Jonathan Mayhew

Jonathan Mayhew in an etching by Giovanni Cipriani (London, 1767)

Jonathan Mayhew (born October 8, 1720 on Martha's Vineyard , † July 9, 1766 in Boston , Province of Massachusetts Bay ) was a leading exponent of early Christian Unitarianism in North America .

Life

Mayhew was born in 1720 on Martha's Vineyard Island in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, the fifth child of settler Thomas Mayhew. His father was active as a missionary among the Indians living on the island and the surrounding area . Jonathan Mayhew himself studied theology at Harvard University and was ordained pastor of the congregational Old West Church in Boston three years after graduating in 1747 .

Theologically, however, Mayhew (despite his Congregational origins) positioned himself against Calvinism and argued, for example, against the notion of total depravity of man. Instead, Mayhew took liberal and anti-Trinitarian positions, which made him an early proponent of North American Unitarianism. Mahew also combined his theology with political commitment and vehemently advocated civil liberties . For him, fighting against injustice was a Christian duty. The saying No taxation without representation is ascribed to him. In 1767, for example, he turned against the British Stamp Act and called for a union of the North American colonies early on. He himself was suspected of having contributed to the unrest against the Stamp Act, which he vehemently denied. His sermons and writings were printed in both Boston and London and had a strong influence on the nascent American independence movement. One of his best-known works was Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission , which appeared on the 100th anniversary of the execution of the former English king Charles I and in which he clearly takes a stand against the monarchy and clearly positions himself as a republican. In 1763, he sharply criticized the practice of still existing Anglican Mission Society Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (German Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to send out) British pastor to North America. In 1749 he received a doctorate in theology from the University of Aberdeen and in 1765 he was called to teach theology at Harvard University, but a year later, on July 9, 1766, Jonathan Mayhew died in Boston.

literature

• Howard Lubert: Jonathan Mayhew: Conservative Revolutionary. In: History of Political Thought. Vol. 32, No. 4, 2011, ISSN  0143-781X , pp. 589-616.
• Ulrich Rosenhagen: Jonathan Mayhews A Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers (1750). In: Ulrich Rosenhagen: fratricide, urge for freedom, world judge. Religious communication and public theology in the American revolutionary epoch (= work on church history. Vol. 123). De Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-030946-1 , pp. 225-262, (also: Heidelberg, University, dissertation, 2011/2012).

Web links

Commons : Jonathan Mayhew  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Jonathan Mayhew in nndb (English)
• Jonathan Mayhew's CV on bartleby.com