God on a Hill
CHAPTER 5 Theology in the United States
The Jefferson Bible
Thomas Jefferson believed that the ethical system of Jesus was the finest the world has ever seen. In compiling what has come to be called "The Jefferson Bible," he sought to separate those ethical teachings from the religious dogma and other supernatural elements that are intermixed in the account provided by the four Gospels. He presented these teachings, along with the essential events of the life of Jesus, in one continuous narrative.
http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/
John Winthrop A Model of Christian Charity
“A Model of Christian Charity” is a 1630 sermon by Puritan layman and leader John Winthrop, who delivered on board the ship Arbella while on route to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It is also known as City upon a Hill and denotes the notion of American exceptionalism. Although known by reputation and preserved in contemporary manuscript copy held by the New-York Historical Society, the sermon was not published until the 1830s.
http://winthropsociety.com/doc_charity.php
https://history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html
Thomas Hooker The Activity of Faith: ar Abraham’s Imitators
Thomas Hooker, graduate and fellow of Cambridge, England, and practically founder of Connecticut, was born in 1586. He was dedicated to the ministry, and began his activities in 1620 by taking a small parish in Surrey. He did not, however, attract much notice for his powerful advocacy of reformed doctrine, until 1629, when he was cited to appear before Laud, the Bishop of London, whose threats induced him to leave England for Holland, whence he sailed with John Cotton, in 1633, for New England, and settled in Newtown, now Cambridge, Mass.
http://biblehub.com/library/various/the_worlds_great_sermons_vol_2/hooker__the_activity_of.htm
Jonathan Edwards Personal Narrative
Edwards did not accept his theological inheritance passively. In his “Personal Narrative” he confesses that, from his childhood on, his mind “had been full of objections” against the doctrine of predestination—i.e., that God sovereignly chooses some to salvation but rejects others to everlasting torment; “it used to appear like a horrible doctrine to…
http://www.britannica.com/topic/Personal-Narrative
http://college.cengage.com/english/heath/syllabuild/iguide/edwards.html
http://mith.umd.edu/eada/html/display.php?docs=edwards_personalnarrative.xml
David Walker Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Preachers of the Religion of Jesus Christ
The structure of David Walker’s Appeal emulates, in part, the Constitution of the United States, having five parts—a preamble and four articles. In the preamble, Walker outlines his arguments in a very general way. The articles’ titles reflect their content, each explicating a reason for the “wretchedness” of the slaves’ lives and experiences: “Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Slavery,” “Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Ignorance,” “Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Preachers of the Religion of Jesus Christ,” and “Our Wretchedness in.
http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/walkerhp.html
William Ellery Channing The Essence of the Christian Religion
William Ellery Channing (April 7, 1780 – October 2, 1842) was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and along with Andrews Norton, (1786-1853), one of Unitarianism’s leading theologians. He was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day. Channing’s religion and thought were among the chief influences on the New England Transcendentalists, though he never countenanced their views, which he saw as extreme. The beliefs he espoused, especially within his “Baltimore Sermon1” of May 5, 1819, at the ordination of a future famous theologian and educator in his own right, Jared Sparks, (1789-1866), as the first minister (1819-1823) of the newly organized (1817) “First Independent Church of Baltimore” (later the “First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (Unitarian and Universalist)"). Here he espoused his principles and tenets of the developing philosophy and theology of “Unitarianism” resulted in the organization later in 1825 of the first Unitarian denomination in America (American Unitarian Association) and the later developments and mergers between Unitarians and Universalists resulting finally in the Unitarian Universalist Association of America in 1961.
Charles Grandison Finney Lectures on Revivals of Religion
Charles Grandison Finney (August 29, 1792 – August 16, 1875) was an American Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States. He has been called The Father of Modern Revivalism.1 Finney was best known as an innovative revivalist during the period 1825–1835 in upstate New York and Manhattan, an opponent of Old School Presbyterian theology, an advocate of Christian perfectionism, and a religious writer.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/finney/revivals.html
Sarah M. Grimké Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman
Sarah Grimké began as an advocate for the immediate abolition of slavery. Soon she found herself defending women’s rights as well in order to advance her primary cause. In her Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman of 1838, (initally published as a series of letters in a newspaper) Sarah Grimké responded to Catharine Beecher’s defense of the subordinate role of women.
http://archive.org/stream/lettersonequalit00grimrich/lettersonequalit00grimrich_djvu.txt
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Divinity School Address
At the time of Emerson’s speech, Harvard was the center of academic Unitarian thought. In this address, Emerson made comments that were radical for their time. Emerson enunciated many of the tenets of Transcendentalism against a more conventional Unitarian theology. He argued that moral intuition is a better guide to the moral sentiment than religious doctrine, and insisted upon the presence of true moral sentiment in each individual, while discounting the necessity of belief in the historical miracles of Jesus.
http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/emerson/essays/dsa.html
Mary Baker Eddy Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
Mary Baker Eddy (July 16, 1821 – December 3, 1910) was the founder of Christian Science, a new religious movement, in the United States in the latter half of the 19th century. Eddy wrote the movement’s textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (first published 1875), and in 1879 founded the Church of Christ, Scientist. She also founded the Christian Science Publishing Society (1898), which continues to publish a number of periodicals, including The Christian Science Monitor (founded in 1908).
http://christianscience.com/read-online/science-and-health
J oseph Smith King Follett Discourse
The King Follett discourse, or King Follett sermon, was an address delivered in Nauvoo, Illinois by Joseph Smith, president and founder of the Latter Day Saint Movement, on April 7, 1844, less than three months before his death. The discourse was presented to a congregation of probably more than twenty thousand Latter-day Saints at a general conference held shortly after the funeral service of Elder King Follett, who had died on March 9, 1844, of accidental injuries. The sermon is notable for its claim that God was once a mortal man, and that mortal men and women can become a god (a concept commonly called divinization) through salvation and exaltation. These topics were, and are, controversial, and have received varying opinions and interpretations of what Smith meant. Literary critic Harold Bloom called the sermon “one of the truly remarkable sermons ever preached in America.”
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1971/04/the-king-follett-sermon?lang=eng
Horace Bushnell Christian Nurture
Horace Bushnell (April 14, 1802 – February 17, 1876) was an American Congregational minister and theologian.
https://books.google.com/books?id=C9TaShjLB5gC&pg=PA123&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false