John Cennick

This study examines the life and inner spiritual world of John Cennick, who lived from 1718 to 1755. Robert Edmund Cotter argues that the inconsistencies and intricacies of early evangelical life deserve fresh attention rather than simplification. The account follows Cennick's path into the eighteenth-century revivals, including his preaching in Ireland and his association with Count Zinzendorf.

The author builds the account on a large body of previously unpublished letters exchanged between Cennick and Zinzendorf, along with Cennick's one-of-a-kind diary of his first extended stay at the Moravian communities of Marienborn, Herrnhaag and Lindheim. These sources show how Moravian and Methodist influences pulled against and shaped one another in his work. Cennick emerges as a strong-willed, unconventional figure who stood at the heart of several of the period's major disputes.

Because Cennick's rise to prominence was both intense and mixed in its sources, it also serves as a lens on wider questions: the varied inspirations behind the revivals, the religious zeal cultivated within Anglican societies, the growing number of people able to preach, the social upheavals that followed from new religious ideas, and the distinctive role of the Moravians in the 1740s and 1750s.

Offering a substantial reassessment of Cennick's spirituality, the book is aimed at researchers working in evangelical and church history.