A Great Awakening Conversion: The Relation of Samuel Belcher

Minkema, Kenneth P.

doi:10.2307/1939722

Cited by 12 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Referring to Edwards's famous sermon, Belcher described his terror at falling "into the hands of an angry God"; next, emulating Whitefield, Belcher wrote, "I felt my Load Go of and my mouth was Stopt and I Could not utter one word for Some time and I fealt as if my heart was Changed" until, in "Joy and Comfort," his "mouth was opened and [he] Spake forth." 48 Edwards's rhetoric of abjection also developed in dialogue with revival conversion narratives by the poor, especially poor women, Native Americans, and African Americans, that tended to be more embodied and to continue the older Puritan model of conversion as a recursive, or sometimes unfinished, process. 49 They used English associations of abjection and bodily corruption with femininity, heathenism, and incivility to develop forms of public religious expression that would play an important role in shaping Edwards's models of public piety.…”

Section: Letters Tears and Being "Swallowed Up In Christ"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Jonathan Edwards, Affective Conversion, and the Problem of Masochism

Miller¹

2012

GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This essay uses the work of Jonathan Edwards to trace intellectual, historical, and theoretical connections between eighteenth-century religious conversion in England and New England and later accounts of masochism's Enlightenment philosophical basis. Expanding feminist readings of revival abjection to include racial abjection, I focus on Edwards's account of religious sentiment in a “Personal Narrative” (ca. 1739), A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Works of God (1736–37), and Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1742). Situating these texts in their philosophical and political contexts, I then use A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746) to show how Edwards's evolving response to revivalist disruptions of hierarchy led him to describe a sentimental structure of desire similar to masochism as a defense against a modern subjectivity that would allow for masochism.

show abstract

Section: Letters Tears and Being "Swallowed Up In Christ"mentioning

confidence: 99%