and helping to inspire the Wesley brothers’ prison ministry. “Evangelicals,” Hindmarsh notes, “saw in the desperate plight of the condemned prisoner the situation of us all as sinners” (233).
Evangelical participation in the societal shift to modernity also exposed divisions within the movement. In one of the book's most original contributions, Hindmarsh analyzes evangelical paintings and prose of the mid-eighteenth century to “reframe” the famed Calvinist-Arminian controversy “as a significant division of spiritual aspirations within a common school of evangelical devotion.” Whereas Calvinist artists sought to convey the sublime, their Arminian counterparts attempted to capture the “quest for sanctification” and the “agony of grace” (265). Modern aesthetic categories thus reveal that theological debates among evangelicals were “about much more than ideas” (266).
The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism is the latest in a series of studies reassessing the birth of the evangelical movement. Perhaps more than any other author, Hindmarsh grounds the revivals, missionary spirit, and new ways of worship in the broader landscape of eighteenth-century society. Evangelicalism, he makes clear, was a product of its time. He nevertheless situates his study historiographically alongside those books arguing that “evangelicalism was … not only a transnational movement of the eighteenth century, but also a movement with an ongoing history” that “has persisted in that same world as a characteristic expression of Christian devotion” today (60). He even goes so far as to conclude that debates over both the transatlantic unity and the continuity of evangelicalism have been “put paid to” by now (59). But the intellectual, ecclesiastical, and spiritual worlds of nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries were and are not the same as those of the eighteenth. And just as evangelicalism was birthed in a particular historical moment, so too it was reinvented in each subsequent century, transforming the very meanings of the label across time and space in response to shifting political and social situations.
It is illuminating to compare Hindmarsh's study with other recent offerings on the history of eighteenth-century awakenings. Both The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism and Douglas L. Winiarski's Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England (2017) narrate the revivals of the era as the beginning of something significant and new. But whereas Hindmarsh employs a transatlantic perspective, Winiarski focuses intently on a single region, examining not only the preaching activities of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, but also—and especially—the experiences of ordinary laywomen and men. Such a focus leads him to not only reject the consensus Hindmarsh insists exists, but to avoid using evangelical as a label for eighteenth-century revivalists altogether. Historiographical debates over the meaning, extent, and unity of early modern revivals, it appears, remain alive and well.
The Spirit of Evangelicalism is the latest contribution to that conversation, offering new lenses through which to understand both early evangelicalism and modernity. By pointing to the literary, scientific, and artistic forces that shaped its emergence, D. Bruce Hindmarsh demonstrates that evangelicalism was a thoroughly modern movement.
