Edwards Between Cities: Learning in the Crossfire of Institutional Politics

It's a peculiar way to get an education: spending your university years as a political pawn.

But that's exactly what happened to Jonathan Edwards. When he enrolled at Yale College in October 1716, he thought he was settling in for a traditional collegiate experience in New Haven. Instead, he found himself shuttled back and forth between competing campuses, caught in a power struggle that would define the early character of American higher education.

Yale College had been founded in 1701, but by Edwards' time, it was still a school without a settled home. The first two decades of its existence were marked by ongoing battles over where the institution should permanently establish itself. When most trustees finally agreed on New Haven as the location, the Hartford trustees immediately rebelled. Rather than submit, they began creating their own rival school in Wethersfield under the direction of Elisha Williams.

Edwards arrived in New Haven in October 1716, a promising young scholar ready to dive into his studies. But within a few weeks, he found himself packing up and moving to Wethersfield. He remained there until late November 1718, when the students were finally called back to New Haven. But the peace didn't last. By early January 1719, the students were on the move again, this time fleeing back to Wethersfield in protest against their tutor, Samuel Johnson.

As one Edwards scholar put it, "Edwards and his classmates were then shuttled back and forth as pawns in a political chess game."

The Anatomy of Academic Warfare

What was really happening here? On the surface, this was a dispute about location and leadership. But underneath, it was about something deeper: competing visions of what a college should be and who should control it.

The Hartford trustees weren't just being difficult. They represented a different understanding of institutional authority and educational philosophy. When they established their alternative school in Wethersfield, they were making a statement about local control, theological emphasis, and the proper relationship between church and academy.

For the students, including Edwards, this meant that their education became inseparable from institutional politics. They couldn't simply focus on their studies; they had to navigate the competing claims of rival authorities. Their very presence on one campus or another was a political statement, whether they intended it or not.

Think about what this must have meant for a serious student like Edwards. Just as he was forming his intellectual habits, engaging with his first substantial theological and philosophical texts, building relationships with mentors—all of this was happening against the backdrop of institutional chaos. His education wasn't taking place in the proverbial ivory tower. It was happening in the crossfire.

Learning in the Mess

But here's what's remarkable: this chaotic educational experience may have been exactly what Edwards needed.

Instead of receiving a single, settled perspective on authority and truth, he was forced to think critically about competing claims from the very beginning of his intellectual formation. He couldn't simply defer to "the way things are done" because there wasn't one agreed-upon way. He had to evaluate arguments, assess leaders, and make judgments about which authorities deserved his loyalty.

The constant movement between campuses also meant that Edwards encountered a wider range of teachers and fellow students than he might have in a more stable environment. Rather than being shaped by a single institutional culture, he was exposed to the tensions and debates that were forming the character of American collegiate education.

When Edwards finally returned to New Haven permanently—after the removal of Samuel Johnson as tutor and the appointment of Rev. Timothy Cutler as rector—he wasn't just settling into a school. He was choosing a side in an ongoing debate about the future of higher education in America.

Authority, Community, and the Shape of Learning

This early experience would prove formative for Edwards in ways that extended far beyond his college years. Throughout his later career, he would demonstrate a remarkable ability to think independently within institutional contexts, to challenge authorities when necessary while maintaining respect for legitimate leadership.

Look at his later conflicts in Northampton, where he challenged his congregation's understanding of church membership and communion practices. Or consider his careful navigation of the theological controversies of his time, where he often found himself defending positions that put him at odds with both liberal and conservative camps.

Perhaps those early years of being "shuttled back and forth as pawns in a political chess game" taught him something crucial about the relationship between institutional loyalty and intellectual integrity. Maybe they showed him that sometimes the most important learning happens not in spite of chaos, but because of it.

The Risks of Settled Comfort

There's something to be said for institutional stability. Students need predictable structures, reliable authorities, and settled communities of learning. But Edwards' experience suggests that there might also be unexpected gifts in seasons of institutional uncertainty.

When everything is up for grabs, students can't simply coast on inherited assumptions. They have to think. They have to choose. They have to develop their own criteria for evaluating competing claims and authorities.

In our own educational contexts—whether in universities, bible colleges, or churches—we often prize stability above all else. We want clear leadership, settled policies, predictable outcomes. And those things matter. But Edwards' story reminds us that some of the most important learning happens in the spaces between competing authorities, in the moments when students have to decide for themselves what they believe and why.

Here in Melbourne, I'm reminded of this tension every time I meet someone considering theological education. We have two prominent Anglican theological colleges—Trinity College and Ridley College—and prospective students often find themselves having to choose between them based on their alignment with different Anglican traditions. But here's the catch: how can someone make an informed choice about Anglo-Catholic versus evangelical emphases when they haven't yet had the depth of study that these very institutions are meant to provide?

It's a version of Edwards' dilemma. Students are asked to choose sides in theological debates they don't yet fully understand, to align themselves with traditions they're only beginning to explore. They're forced into a kind of institutional chess game before they've learned the rules of the game itself.

Edwards the Student, Edwards the Teacher

By the time Edwards completed his education and began his own teaching and pastoral career, he had learned something that many of his contemporaries missed: institutions are human constructs, and human constructs are fallible. Authority matters, but it's not absolute. Tradition is valuable, but it's not unchangeable.

This didn't make him a revolutionary or a rebel. If anything, it made him more thoughtful about when to submit and when to resist, when to preserve and when to reform. He understood, from personal experience, that the health of institutions often depends on their willingness to be challenged by those within them.

When we read Edwards today—his careful theological arguments, his pastoral wisdom, his ability to hold tradition and innovation in creative tension—we're seeing the fruit of an education that began in chaos. We're seeing what can happen when a brilliant young mind is forced to think for itself from the very beginning.

Letters for Today

Most of us will never be shuttled between rival university campuses. But we will face our own moments of institutional uncertainty, our own competing authorities, our own political chess games.

In those moments, Edwards' experience offers both warning and encouragement. The warning is that we cannot simply drift with the currents of institutional politics without engaging our minds and consciences. The encouragement is that seasons of instability, while uncomfortable, can also be seasons of formation—times when we develop the intellectual muscles we'll need for a lifetime of faithful thinking.

I think about my own theological education, undertaken during the height of the young, restless, and reformed movement. I had relative stability—clear authorities, settled convictions, confident voices. It built a certain kind of confidence, an articulation of gospel convictions that affirmed particular ideas about contextualisation and masculinity. The louder voices prevailed, and mine was often among them.

With hindsight, I can see that these voices—my own included—were often emanating from places of prideful certainty. It was as if the mystery and contemplation of weighty theological and practical realities had been plastered over by loudspeakers and billboards full of market differentiators that obscured the lived experiences of anyone not like us. I'm not sure it was right. I'm not confident it was godly.

Perhaps I needed to feel the weight of uncertainty that Edwards endured at Yale. Perhaps that restless movement between competing authorities, that discomfort of having to choose without the luxury of settled assumptions, might have taught me something that all my confident certainty could not.

The young Edwards who moved restlessly between New Haven and Wethersfield was learning more than Latin and logic. He was learning how to navigate the gap between human authority and divine truth, how to think independently within community contexts, how to be both loyal and critical.

That kind of education—messy, uncertain, demanding—might be exactly what we need.

And perhaps exactly what our institutions need too.

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Kelley, Brooks Mather. Yale; a History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974. pp. 21–31
Warch, Richard. School of the Prophets: Yale College, 1701-1740. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973. pp. 72–95