David Brainerd and the Nineteenth Century Missionary Movement

Despite a tragically short life marked by illness, personal loss, and repeated disappointment, the Connecticut evangelical minister David Brainerd became a revered figure among early 19th-century evangelical missionaries. Thanks to Jonathan Edwards\u27s extremely popular and highly romanticized \u27Life of Brainerd\u27 (1748), Brainerd\u27s meager missionary achievements took on heroic proportions. Missionary groups looking for a new role model found inspiration in Brainerd\u27s work among Eastern Indian tribes and discovered the revivalist-pietist impact of the First Great Awakening. An outgrowth of Brainerd\u27s popular appeal was the emphasis Edwards placed on disinterested benevolence and regeneration. Although disinterested benevolence fired missionary zeal, it could not overcome ethnocentrism and selfish attention to personal conversion. In Edwards\u27s hands, Brainerd\u27s life resembled a Puritan devotional work, and it provided a model for 19th-century missionary memoirs