A Divine Light: The Spiritual Leadership of Jonathan Edwards (Leaders in Action Series)

Hardback, 236 pages

Subtitle: The Spiritual Leadership of Jonathan Edwards

About the Title: Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) was one of the leading religious thinkers of the colonial era. Educated at Yale, he became the senior pastor of the Congregational Church in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1724 at the age of twenty-one. As pastor of the most influential church in New England at the time, his powerful preaching helped launch the revival of 1734-35 and spearheaded the more extensive Great Awakening of 1740-41. When the awakening came under attack due to various excesses and slanders, he became the leading apologist for experiential religion. His articulate defense of the revival, A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections, is now considered a masterpiece of religious psychology. While faithfully laboring at his pastoral duties, Edwards also wrote The Life of David Brainerd and An Humble Attempt, both of which displayed his passion for missions and evangelism.

Edwards spent the last years of his life as a missionary to the Indians on the western frontier. While he lived in relative seclusion at the time, he wrote Freedom of the Will and Original Sin, both of which earned him recognition as America's greatest theologian and philosopher. His writings on theology, metaphysics, ethics, and psychology are still studied today. "Jonathan Edwards," Princeton theologian Benjamin Warfield once said, "stands out as the one figure of real greatness in the intellectual life of colonial America."

Among the plethora of books on leadership today, the Leaders in Action series is dedicated to the notion that leadership is more "caught than taught." Each volume not only tells the story of a great leader, but also highlights the ideas, traits, and circumstances that contributed to their role as leaders. With a balance of theory and story, the Leaders in Action series is designed to inspire a new generation to world-class leadership.