Books
Conservative Revolutionaries: Transformation and Tradition in the Religious and Political Thought of Charles Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016; Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2018).
Boston Congregationalist ministers Charles Chauncy (1705–87) and Jonathan Mayhew (1720–66) were significant political as well as religious leaders in colonial and revolutionary New England. Scholars have often stressed their influence on major shifts in New England theology, from traditional Calvinism to Arminianism and, ultimately, to universalism and Unitarianism. They have also portrayed Mayhew as an influential preacher, whose works helped shape American revolutionary ideology, and Chauncy as an active leader of the patriot cause.
Through a deeply contextualized re-examination of the two ministers as “men of their times,” John S. Oakes offers a fresh, comparative interpretation of how their religious and political views changed and interacted over decades. The result is a thoroughly revised reading of Chauncy’s and Mayhew’s most innovative ideas. Conservative Revolutionaries also unearths strongly traditionalist elements in their belief systems, centering on their shared commitment to a dissenting worldview based on the ideals of their Protestant New England and British heritage. Oakes concludes with a provocative exploration of how the shifting theological and political positions of these two “conservative revolutionaries” may have helped redefine prevailing notions of human identity, capability, and destiny.
Reluctant Revolutionary: The Life and Legacy of Pastor Andrew Eliot (1718–1778) of Boston (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2025)
Andrew Eliot (1718–1778) was one of the most prominent Boston leaders in the second half of the eighteenth century. As minister of one of the city’s biggest churches, his was an important political, as well as religious voice into the earliest years of the American War for Independence. But Eliot has often been neglected or misunderstood.
In this first full biography, John S. Oakes draws on multiple sources to offer a fresh portrait of the Boston minister as:
• a moderate, but orthodox Calvinist, who maintained a consistent witness at a time of theological turmoil
• a prosperous family man, who helped the lay the foundations for future generations of Eliots
among the Boston “Brahmin”
• a “reluctant revolutionary,” whose devotion to Protestant British ideals prevented him from embracing the patriot cause in the War for Independence until hostilities were already under way.
• a dedicated pastor, who was one of very few ministers to choose to endure the hardships of Boston under British occupation
Articles
"John Wise Reconsidered"
Massachusetts minister John Wise (1652-1725) was a major contributor to early eighteenth-century debates about New England Congregationalist church polity and the key opponent of plans to introduce greater centralization in ecclesiastical structures.
According to Professor Jonathan Chu in his “Editorial,” my article, “Beyond the ‘Democrat’/’Conservative’ Dichotomy: John Wise Reconsidered,” New England Quarterly (September 2015), 88:3, 483–508, “recasts our understanding of John Wise through an intensive analytical exegesis drawn from a wide range of sources that compels us to reconsider his defense of the congregational polity.”
The full article is available in pdf. format here.
Other Articles
2023: Review of Gary L. Steward, Justifying Revolution: The American Clergy’s Argument for Political Resistance, 1750–1776 (New York: OUP, 2021), Journal of Church and State, 65:2 (Spring 2023), 285–287.
2017: “Congregationalism,” “Councils (Ecclesiastical),” “Foxcroft, Thomas” and “Mayhew, Jonathan,” in Kenneth Minkema, ed., A Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia (New Haven, CT & Grand Rapids, MI: Jonathan
Edwards Center at Yale University & William Eerdmans Publishing Company).
1997: “Transforming Conservatism: The Cultural Vision of F. D. Maurice,” Crux, 33:2 (June 1997), 18-26.
1996: Six articles in Donald M. Lewis, ed., The Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography: 1730–1860 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1996)
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