The lives of David Brainerd : the making of an American evangelical icon /

David Brainerd (1718-1747) lived a short, inspirational life, emerging from establishment origins in Connecticut through the tempest of the Great Awakening to a brief but personally transforming career as a missionary to the Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Thereafter, Brainerd's life became a malleable example for evangelical writers from Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley to Richard Hasler and Ranelda Hunsicker to render Brainerd as a Calvinist, an Armenian, a self-sacrificial missionary, and a Jesus person. Historian Grigg (Univ. of Nebraska-Omaha) now offers both a sound analysis of these posthumous protean and contradictory depictions and a convincing depiction of the real life of Brainerd in historical context. Caught in the maelstrom of the Great Awakening, Brainerd was expelled from Yale and subsequently employed by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, where his success at converting Delaware Indians became the source of his fame. Grigg's Brainerd embodies the persevering saint who came to view converted Lenape as siblings among God's redeemed, while unregenerate whites recalled for him the allegedly unconverted established clergy from his student days at Yale. Grigg's exemplary study permits a fuller understanding of the history of 18th-century evangelicalism and revivalism. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. E. R. Crowther Adams State College