Rick Kennedy - The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather (Library of Religious Biography (LRB))

LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY

Edited by Mark A. Noll

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LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY

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Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat James D. Bratt

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Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson
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Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President Allen C. Guelzo

Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism
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Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America
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The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather
Rick Kennedy

Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life Nancy Koester

Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief Roger Lundin

A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards George M. Marsden

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The First American Evangelical

A Short Life of Cotton Mather

Rick Kennedy

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

2015 Rick Kennedy
All rights reserved

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /
P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kennedy, Rick, 1958
The first American evangelical: a short life of Cotton Mather / Rick Kennedy.
pages cm. (Library of religious biography)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8028-7211-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)
eISBN 978-1-4674-4310-4 (ePub)
eISBN 978-1-4674-4270-1 (Kindle)
1. Mather, Cotton, 1663-1728.
2. Puritans Massachusetts Biography.
3. Massachusetts History Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.
4. Evangelicalism United States History.
I. Title.

F67.M43K46 2015
285.8092 dc23
[B]
2015004724

www.eerdmans.com

To Mathew, Steven, Lebari, Elizabeth, and Bariza

Quench not the Spirit.
Despise not prophesyings.
Prove all things; hold fast to that which is good.
(1 Thess. 5:19-21, KJV)

Cotton Mather in 1727 at age 65. Peter Pelham painted a portrait for the family, then created this mezzotint to sell to the public. Kenneth Silverman writes that Mather seems to have been the first American whose portrait others wanted and bought for their homes. (Used by permission of the American Antiquarian Society)

Contents

Preface

S earch the internet for Cotton Mather and you will get an amazing array of material much of it about the Salem witch trials and most of that information rooted in one source, Robert Calef, a man who hated Mather so much, and portrayed him so wildly, that reputable historians discount most of what he reports. Calef created a Mather that people love to hate. Type in Marvel Comics Database and you will find a cartoon image of Cotton Mather as a threatening, be-muscled villain whose cape spreads wide behind him as he leaps toward you brandishing a glowing sword. The database offers the following biographical information: Alias: Witchslayer; Citizenship: American; Origin: Human; Alignment: Bad. A better source on Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, warmly remembered Cotton Mather as a generous man eager to do good. Mather was, in truth, one of the most energetic do-gooders in colonial America. He was a family man much respected in his native Boston, a pastor who was considered a leader of the churches of New England, and a scholar with a transatlantic reputation. If it had been up to him, the Salem witchcraft problem would have been handled without hysteria. Before the trials began, he recommended that the girls who professed to be afflicted by witches and demons should be separated and distributed to good homes where their diet and sleep could be regulated. He also advised the judges that the testimony of the girls about what they saw was very weak evidence, and did not alone warrant the conviction of any of the accused witches. Aligning himself with most of the other ministers of colonial Boston, Cotton did not support the courts rush to execute witches.

Such matters will be more fully discussed later. Here I simply introduce the theme by noting that calling Cotton Mather the first American evangelical Christian is a deliberate echo of an earlier book on Cotton Mathers father by Michael Hall titled Increase Mather: The Last American Puritan. Between the 1680s and 1720s New England was transitioning out of a narrow but deep Puritanism into the British Empires broader and shallower Protestantism. Many scholars have written about how the loss of Massachusetts distinctive Puritan charter, the fiasco of the Salem witch trials, the controversy surrounding the founding of the Brattle Street Church, and finally the struggle for the presidency of Harvard all drove New England through a cultural transition that integrated it better into the British Empire. Out of this transition was born the broadminded imperial Protestantism that supported the beginnings of a moderate intellectual enlightenment in America. Also born was something else, a Protestantism of a different sort, one that refused to be lukewarm, and one that is recognizable as a root to what would grow into the American evangelical tradition.

Increase Mather and his son Cotton were involved at every stage of this transition. Of the two, however, Cotton more eagerly embraced the new and expansive possibilities of a Boston more connected with global evangelism. Whereas Increase often preached harsh Jeremiads against the decline of Puritan society, Cotton was softer, more humanitarian. He preached more about Heavens call than Gods judgment. He regularly called his listeners to be daily filled with joy and embrace a moment-by-moment conversational relationship with God. There is nothing, he preached, that will bring you so near Heaven, or help you lead a Heavenly life, as to keep alive a comfortable persuasion of this, that God your savior has loved you.