|
|
|
Souls Filled with Ravishing Transport: Heavenly Visions and the Radical Awakening in New England
Douglas L. Winiarski
|
AS the Great Awakening surged across the Atlantic world in the mid-eighteenth
century, few ordained clergymen willingly admitted that their parishes
had been infected by antinomian intrusions of the Holy Spirit. When
confronted with incidents of revival "enthusiasm"—a pejorative
term in early modern parlance, denoting false claims to divine inspiration—they
were quick to criticize.
1
William M'Culloch and his Scottish colleagues systematically effaced
all references to visions of the bleeding Christ and other supernatural
wonders from the conversion narratives that they collected during
the Cambuslang "Wark" of 1742.
2
When South Carolina gentleman Hugh Bryan prophesied the imminent
destruction of Charleston after conversing with an "Angel of Light"
and began "filling" the heads of local slaves with "a Parcel of
Cant-Phrases, Trances, Dreams, Visions, and Revilations,"
fellow planters promptly had him arrested.
3
Even those inveterate revival combatants, Jonathan Edwards and Charles
Chauncy, found common ground on the issue. Both men agreed that
popular claims to immediate revelations were, at best, uncertain
marks of authentic religious experience; at worst, they were the
products of overheated imaginations or "animal spirits."
4
For decades, ministers on both sides of the Atlantic had prayed
for a marvelous effusion of the Holy Spirit; when the harvest came,
many had reaped substantial rewards. Yet, with few exceptions, revival
opposers and advocates alike drew the line at those spirit-possessed
delusions collectively ridiculed as trances, dreams, and visions.
|
1
|
|
Clerical campaigns to exorcize the
demon of enthusiasm from their parishes militated against the preservation
of documents that might illuminate this crucial dimension of the
Great Awakening—with one notable exception. Buried in the
correspondence of the Lebanon, Connecticut, evangelist Eleazar Wheelock
is a unique vision narrative drafted by an anonymous author who,
by his or her own reckoning, had "never Learnt to right nor spell"
(see
Figures I
–
II
and
Appendix
). Scrawled in an unschooled hand during the winter of 1741–1742,
the 746-word testimony described a celestial spirit journey during
which the entranced author was carried to the gates of heaven on
the wings of a giant dove and shown his or her name written in blood
in the Book of Life by Christ himself.
5
In contrast to the spiritual autobiographies of well-known Great
Awakening converts such as Isaac Backus, David Brainerd, Nathan
Cole, Sarah Edwards, Hannah Heaton, or Sarah Osborn—all of
which were written years after the revivals or revised significantly
by clerical editors—this unique, unstudied first-person narrative
offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a radical strain
of evangelical piety that flourished during the peak months of the
Great Awakening in New England.
6
|
. . . |
There are about 19297 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
