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Reviews
| The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Phillip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America, by John Fea. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 280 pages. $39.95, cloth.
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| The colonial and revolutionary eras in America experienced both a religious and an intellectual awakening. Early Americans wanted to be both pious and enlightened. Professor John Fea of Messiah College has captured a vivid picture of such an individual, his subject, Philip Vickers Fithian (1747–1776). Fithian appears often in the literature and histories of the late eighteenth century, but Fea's work is the first comprehensive biography of this interesting, albeit short, life. Within the pages of his account, Fea produces a cultural and intellectual biography; therefore, readers receive a glimpse into the mind of one of the period's well-known diarists and the society that shaped him. As Fea states, his purpose in writing serves "to use Philip's story to explain the impact of the Enlightenment in the British American colonies" (p. 4). Fithian serves as a historical model of an enlightened Christian and republican. He also writes this work with his students in mind, because during his tenure as a professor, he has "learned that biography can be used to help students locate the Enlightenment historically and suggest to them that ideas about how to make a better self always rise in a historical context" (p. 5). The author writes Fithian's life in tight chronological detail, beginning with his family (both parents died during his twenties); his religious conversion; call to ministry; studies at Princeton with John Witherspoon; and his difficult courtship with Betsy Beatty, who initially turns him down, but marries him five years later. The most famous episode of his life is the year he served as a tutor at the plantation of Robert Carter in Virginia, where he kept a thorough journal of his experiences. He also traveled as circuit-riding preacher throughout Pennsylvania and Virginia. The diary closes with the entry of September 22, 1776, while Fithian was serving as a chaplain in the militia. He died on October 8, 1776 of dysentery. Philip and Betsy did not have children. |
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Fithian's biography illustrates four interrelated themes at the heart of the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century America: self improvement, reason as a necessary check to the individual passions, the directing of one's passions away from parochial concerns to a universal love of humanity, and balancing Enlightenment ideals with a deep Christian faith. These four serve as the framework for the remainder of the work. |
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Through the diaries of Fithian, readers get a deeply intimate look into the mind of a conflicted individual who wanted to aspire to perfection, remain loyal to his Calvinist faith, and a yet live as child of the Enlightenment and a staunch proponent of republicanism. Scholars, students, and readers of more secular views may read into this account that Fithian was a secularist at heart, but evangelical Calvinists of Fithian's generation viewed their faith as superior to worldly ideas, and there is no evidence that Fithian ever doubted the superiority of the Christian worldview. As Fea astutely notes, "Philip's call to an educated and enlightened life and his call to serve God were one in the same" (p. 213). Modern Christian apologists and intellectuals can relate to Fithian, as many are graduates of prestigious Ivy League and European universities and are of the same philosophical and intellectual persuasion. |
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The author concludes that the life of Fithian "teaches us that the abstract, urban, and elite-centered republic of letters that has so captivated early American historians over the past two decades had a real impact on individual human experience" (p. 211). Though Fithian was not cosmopolitan in a truly Jeffersonian sense—he had not been outside the colonies nor had a copious correspondence with Europeans—Fea believes "his network of friends, letter-writing circles, admonishing societies, pastoral commitments, reading groups, and revolutionary activities, were all a means of being cosmopolitan in a given place" (p. 212). |
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There is not much to criticize here, as Fea's narrative is an easy read and makes for a pleasant experience, but the lack of a bibliography weakens the utility of the book for secondary teachers and community college instructors for use in their courses. Nevertheless, Fea succeeds in giving his readers keen insight into the life and mind of diarist who left to Americans and the world a record of what it was like to live as a Christian amid the Enlightenment and revolution. |
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| Columbus State Community College |
James S. Baugess |
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