Jonathan Edwards Center Germany
The Jonathan Edwards Center Germany advances research and teaching on Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the tradition of New England Puritanism from which he came, and his legacies in contemporary global Christianity. A pastor, revivalist, Christian philosopher, missionary, and college president, Edwards is widely regarded as North America’s greatest theologian and has attracted intense scholarly interest across disciplines and around the globe.
A special interest of the center is to study Edwards’s times, thought, and global reception from a European and comparative perspective that sees the American revivals as part of a much larger transatlantic movement of Protestant awakening, encompassing not only British evangelicalism but also continental Pietist groups.
Directed by Jan Stievermann, the center is a partnership between the Department of Theology and the Heidelberg Center for American Studies at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg with the Jonathan Edwards Center at the Yale Divinity School.
Together these institutions advance work on Edwards and early American religious history by supporting and advising related academic projects, providing resources, offering seminars, organizing lectures and conferences, and collaborating with the other international centers.
Publications
Publications related to Jonathan Edwards produced by the Jonathan Edwards Center Germany’s Director and Research Associates:
- Stievermann, Jan, ed., with Editorial Assistants Michael Dopffel, Ryan P. Hoselton, and Benjamin Pietrenka. Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana. Vol. 10: Hebrews-Revelation. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022.
- Ryan P. Hoselton, Jan Stievermann, Douglas A. Sweeney, and Michael A.G. Haykin, eds. The Bible in Early Transatlantic Pietism and Evangelicalism. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2022. Hoselton contributed the “Introduction” and ch. 6, “The Bible in Early Pietist and Evangelical Missions,” Stievermann contributed ch. 11, “Reading Revelation and Revelatory Readings in Early Awakened Protestantism: A Transatlantic Comparison,” and Benjamin M. Pietrenka co-authored chapter 13, “The Spirit of the Word: Scripture in the Lives of Evangelical and Moravian Women in the New World, 1730-1830.” Several chapters feature Edwards prominently.
- Sweeney, Douglas A. and Jan Stievermann, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Jan Stievermann contributed the “Introduction” and ch. 14, “History, Providence, and Eschatology.”
- Bezzant, Rhys, ed. Edwards, Germany, and Transatlantic Contexts. Göttingen: V&R, 2021. Ryan Hoselton contributed chapter 3: “Jonathan Edwards, Halle Pietism, and Benevolent Activism in Early Awakened Protestantism,” and Jan Stievermann contributed chapter 9, “Jonathan Edwards, American Evangelicalism, and the Prussian Erweckungsbewegung, ca. 1815-1850.”
- Stievermann, Jan. “Europe.” In: A History of Puritan Literature. Ed. Kristina Bross and Abram Van Engen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 72-90.