Editing Jonathan Edwards (theologian) (section)

== Death and legacy ==
[[File:Jonathan Edwards engraving.jpg|thumb|right|Engraving of Edwards by R Babson & J Andrews]]Almost immediately after becoming president of the College of New Jersey, Edwards, a strong supporter of [[Variolation|smallpox inoculations]], decided to get inoculated in order to encourage others to do the same. Never having been in robust health, he died as a result of the inoculation on March 22, 1758. Edwards left behind eleven children (three sons and eight daughters).{{Sfn|Gardiner|Webster|1911|p=3}} The grave of Edwards is located in [[Princeton Cemetery]]. Written in Latin, the long emotional [[epitaph]] inscription on the horizontal gravestone eulogizes his life and career and laments the great loss of his passing.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Dod|first=William Armstrong |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PFQbAAAAYAAJ|title=History of the College of New Jersey: From Its Commencement, A.D., 1746, to 1783|publisher=J.T. Robinson|year=1844|location=Princeton|pages=15|oclc=32788003}}</ref> It draws from the classical tradition in extolling the virtues of the deceased and directly inviting the passerby to pause and mourn.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}}

The followers of Jonathan Edwards and his disciples came to be known as the [[Old and New Lights|New Light]] Calvinist ministers. Prominent disciples included the [[New England theology|New Divinity]] school's [[Samuel Hopkins (theologian)|Samuel Hopkins]], [[Joseph Bellamy]], [[Jonathan Edwards (the younger)|Jonathan Edwards Jr.]],<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jonathan-Edwards Britannica website, ''Jonathan Edwards'', article by Thomas A. Schafer dated  Jan 12, 2024]</ref> and Gideon Hawley. Through a practice of apprentice ministers living in the homes of older ministers, they eventually filled a large number of pastorates in the [[New England]] area.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}} Many of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards's descendants became prominent citizens in the United States, including Burr and college presidents [[Timothy Dwight IV|Timothy Dwight]], Jonathan Edwards Jr. and [[Merrill Edwards Gates]]. Jonathan and Sarah Edwards were also ancestors of [[Edith Roosevelt]], the writer [[O. Henry]], the publisher [[Frank Nelson Doubleday]], and the writer [[Robert Lowell]].<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=pKiM74AgJlwC&dq=jonathan+edwards+princeton+theological+descendants+Edith+Roosevelt%2C+the+writer+O.+Henry%2C++Frank+Nelson+Doubleday%2C+and+the+writer+Robert+Lowell&pg=PA57 Google Books website, ''Antebellum Slavery: The Orthodox Christian View'', by Gary Lee Roper, p. 57]</ref><ref>[https://www.abebooks.co.uk/first-edition/careful-strict-Enquiry-Modern-Prevailing-Notions/30763687346/bd ABE Books website, ''A careful and strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will, which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame'', by Jonathan Edwards]</ref> The eminence of many descendants of Edwards led some [[Progressive Era]] scholars to view him as proof of [[eugenics]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Winship |first=Albert E. |title=Jukes-Edwards: A Study in Education and Heredity |publisher=R. L. Myers & Co. |year=1900 |location=Harrisburg |chapter=A Study of Jonathan Edwards |oclc=22842812 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/jukesedwardsstud1900wins/page/15/mode/1up?view=theater}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Popenoe |first1=Paul |last2=Johnson |first2=Roswell Hill |date=February 10, 1921 |title=Applied Eugenics |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/106752a0 |journal=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]] |language=en |volume=106 |issue=2676 |pages=752–753 |bibcode=1921Natur.106..752. |doi=10.1038/106752a0 |issn=1476-4687 |s2cid=4095859}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lombardo |first=Paul A. |date=2012-04-01 |title=Return of the Jukes: Eugenic Mythologies and Internet Evangelism |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/01947648.2012.686798 |journal=[[Journal of Legal Medicine]] |volume=33 |issue=2 |pages=207–233 |doi=10.1080/01947648.2012.686798 |issn=0194-7648 |pmid=22694094 |s2cid=38739509}}</ref> His descendants have had a disproportionate effect upon American culture: his biographer [[George Marsden]] notes that "the Edwards family produced scores of clergymen, thirteen presidents of higher learning, sixty-five professors, and many other persons of notable achievements."{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|pp=500–501}}

