Uh, he's author of the book, reviving New England, the key to revitalizing post -Christian America available

Reviving New England, the Key to Revitalizing Post -Christian America, which is the first book by our

In fact, obviously, reviving New England is sort of your book. Reviving New England is a lot to do with what we're going to discuss today, I'm assuming. But one of the things that has always one of the things that has always amazed me is how New England went from being a central hub in the United States or should I say America, because this began before we were these United States.

A book at the moment titled Reviving New England, is that what made you think about New England? Your love for the people, your love of God�s glory here, what it used to be like, what it could be like?

First in New England, then throughout America, the values, ethics, and worldview of Puritanism, which sometime in its growth can be called Evangelicalism, was the dominant cultural force. The skeptical, deistic flavor of the European Enlightenment was overwhelmed in America by the 1620 Project.

Look New England is a derivative of Puritan culture in many ways sort of a secularized Puritan culture and Most people think that this is the centerpiece of American history. And it's a wonderful part of American history in many ways.

The history of Puritan New England shows that their faith gave them a special resilience against the eroding power of the wider world. At the close of the century, New England was still an essentially Puritan society, although the state was ultimately out of Puritan hands, at least in Massachusetts, and the culture was beginning to be shaped by Anglicized, Atlantic -oriented merchants, Puritanism remained strong.

The more immediate mission to the indigenous people of New England had not only the goal of bringing the gospel and civilization to them, but the long -range target of demonstrating God's blessing upon the Puritan experiment.

There was still a vibrant Puritan heartland in New England. First, the restoration, and then Andros provoked a renewal of New England Puritanism by renewing its oppositional mentality. As threats to their religious principles mounted from outside, Puritans, like those of Boston's Third Church, as well as the Mathers, took the lead in defending traditional Puritan ways.

Are we talking about the revival? Well, both of those movements have significantly impacted our country as well as England, Scotland, Wales and others but and they've impacted us in in really beneficial ways which I think if we can get to the heart of the movement so we're not just interested in what happened that you know in the year 1662 or you know what did George Whitfield do when he preached, what were his methods but if we get kind of beneath that initial layer to talk about the heart of Puritanism and the heart of the evangelical revival or the Great Awakening which is what we call it in our country, I think then that there are so many significant lessons for us and one of the lessons that we're going to be looking at is the fact that Puritanism is not just a group that you know it's not a movement that was merely interested in being really really really precise and then you get this kind of impression that that's a bit of a dry academic armchair kind of you know theologian kind of thing but actually the Puritans were very activistic they wanted to bring the doctrines that they were learning from the Reformation and apply it in their day in a way that would revolutionize or revitalize or reform the the British Church and so that that has a lot to say to us today.

By providing poor Englishmen with opportunities to better themselves through working hard in their vocations, the new colony could glorify God by serving their neighbor. The founders of Massachusetts Bay saw all of this as a peace, fleeing to America as an opportunity to escape Archbishop Laud's liturgical tyranny and thus setting up pure churches which, through the beauty of holiness, would attract the Native Americans to the gospel, discipline all members, White and Red, in true Christian living, inspiring all to work hard in vocations which would produce prosperity for most, shared with all, which would produce a society so attractive to England and the rest of Europe that the nations would stream to Zion.

There wouldn't be a United States of America if it were not for Protestant Christianity. And so we're gonna talk about different traditions and denominations, what did the Puritans and the Congregationalists bring to the table?

You had the Puritans flourishing in this area and other very solid, biblically faithful heirs of the Protestant Reformation. And the Northeast is now known as a theologically barren place. Of course, there are faithful churches still there, but many of the very same churches that were pastored by Puritans, even the one pastored by Jonathan Edwards himself, they have become apostate.

It's the idea that Christianity is part of our national identity that from the founding of the United States of America we were a Christian nation and that Maybe we're not right now, but we should be and Christian nationalists if they even exist.

Sure. The Great Awakening in 1842 probably had its most indelible impact in New England, and even down into the Southern Continent—. Wow. —as a separatist. He and his brother— —century here in America.

When we talk about true revival in the church, we probably don't immediately think of the Puritans. But the Puritans do have a great deal to offer us in this area. Their understanding of the way that God works in human history laid the foundation for a biblical theology of revival that lasted two centuries.

So a full -orbed Christianity. And many historians feel that that's why the evangelical revival was so successful was because, you remember, we talked about deism and all those things. The church's response tended to be kind of really brainy and left the heart unaffected.

At the same time, they assumed the government, especially on the state and local level, would have a role to play in preserving public morals and encouraging religion generally. The famous New England revivalist of the early 19th century, Lyman Beecher, at first lamented the disestablishment of Connecticut's Congregational Church in 1818, but as he mastered the voluntary society, he saw the great possibilities for, quote, influence.

The civil religion was a factory of American civil religion, America's redemptive identity, messianic America. That's where so much of it came from. But I think we can find it. You're right, that there's an element of this in the second Great Awakening.

It is an amazing resource. By the way, that really long paragraph I read, that was the title and the subtitle. So if you want to know about a genuine revival or an extraordinary season of grace that occurred when an early American minister, John Eliot, was preaching to the Indians before David Brainerd, before other missionaries that we know better, not just that he was a Reformed man as a missionary to the Indians in America, but he experienced some extraordinary success.