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Frontier Faith: The Stockbridge Indians and Jonathan Edwards

Frontier Faith: The Stockbridge Indians and Jonathan Edwards

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SKU:
9798886862577
Publisher:
Reformation Heritage Books
Format:
Paperback
Pages:
254
Available:
November 3, 2026
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On a cold January day in 1751, Jonathan Edwards—powdered wig, black robe, Geneva bands—stepped into the pulpit of a wooden mission church on the Massachusetts frontier. Before him sat several dozen Indians in breechcloths, leggings, and moccasins. He began to preach.

For generations, history has treated this moment as an exile: Edwards, dismissed from the most prominent pulpit in New England, retreating to the wilderness to write philosophical treatises while largely ignoring the people he was sent to serve. The typical portrait of the Stockbridge Indians is hardly better: silent extras in Edwards’s drama, spiritually cowed by their colonial neighbors.

Both accounts are wrong.

Drawing on long-neglected sources, Brandon Crawford tells a richer story. Far from a disengaged exile, Edwards poured himself into the spiritual lives of a people navigating rivalries between English Puritans, Dutch merchants, French Jesuits, Mohicans, Mohawks, and others on the volatile colonial frontier. And the Indians were no silent extras. They embraced, adapted, and shaped the Christian faith in ways that were at once evangelical and distinctly their own. What emerges is a portrait of a pastor and a people who, against all odds, were earnest in their commitments to the gospel, the mission, and each other.

Endorsements

“An important work...erudite and judicious...written with a sense of verve that engages the reader.”
—David Luke

“A compelling and eye-opening history.”
—Ryan Martin

“A major contribution to Edwards studies, church history, and missiology.”
—Joel R. Beeke

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Beyond the Pale

  1. River Indians, River Gods, and the Founding of a Frontier Mission
  2. To Die in Disappointment: John Sergeant in Stockbridge
  3. “I Am Come to Preach”: Jonathan Edwards in Stockbridge
  4. Dark Clouds (1751–1754)
  5. Great Frowns of Providence (1755–1758)

Conclusion: Making Their Hopes Prevail
Appendix: What Became of the Stockbridge
Indians and Jonathan Edwards?
Bibliography

Dr. Joel R. Beeke

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With warmest regards in Christ,

Dr. Joel R. Beeke

Founder and Chairman, Reformation Heritage Books