DAVENPORT, JAMES
(1716, Stamford, CT-I0 November 1757, near Pennington, New Jersey). Education: B.A., Yale College, 1732; studied theology in New Haven, CT, 1732-35. Career: Minister, Southold, NY, 1738-44; minister, several churches in NJ, 1744-57.
William B. Sprague called him, "the celebrated James Davenport, of fanatical memory." Davenport is rightly known as the most radical of the Congregational ministers of the Great Awakening era. He actually anticipated the Awakening, preaching revivalistic sermons in his Southold, Long Island, church in 1739 before the revival swept New England. His extravagance was apparent at that time when he preached a twenty-four-hour sermon to his congregation. He is said to have needed several days of rest after this exercise, and one hopes his parishioners were given the same consideration.
Davenport then began preaching as an itinerant in various parts of New England. He argued that a personal spiritual experience is the essence of all religion and that only ministers who have had such experiences are qualified to preach. Moreover, he claimed that he had the insight to determine just who had received this saving grace-and who had not. He told his audiences he would rather that they drank poison than that they listened to the preaching of an unconverted minister. Often he made these statements after having "invaded" the parish of a minister who had not agreed to let him speak.
Anne Hutchinson* had been equally self-assured a century before, and like Hutchinson, Davenport discovered that ministers disliked the claim that they were unconverted. George Whitefield* had said that he knew no one who "kept so close a walk with God" as Davenport. But many ministers reckoned he walked closer to the devil. With clerical support in 1742, Connecticut passed an Act for Regulating Abuses and Correcting Disorders in Ecclesiastical Affairs. The act outlawed the kind of free-lance itinerant preaching Davenport and others had been practicing. Davenport was tried by courts in Connecticut and
Massachusetts and found insane, but he managed to avoid confinement, and in 1743 in the most famous act of his ministry, he presided over a great bonfIre in New Haven, into which he and his followers threw ornaments, clothes, and books.
While others concluded that they had seen too much of Davenport, his parishioners in Southold complained that they had seen too little of their wandering parson and voted to censure him. Whether from exhaustion or enlightenment, Davenport recanted his behavior in 1744 and published Confessions and Retractions. He lived the remainder of his life in obscurity, with a series of appointments to parishes in the Puritan hinterland of New Jersey.
In retrospect Davenport seems an eccentric, a "loose cannon" in Congregational history. But it is better to think of him as a man who carried to an extreme a belief that was common among early Congregationalists-that the essence of religion is heartfelt communion with God.
Bibliography
A: A Song of Praise for Joy in the Holy Ghost (Boston, 1742); The Reverend Mr. James Davenport's Confessions and Retractions (Boston, 1744).
B: AAP 3, 80-92; DAB 5, 84-85; DARB, 121-22.
William B. Sprague called him, "the celebrated James Davenport, of fanatical memory." Davenport is rightly known as the most radical of the Congregational ministers of the Great Awakening era. He actually anticipated the Awakening, preaching revivalistic sermons in his Southold, Long Island, church in 1739 before the revival swept New England. His extravagance was apparent at that time when he preached a twenty-four-hour sermon to his congregation. He is said to have needed several days of rest after this exercise, and one hopes his parishioners were given the same consideration.
Davenport then began preaching as an itinerant in various parts of New England. He argued that a personal spiritual experience is the essence of all religion and that only ministers who have had such experiences are qualified to preach. Moreover, he claimed that he had the insight to determine just who had received this saving grace-and who had not. He told his audiences he would rather that they drank poison than that they listened to the preaching of an unconverted minister. Often he made these statements after having "invaded" the parish of a minister who had not agreed to let him speak.
Anne Hutchinson* had been equally self-assured a century before, and like Hutchinson, Davenport discovered that ministers disliked the claim that they were unconverted. George Whitefield* had said that he knew no one who "kept so close a walk with God" as Davenport. But many ministers reckoned he walked closer to the devil. With clerical support in 1742, Connecticut passed an Act for Regulating Abuses and Correcting Disorders in Ecclesiastical Affairs. The act outlawed the kind of free-lance itinerant preaching Davenport and others had been practicing. Davenport was tried by courts in Connecticut and
Massachusetts and found insane, but he managed to avoid confinement, and in 1743 in the most famous act of his ministry, he presided over a great bonfIre in New Haven, into which he and his followers threw ornaments, clothes, and books.
While others concluded that they had seen too much of Davenport, his parishioners in Southold complained that they had seen too little of their wandering parson and voted to censure him. Whether from exhaustion or enlightenment, Davenport recanted his behavior in 1744 and published Confessions and Retractions. He lived the remainder of his life in obscurity, with a series of appointments to parishes in the Puritan hinterland of New Jersey.
In retrospect Davenport seems an eccentric, a "loose cannon" in Congregational history. But it is better to think of him as a man who carried to an extreme a belief that was common among early Congregationalists-that the essence of religion is heartfelt communion with God.
Bibliography
A: A Song of Praise for Joy in the Holy Ghost (Boston, 1742); The Reverend Mr. James Davenport's Confessions and Retractions (Boston, 1744).
B: AAP 3, 80-92; DAB 5, 84-85; DARB, 121-22.
