Jonathan Edwards

Born in East Windsor, Connecticut, in 1703, he entered Yale at a remarkably young age and grew into one of colonial America’s best-known theologians and philosophers. He served for many years in Northampton, Massachusetts, where his preaching became closely linked with the revivals of the Great Awakening.

He is still widely remembered for sermons such as Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, but his work was broader than that single title suggests. He wrote extensively about revival, religious experience, freedom of the will, and the beauty and sovereignty of God, combining intellectual rigor with vivid, urgent language.

Later in life he served in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and in 1758 was chosen to lead the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. He died that same year, but his influence on American Protestant thought, evangelical history, and religious philosophy has remained unusually strong.