Cotton Mather and Harvard
Cotton Mather was one of the first American Evangelicals. He was a family man and known as an energetic do-gooder in colonial America. Mather was the long-time paster of the Second Church of Boston. Cotton Mather’s father, Increase Mather was the President of Harvard. Cotton Mather worked diligently with the college in hopes of filling his father’s shoes in the future. [1] In the 1690s the leaders of Harvard College wanted to attain university status. This led to the construction of new buildings and bringing a wider range of books and ideas into the college curriculum. Cotton Mather worked with Charles Morton to negotiate a way of cultural accommodation, personal holiness, and intellectual sophistication that was biblically authorized. This perspective is recognized today as being evangelical. [2] In the 1690s there were unique ideologies regarding the local population and the ideas of witchcraft. This ideology spread quickly against colonists and ultimately led to the Salem...