Edwards's writings and beliefs continue to influence individuals and groups to this day. Early [[American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions]] missionaries were influenced by Edwards's writings, as is evidenced in reports in the ABCFM's journal "The Missionary Herald," and beginning with [[Perry Miller]]'s seminal work, Edwards enjoyed a renaissance among scholars around the time of the [[Second World War]].<ref name=JES>[https://jestudies.yale.edu/index.php/journal/article/view/161/0   Yale University website, Jonathan Edwards section ''Studying the History of American Protestantism through Jonathan Edwards: Versions of ‘America’s Theologican’ at mid-century'', article by Jan Stievermann, published in the Jonathan Edwards Journal, Volume 4 No 2 (2014)]</ref> The [[Banner of Truth Trust]] and other publishers continue to reprint Edwards's works, and most of his major works are now available through the series published by [[Yale University Press]], which has spanned three decades and supplies critical introductions by the editor of each volume. Yale has also established the Jonathan Edwards Project online.<ref name=JES /> Author and teacher, Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris, memorialized him, her paternal ancestor (3rd great-grandfather) in two books,'' The Jonathan Papers'' (1912), and ''More Jonathan Papers'' (1915).<ref>[https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/author/elisabeth-woodbridge  ABE Books website, ''Jonathan Papers'']</ref><ref>[https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/isbn/9781018878942/   ABE Books website, ''More Jonathan Papers'']</ref> In 1933, he became the namesake of [[Jonathan Edwards College]], the first of the 12 [[residential colleges]] of Yale, and [[The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University]] was founded to provide scholarly information about Edwards' writings.<ref>[https://je.yalecollege.yale.edu/about-us/history  Yale University website, Jonathan Edwards College section, ''History'']</ref><ref>[https://catalog.yale.edu/div/research-outreach/jonathan-edwards-center-online-archive/  Yale Divinity School website, ''The Jonathan Edwards Center and Online Archive'']</ref> Edwards is remembered today as a teacher and missionary by the [[Evangelical Lutheran Church in America]] on March 22.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}} The contemporary poet [[Susan Howe]] frequently describes the composition of Edwards' manuscripts and notebooks held at the [[Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library]] in a number of her books of poetry and prose, including {{Citation | title = Souls of the Labadie Tract | date = 2007}} and {{Citation | title = That This | year = 2010}}.  She notes how some of Edwards' notebooks were hand sewn from silk paper that his sisters and wife used for making fans.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Howe|first=Susan|date=2009|title=Choir answers to Choir: Notes on Jonathan Edwards and Wallace Stevens|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25742542|journal=Chicago Review|volume=54|issue=4|pages=51–61|jstor=25742542|issn=0009-3696}}</ref> Howe also argues in ''My Emily Dickinson'' that [[Emily Dickinson]] was formatively influenced by Edwards's writings, and that she "took both his legend and his learning, tore them free from his own humorlessness and the dead weight of doctrinaire Calvinism, then applied the freshness of his perception to the dead weight of American poetry as she knew it."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Howe|first=Susan|title=My Emily Dickinson|publisher=[[North Atlantic Books]]|year=1985|isbn=978-0-938190-53-0|location=Berkeley|pages=51|author-link=Susan Howe}}</ref>

He was the maternal grandfather of [[Aaron Burr]], the third United States vice president and the murderer of [[Alexander Hamilton]].<ref name="Edwards bio" />

=== Slavery ===
Edwards [[Slavery in the colonial history of the United States|was involved with slavery]] during his lifetime. In June 1731, he purchased a young black teenager named Venus. In subsequent years, he acquired at least five more slaves: Joab and Rose Binney, Titus, Joseph, and Sue. Edwards married Joab and Rose in 1751; Titus was their son. Joseph and Sue were also a married couple. Edwards also owned a slave by the name of Leah, though this is likely the biblical name given to Venus as she was admitted as a full member to Edwards' church by  1736.<ref>{{cite news |last=Stinson |first=Susan |author-link=Susan Stinson |date=April 5, 2012 |title=The Other Side of the Paper: Jonathan Edwards as Slave-Owner |newspaper=[[Daily Hampshire Gazette|Valley Advocate]] |url=http://valleyadvocate.com/2012/04/05/the-other-side-of-the-paper-jonathan-edwards-as-slave-owner/ |access-date=October 5, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Sweeney |first=Douglas A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uvhaQ3Ju9dYC&q=%22they+owned+several+slaves.+Beginning+in+June+1731%2C+Edwards+joined+the+slave+trade%2C+buying%22+Girle+%22named+Venus%22&pg=PA66 |title=Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought |publisher=[[InterVarsity Press]] |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-8308-7941-0 |location=Downers Grove |pages=66–68 |quote=...they owned several slaves. Beginning in June 1731, Edwards joined the slave trade, buying 'a Negro Girle named Venus ages Fourteen years or thereabout' in Newport, at an auction, for 'the Sum of Eighty pounds.'}}</ref> In a 1741 pamphlet, Edwards defended the institution for those who were debtors, war captives, or were born enslaved in North America, but rejected the [[Atlantic slave trade]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Minkema |first=Kenneth P. |year=2002 |title=Jonathan Edwards's Defense of Slavery |url=https://edwardseducationblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/minkema-defense-slavery.pdf |journal=[[Massachusetts Historical Society|Massachusetts Historical Review]] |type=Race & Slavery |volume=4 |pages=23–59 |issn=1526-3894 |quote=Edwards defended the traditional definition of slaves as those who were debtors, children of slaves, and war captives; for him, the trade in slaves born in North America remained legitimate.}}</ref>

Attention to this fact became prominent during the 2010s and 2020s. Responses have ranged from condemnation<ref>{{cite web |last=Raymond |first=Kaymarion |date=June 19, 2021 |title=Slavery in Northampton |url=https://fromwickedtowedded.com/2021/06/19/slavery-in-northampton/ |website=From Wicked to Wedded}}</ref>  to the view that he was a man of his time.<ref name="Gateway">{{cite web |title=Jonathan Edwards and Slavery |url=https://thegateway.press/jonathan-edwards-and-slavery/}}</ref> Other commentators have sought to maintain what they see as valuable in Edwards' theology, while deploring his involvement in slavery.<ref name="lament">{{cite web |title=Jonathan Edwards and His Support of Slavery: A Lament |date=February 27, 2019 |url=https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/jonathan-edwards-support-slavery-lament/}}</ref>