Reviving Jonathan Edwards: Perry Miller's Mid-Century Mission

The untold story of how an unlikely Harvard atheist helped resurrect one of America’s greatest Puritans Jonathan Edwards is widely regarded as one of America’s most important and original thinkers.Prior to the mid-twentieth century, however, he was largely unknown to the learned community, except, perhaps, as a preacher of terror due to his well-known sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” In 1948 and 1949, Harvard professor of English Perry Miller published four pieces on him, including the acclaimed biography, Jonathan Edwards, and only a few years later he became the general editor of Edwards’s collected works.Miller’s efforts helped to resurrect Edwards as America’s greatest Puritan and to solidify him as central to the American experience, and their names have been closely intertwined ever since. Miller, an iconoclastic scholar widely considered to be the founder of American studies, was known for his brilliant scholarship, devoted teaching, and hard living.Dying prematur