John Oakes is an adjunct professor in the department of history at Simon Fraser University. He recently held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Divinity School and a Visiting Fellowship at Yale Divinity School. He has also taught courses in church history and spiritual theology at Regent College, Vancouver. He was educated at Oxford University (MA), Regent College (MDiv and MCS), the University of British Columbia (MA), and Simon Fraser University, where he earned his PhD in history.
In studies of early American evangelicals and evangelicalism that
seem to dominate the landscape these days, Charles Chauncy is
usually trotted out in a couple of paragraphs to represent the
reactionary 'Old Lights' who were so shortsighted as to oppose the
Great Awakening, and Jonathan Mayhew is mentioned in passing as an
inlet of soulless rationalism on the road to Deism. But John Oakes'
dual biography of these two rich and formative figures shows that
these characterizations are too pat, too simplistic, and that a
new, comparative approach to their religious and political thought
reveals that 'traditional Calvinists' such as Chauncy and Mayhew
are vital to understanding the great changes that occurred in the
period from the Awakenings to the Revolution. In the process, Oakes
shows that both of these figures had many points of similarity but
were also unique thinkers and actors in their own right.
-- Kenneth P. Minkema, Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University A
balanced, careful, and engaging study of two important figures who
are more often captured in caricature. Oakes' book situates Charles
Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew not as pathfinders of revolution and
Enlightenment, but as key figures in their own historical
moment.
--Nicholas Guyatt, University of Cambridge Oakes' study of Chauncy
and Mayhew has brought depth, texture, and a kind of iridescence to
his subjects. For those who think 'moderate' means 'bland, ' this
book offers a powerful rebuttal. Far from monochromatic gray,
Chauncy's and Mayhew's efforts to balance tradition and change drew
from a rich palette of intellectual trends and cultural forces in
eighteenth-century New England. Oakes' comparison of them vividly
reveals, too, that such colonial balancing acts took multiple
forms.
--David Holland, Associate Professor of North American Religious
History, Harvard Divinity School John Oakes' erudite understanding
of Reformed Protestantism has allowed him to give us a fresh,
insightful, and nuanced analysis of how Charles Chauncy and
Jonathan Mayhew articulated the momentous religious and political
transformations that shook New England from the 1740s through the
Revolution. By locating these two important figures in the
socioreligious context in which they flourished, Oakes has framed a
revealing window that sheds light on the way in which religiously
based thought, as it evolved in New England, suffused the secular
languages of liberty, and how tradition continued to shape the
innovative discourses of the latter half of the eighteenth century.
An exemplar of how disciplined comparative scholarship can
significantly expand our understanding of long-studied events.
--Alan Tully, Eugene C. Barker Professor of History, University of
Texas at Austin
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