Jonathan Dickinson and the Formative Years of American Presbyterianism

Bryan F. LeBeau, chair of the Department of History and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at Creighton University, is the author of Frederic Henry Hedge: Nineteenth-Century American Transcendentalist.

One of the founders of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and its first president, Dickinson was a central figure during the First Great Awakening and one of the leading lights of colonial religious life. In this first-ever biography of the man, Bryan Le Beau examines Dickinson's writings and actions, showing him to have been a driving force in forming the American Presbyterian Church. Dickinson accommodated diverse traditions in the early church and grappled with the classic dilemma of American religious history - the simultaneous longing for freedom of conscience and the need for order - as he addressed concerns central to the early American religious experience, including denominationalism and religious liberty. This account of Dickinson's life and writings provides a rare window into a time of intense turmoil and creativity in American religious history.