On March 16, 1742, Jonathan Edwards’ church in Northampton, Massachusetts, renewed its covenant with God. Every member of the church “over fourteen years of age rose and assented to the document.”1 The Great Awakening2 had begun there eight years earlier and was continuing, but Edwards knew that healthy congregations needed pointed moral teaching, such as the document contained. He never assumed that once people had come to Christ, they could easily, and without a pastor’s counsel, figure out the rest—the range of moral and social applications. They very much needed instruction in discipleship, which has major repercussions in the public square.

In the 1730s, the town of Northampton had begun to enlarge, and she saw significant economic growth, with attendant tensions. For example, a bitter land dispute had divided the town for a number of years, and in 1737, party spirit came to the surface during the building of an enlarged meeting house. Seeing strife, sharp-dealing, and bitterness among the townspeople, Edwards spoke directly to the problem. In his eyes, the local church was more than a place of comfort for the weary, but also a staging ground for social renewal. Accordingly, he penned these words for his congregation to read:

In all our conversation, concerns, and dealings with our neighbor, we will have a strict regard to rules of honesty, justice, and uprightness; that we don’t overreach or defraud our neighbor in any matter, and either willfully or through want of care, injure him in any of his honest possessions or rights; and in all our communication, will have a tender respect, not only to our own interest, but also to the interest of our neighbor; and will carefully endeavor in everything to do to others as we should expect, or think reasonable, that they should do to us, if we were in their case and they in ours. And particularly we will endeavor to render to everyone his due; and will take heed to ourselves, that we don’t wrong our neighbor, and give them just cause of offense, by willfully or negligently forbearing to pay our honest debts.3

Such topics were not new to Edwards; he “actually wrote and preached about economic practice throughout his career. . .”4 So when, in 1742, he led his people to examine their business practices, his words did not come from the blue. Rather, they were yet another instance of his prophetic engagement with the culture.

The Awakening was stunning in its power; emotions ran high, and tears flowed freely. But the old preacher reminds the Church, what matters is “not how high you jump, but how straight you walk when you hit the ground.”5 
 
 
Footnotes:
 
1  George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 261.
 
2  See Kairos Journal articles, “Revival in Northampton,” “Jonathan Edwards: ‘A Glorious Alteration,'” “George Whitefield: God’s Unusual Evangelist,” & “John Wesley: A Social, Not Solitary, Religion.”
 
3  Jonathan Edwards, Letters and Personal Writings, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 16, ed. George S. Glaghorn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 122.
 
4  Mark Valeri, “The Economic Thought of Jonathan Edwards,” Church History 60 (March 1991), 38.
 
5  Joe McKeever, “The Excitement Quotient,” March 28, 2006, http://www.joemckeever.com/mt/archives/000268.html (accessed October 3, 2006).
 
 First Baptist Church of Perryville is located at 4800 W. Pulaski Hwy., Perryville, MD 21903