Growing out of decades of research in the developments and meanderings of the Reformation, Early Evangelicalism provides a comprehensive introduction to the theologians and writings that formulated and nourished this transformative religious movement. In this tightly focused history of ideas, W. R. Ward opens his examination of rise of this movement of spiritual intensity amidst the Lutheran Orthodoxy and the Reformed Calvinism of the Continent. He establishes the intellectual and congregational spaces out of which the European dissenters arose and against which they resisted, describing the nature of their critique as well as their theological corrections and spiritual strategies to construct stronger connections with God and the community of believers. Following detailed expositions of specific philosophers, German religious leaders, and key French theologians, Ward traces these influences onto English evangelicalism, particularly Wesleyan Methodism and Edwardsian revivalism in New England. Previous scholarship has certainly explored, through sermons, publications, and correspondence, particular ideas or practices that claimed importance among leaders such as John Wesley and Nickolaus von Zinzendorf. In this volume, however, Ward goes beyond specific examples to elucidate the ideological threads common to all of these leaders and the movements they built, weaving them analytically into the system that grounded their identities and drove their praxis.
In his introduction, Ward outlines the six themes of an “evangelical hexagon” (4) that he traces from the mid-seventeenth-century inception of the movement until its fragmentation at the beginning of the nineteenth century. First, he points to their close association with mysticism, arguing that there was some affinity with some Roman Catholic mystics. This attraction to mysticism was reflected in their espousal of experimental conversion. A third aspect was the benefit perceived in the use of small groups to foster spirituality among believers, foreshadowing the Methodist class meetings. Interestingly, Ward also finds that evangelicals had moved away from an eschatology of immediacy, so powerful in early seventeenth-century Europe in light of the wars on the continent and in Britain; instead, they envisioned an end that would come only after God's promises had been fulfilled. Undergirding the entire movement was a hostility to theological systematization that Ward labels anti-aristotelianism but which might also be described as a resistance to a formalistic, or “legal,” religion. Rather than feel restricted by mechanistic doctrine, evangelicals, Ward argues, celebrated the vitality of their souls in relation to the divine, a conviction they worked to reinforce through a vitalist understanding of nature. Theirs was not a spirituality of correct belief and right behavior under the guidance of learned clergy (although their clergy was learned). This was a religiosity centered upon the power of the soul infused with gracious principle, an experiential spirituality that emphasized the mystical connection to God.
As always, Ward proves himself a master of the archive and the text. His encyclopedic knowledge of the huge and diverse community of theologians, church leaders, and their writings is matched by the illuminating perspicuity he brings to their words. While the idea of an intellectual history of experiential evangelicalism seems at first glance an oxymoron, Ward rightfully moves forward with his purpose: in terms of these highly educated leaders at least, it is important to identify the complex of concepts that drove their praxis and justified their work in their own minds. That these ideological features were common across space and time is forcefully argued, and many scholars have, in fact, recognized most of these facets. The reader will, nevertheless, appreciate the intricacy of the web that Ward has produced, for he has gone further to provide a sense not only of sources from which these features were drawn and developed but also of the process by which some pieces of the foundational theological systems were kept and others eliminated. I believe that Ward has a sense of why evangelicals chose some pieces over others, why some characteristics were longer lived; but I would have appreciated some clarity as these explanations are drawn. The introduction, for example, provides a concise outline of the six thematics that Ward identifies and traces in the book. The volume would have been enhanced by additional guide posts throughout.
Something should be said about the scope of this “Global Intellectual History”: global it is not. For Ward, global seems to be a pointer at his expansive evangelical network connecting Continental Europe, England, and New England, but as the term has been recently applied by eighteenth-century historians, it signifies a much larger world that reaches into the new colonial empires, trading systems, and travel beyond. Had Ward engaged this expanded world, he would have had the opportunity to consider an additional facet of the evangelical ethos, namely the missionary emphasis upon bringing salvation to those frequently judged unfit for conversion, be they the disfranchised classes or the uncivilized natives in the colonies. Moreover, even accepting Ward's limitation to Europe and Britain, the explicit exclusion of Scotland and Ireland leaves significant gaps, particularly in terms of understanding the development of evangelical culture in British America as it moved through its independence movement and would reconstruct itself in the nineteenth century.
Still, these considerations notwithstanding, Ward has produced a remarkable analysis of an intellectual system shared by German Pietists, British Methodists, and New England Congregationalists, among others. He has provided scholars with explorations of such detail and comprehensiveness that the text will become a key reference work for anyone working broadly in the histories of philosophy and theology as well as the narrower world of evangelical religion.
