Douglas A. Sweeney > Quotes

“Despite all this schism, Wesleyan Methodism continued to grow by leaps and bounds throughout the nineteenth century, bringing Arminian views to the mainstream of American evangelicalism.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“On the eve of the Revolution in 1776, more than half of the nation’s churchgoers went to Congregational, Presbyterian, and Anglican worship services—and supported the legal establishment of their churches. By 1850, though, these denominations contained fewer than 20 percent of churchgoers, while evangelical communities predominated the landscape. Baptists and Methodists alone comprised over half of the nation’s attenders.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“Most prodigious by far was the growth of the Baptists and the Methodists. Scholars estimate that at the outbreak of the American Revolution there were 494 Baptist congregations in the colonies. By 1795, this number had more than doubled to 1,152, and Baptists were poised to exert an enormous influence on the church of the next century. They proved most powerful in the South and on the ever-expanding frontier,”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“To this day, the vast majority of black Christians are Baptists, and this is not a coincidence. White Baptists proved most aggressive in gospel missions to slaves. Their spiritual dynamism, populism, and extemporary preaching attracted large numbers of Africans in the early United States.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“What a precious treasure God has committed into our hands in that he has given us the Bible. How little do most persons consider how much they enjoy in that they have the possession of that holy book. ... What an excellent book is this, and how far exceeding all human writings.... He that has a Bible, and don’t observe what is contained [in] it, is like a man that has a box full of silver and gold, and don’t know it.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought

“there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man can’t have the latter, unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter only by seeing the countenance. There is a wide difference between mere speculative, rational judging anything to be excellent, and having a sense of its sweetness, and beauty. The former rests only in the head, speculation only is concerned in it; but the heart is concerned in the latter.33”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought

“fact, he traveled nonstop for nearly forty-five years, covering three hundred thousand miles on horseback, crossing the Appalachian Mountains more than sixty times in the process, preaching sixteen thousand sermons, and ordaining four thousand Methodist preachers. He had no home—literally—and once told an English friend to address all future letters to him “in America.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“Of course, there were other motives as well for their migration to the New World. But many believed that Native Americans had descended from ancient Israel—from the “ten lost tribes” dispersed soon after the exile in the Old Testament—and that their salvation was a necessary component of the conversion of “all Israel” that would precede the return of Christ (Rom. 11:11–36).”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“Jonathan loved Sarah’s beauty, but attributed her attractiveness to the fullness of God in her soul. To call theirs love at first sight would be to mislead most modern readers. These two fell in love with the image and glory of God they saw in each other.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought

“As Whitefield declared to a friend in May of 1742, “If the Lord gives us a true catholic spirit, free from a party sectarian zeal, we shall do well . . . for I am persuaded, unless we all are content to preach Christ, and to keep off from disputable things, wherein we differ, God will not bless us long. If we act otherwise, however we may talk of a catholic spirit, we shall only be bringing people over to our own party, and there fetter them. I pray the Lord to keep . . . me from such a spirit.”[14] In the 1740s, thousands of others began to pray in this way too.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“Edwards taught that “most ... are to blame” for their “inattentive, unobservant way of reading” this gift of heaven. “The word of God contains the most noble, and worthy, and entertaining objects, ... the most excellent things that man can exercise his thoughts about.” Those who had truly “tasted the sweetness” of God’s Scriptural divinity ought to live out their days, he said, in “longing for more and more of it.”126”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought

“Thesis #3: Edwards shows us the advantages of keeping an eschatological perspective on our lives. The tyranny of the urgent and the pressure to “succeed” can thwart our Christian faith and practice. Keeping our minds on things eternal, though, can strengthen us for the day. As we remember God’s call on our lives, his larger purposes for our work, as well as his promise to sustain us, we are emboldened to be the people he created us to be. Those who trust in Scripture truth—who really believe in God and his Word—have less debilitating fear than most conventional “believers.” Conviction of the reality of heaven, hell and eternity provides the kind of perspective that can keep priorities straight. Those who truly fear the Lord are free to act with holy boldness, to do the right thing whatever the cost (including the loss of livelihood and public humiliation).”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought

“As in the Westminster Directory, so in his weekly pastoral practice, Edwards sought to preach the Word, 1. Painfully, not doing the work of the Lord negligently. 2. Plainly, that the meanest may understand, delivering the truth not in the entising words of mans wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, least the Crosse of Christ should be made of none effect.... 3. Faithfully, looking at the honour of Christ, the conversion, edification and salvation of the people, not at his own gaine or glory.... 4. Wisely.... 5. Gravely.... 6. With loving affection.... 7. As taught of God, and perswaded in his own heart, that all that he teacheth, is the truth of Christ; and walking before his flock, as an example to them in it.114”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought

“Christ has brought it to pass, that those that the Father had given him, should be brought into the household of God; that he, and his Father, and his people should be as it were one society, one family; that the church should be as it were admitted into the society of the blessed Trinity.156”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought

“Thesis #2: Edwards shows us that true religion is primarily a matter of holy affections. Christian doctrine is meant to be tasted, not just memorized, affirmed and then debated with those who differ. God communicates with us in order to draw us near to him. He helps us grow in spiritual knowledge so we can grow in divine love. Head and heart must work together. “There is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace.” God reveals himself to us and dwells within us by his Spirit to inform, guide and fashion our love for him and those around us.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought

“11, 1729, Stoddard passed away, leaving the twenty-five-year-old Edwards the sole pastor of a church that boasted nearly seven hundred members. Edwards soon led a revival there that anticipated the Awakening. In 1734, and while still in his early thirties, he began to preach a lengthy sermon series on justification by faith (based on his master’s thesis at Yale), which was by now a major doctrine of the emergent evangelicals. Before he knew it, revival broke out, and hundreds of locals experienced conversion.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement

“for Edwards, God’s Word and Spirit illuminate our worldly wisdom, rendering our knowledge more clear, beautiful and real than ever before. In a remarkable notebook entry dating from 1729, Edwards depicted this point vividly: A mind not spiritually enlightened [by means of the Bible and God’s Spirit] beholds spiritual things faintly, like fainting, fading shadows that make no lively impression on his mind, like a man that beholds the trees and things abroad in the night: the ideas ben’t strong and lively, and [are] very faint; and therefore he has but a little notion of the beauty of the face of the earth. But when the light comes to shine upon them, then the ideas appear with strength and distinctness; and he has that sense of the beauty of the trees and fields given him in a moment, which he would not have obtained by going about amongst them in the dark in a long time. A man that sets himself to reason without divine light is like a man that goes into the dark into a garden full of the most beautiful plants, and most artfully ordered, and compares things together by going from one thing to another, to feel of them and to measure the distances; but he that sees by divine light is like a man that views the garden when the sun shines upon it. There is ... a light cast upon the ideas of spiritual things in the mind of the believer, which makes them appear clear and real, which before were but faint, obscure representations.133”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought

“On the one hand, disestablishment led to an exponential increase in religious institutions, none of which was able to claim a legally sanctioned cultural authority. On the other hand, it deregulated the religious marketplace, enabling new ministry groups to flourish like never before.”
― Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement