Jonathan Mayhew

Jonathan Mayhew (born Oct. 8, 1720, Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. [U.S.]—died July 9, 1766, Boston) was a vigorous Boston preacher whose outspoken political and religious liberalism made him one of the most controversial men in colonial New England.

The Mayhew family had arrived in the American colonies in 1631. After a boyhood on Martha’s Vineyard, young Mayhew attended Harvard College (1740–44). In 1747 he was ordained pastor of Boston’s West Church, where he remained—outspoken, controversial, and at odds with most of the local clergy—until his death. His sermons were printed in New England and in London. He carried on a lively correspondence with several British clergymen and became, to the English, one of the best-known Americans.

In theology Mayhew was an Arminian—he saw divine will in terms of the power of love rather than of unmitigated force. Rejecting both Calvinistic dogmatism and Anglican authoritarianism, he preached a “true primitive religion” of strong belief in individual responsibility and private judgment. He believed that resistance to tyranny was a Christian duty, and he was an outspoken defender of civil liberties. When the British imposed the Stamp Act on the colonists early in 1765, he opposed it so zealously that he was accused of inciting the Stamp Act riots of that August, but he denied the charges and continued his vigorous opposition to the act.