“We also Glory in Our Sufferings:” David Brainerd and the Primacy of Suffering in Early Anglo ...

307 Pages·2016·1.54 MB·English

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Title
“We also Glory in Our Sufferings:” David Brainerd and the Primacy of Suffering in Early
Anglo-American Evangelicalism
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0dk1n0jj
Author
Nelson, Benjamin Ryan
Publication Date
2016

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles

“We also Glory in Our Sufferings:” David Brainerd and the Primacy of Suffering in Early
Anglo-American Evangelicalism

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
in History

By

Benjamin Ryan Nelson

2016
© Copyright by
Benjamin Ryan Nelson
2016
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
“We also Glory in Our Sufferings:” David Brainerd and the Primacy of Suffering in Early
Anglo-American Evangelicalism
by
Benjamin Ryan Nelson
Doctor of Philosophy in History
University of California, Los Angeles, 2016
Professor Craig Bryan Yirush, Chair
This dissertation assesses the significance of suffering in the formation of Anglo-
American Evangelicalism primarily through the life and legacy of David Brainerd. It is my
argument that an emphasis on suffering, specifically the suffering of the individual believer,
became a crucial component of Evangelicalism since it stood as the best practical display of the
religious activism demanded by Protestant theologies of grace. Scholars have increasingly
shown that the religious movement known as Evangelicalism formed in the confluence of
Protestant theology that occurred in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century, which
created in the movement both a peculiar diversity and cohesion. It is my contention that
evangelical beliefs about suffering and the necessity of suffering by the believer was one of the
most enduring and binding components of the movement. Suffering figured prominently in
almost every stage of the process of salvation, especially conversion and sanctification, and was,
in many ways, the most reliable sign of assurance evidencing the work of God’s grace while the
believer endured life on earth.
ii
David Brainerd’s life and relatively brief ministry and missionary activity roughly
coincided with the sporadic but widespread religious revivals of the early mid-eighteenth
century, which scholars widely agree mark the emergence of the modern evangelical movement.
More than an influential theologian or captivating minister, Brainerd was also a sickly man and
troubled soul who suffered through a mission to the Native Americans in the colonial frontier
wilderness of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Brainerd’s place in time, his path to
and work as a missionary, and the use of his printed works by later evangelical ministers, make
Brainerd a unique lens through which to study the prominence of suffering in evangelical
thought and practice from its seventeenth-century origins to its unprecedented diffusion in the
nineteenth century. The physical and psychic agony that Brainerd experienced throughout his
faith characterized the necessity of suffering and its purpose for generations of Evangelicals.

iii
The dissertation of Benjamin Ryan Nelson is approved.
Ruth H. Bloch
Karen E. Rowe
Craig Bryan Yirush, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles
2016
iv
DEDICATION
To my family, my own little ones, and the ones who have always been with me. You provided
the consistent support to see me through, and just the right amount of distraction to keep me
sane. I hope that the increase in my presence is enough to repay the time that you gave. Finally,
to Kendra, my most stalwart partner in everything. This is yours as much as it is mine. “If ever
two were one, then surely we.”

v
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………….…1
David Brainerd and “Costly Discipleship”

CHAPTER ONE……………………………………………………………………………..…27
Edification of the Saints: Suffering and the Puritan Exposition of Conversion

CHAPTER TWO……………………………………………………………………………….75
“Do the Work of Christ:” The Ministry of David Brainerd

CHAPTER THREE…………………………………………………………………………...139
“His love and meekness were not a mere pretence…but they were effectual things:”
Suffering and Jonathan Edwards’s Defense of Evangelical Revival

CHAPTER FOUR…………………………………………………………………………......188
“Representing and Recommending True Religion...Through Many Vicissitudes and Trials:”
Suffering and Evangelical Concepts of True Virtue

CHAPTER FIVE……………………………………………………………………………...227
Tempered to Perfection: Suffering and Holiness in Nineteenth Century Evangelicalism

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………..272
“Those storms and tempests are yet before you:” The Evangelical Embrace of Suffering

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………..…280
vi
VITA

Education
2004 B.A., Magna cum Laude in History
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, Ca

2008 M.A., History
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, Ca

Employment
2007-2009 Teaching Assistant
Department of History
University of California, Los Angeles

2009-Present Social Studies Instructor and Chair
Harmony Magnet Academy
Strathmore, Ca

2015- Present Adjunct Professor of History
Porterville College
Porterville, Ca

vii
INTRODUCTION
David Brainerd and “Costly Discipleship”

…whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it
Matthew 16:25

“Tis good for me to be afflicted:” David Brainerd’s Quest for Holiness1
Throughout the course of his brief life and ministry, David Brainerd staunchly adhered to
his belief that “it was worth the while to follow God through a thousand snares, deserts, and
death itself” if only to know he was “committing [his] cause to God.”2 As assessed primarily
through the life, work, and legacy of colonial American missionary David Brainerd (1718-1747),
this dissertation establishes the centrality of suffering in the development of Anglo-American
evangelical thought and practice. Brainerd lived a life informed by physical and spiritual
suffering, and by any measure, past or present, he “was not a healthy man.”3 For most of his life,
Brainerd struggled greatly from what his biographer, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), described
as “melancholy” and “despondency,” which Edwards worked hard to obscure and modern
admirers believed, at first, “repelled” any interest in Brainerd.4 His mental suffering was only
compounded by a life-long battle with tuberculosis, which robbed him of his life at the young
age of twenty-nine. Regardless of Brainerd’s problems with melancholia, self-loathing, and

1 David Brainerd in Jonathan Edwards, The Life of David Brainerd, ed. Norman Pettit, The Works of Jonathan
Edwards, Vol. 7 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 211.

2Ibid, 210-211.

3 David L. Weddle, “The Melancholy Saint: Jonathan Edwards’s Interpretation of David Brainerd as a Model of
Evangelical Spirituality,” The Harvard Theological Review 81 (July, 1988), 318.

4 See Jonathan Edwards, The Life of David Brainerd, ed. Norman Pettit, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 7
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 89-98; Richard Ellsworth Day, Flagellant on Horseback: The Life
Story of David Brainerd (Philadelphia: The Judson Press, 1950), 14-17.
1