Anthony Benezet (1713–1784) was an anti-slavery advocate and Quaker educator who taught free blacks in Philadelphia. As an ardent abolitionist, Benezet wrote and published anti-slavery pamphlets and encouraged his fellow Quakers to ban slavery from their community.
Increase Mather (1639–1723) was an influential Puritan minister and leader of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Mather was a traditionalist who clashed with more liberal members of the church. With his son, Cotton, Mather is also remembered for his part in the Salem witch trials. The Mathers served as advisors to the trial judges, pressuring them not to rely on “spectral evidence,” and in 1693 Increase published his Case of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men, justifying the Mathers’ role in the trials.
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James Ireland (1745–1806) was a Scottish-born Virginian who, after briefly working as a school teacher, became a well-known Baptist preacher. During the 1760s and 1770s, Ireland was among the Baptist leaders persecuted by Virginia officials, and he was imprisoned in 1769–1770 for preaching without a license.
Cotton Mather (1663–1728) was the Boston-born son of Increase Mather, a prominent Puritan minister. Cotton was an influential church leader in his own right, but he is most widely remembered for his role in the Salem witch trials. Although he cautioned the judges against relying on “spectral” evidence he did view New England as a battleground in the war against Satan and defended the trials and his participation in them in his 1693 book Wonders of the Invisible World.
John Winthrop (1558–1649), a lawyer, was one of the Puritan founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony and the colony’s first governor. Winthrop sailed to Massachusetts in 1630. As the Puritans prepared to create a community in the New World, Winthrop delivered his sermon on “A Modell of Christian Charity,” declaring that “we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” He served as governor several times throughout his twenty years in New England and his journals provide a...
Solomon Stoddard (1643–1729) was the grandfather of revivalist minister Jonathan Edwards and an influential pastor in his own right. Stoddard was ordained in 1672 and served the congregation of Northampton, Massachusetts, until his death. He worked to make the church more inclusive and liberalized the requirements for membership and Communion. In 1726, Stoddard was joined at Northampton by Jonathan Edwards, who was both influenced by and opposed to many of his grandfather’s views. Edwards took over the Northampton...
Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764) was a Presbyterian revivalist and son of the preacher William Tennent Sr. Gilbert immigrated to North America from Ireland with his parents in 1718. He was educated at his father’s Log College. Tennent experienced a religious conversion in 1723 and began a successful career as a popular revivalist preacher, serving primarily in New Jersey. Tennent toured the colonies with George Whitefield and, in 1740, issued his most famous sermon, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, a condemnation of anti-revival...
James Blair (1656–1743) was the Scottish Anglican clergyman who founded the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Blair left Scotland for North America after being removed from his parish for refusing to take an oath of support for the Catholic James II. In 1691, he traveled to England to lobby King William III and Queen Mary II for a charter to establish a religious college in the colonies. They granted the charter in 1693 along with an endowment for The College of William and Mary, which opened in 1695 with Blair as its...
James Davenport (1716–1757) was an itinerant preacher and divisive figure during the religious revivals of the eighteenth century. Davenport was drawn to revivalism after hearing George Whitefield speak. In 1742, Davenport was deported from Connecticut after creating unrest at Yale between students and the school and the townspeople and their church. In 1743, he returned to Connecticut to lead a “Bonfire of the Vanities,” burning anti-revival tracts in New London. In 1744, Davenport published Confessions and Retractions, an apology...
John “Swearing Jack” Waller (1741–1802) was an anti-Baptist lawyer who became a Baptist preacher. An Anglican, Waller spent his early career helping to prosecute Baptists in Virginia. In 1767, however, following a grand jury indictment of an unlicensed Baptist preacher named Lewis Craig, Waller was inspired by Craig’s religious conviction to give up his “wicked” ways and be baptized himself. In 1770, Waller was ordained as a Baptist pastor, and he soon became a widely known preacher, baptizing hundreds of converts before his death in 1802...