First published edition of what has been described as "one of the most remarkable testimonies of eighteenth-century piety ever compiled".
In recent decades scholars have rediscovered a handwritten source of historical documentation from the eighteenth-century transatlantic religious movement known as "The Great Awakening". The McCulloch Examinations manuscripts contain more than a hundred first-person conversion narratives from the Cambuslang Revival of 1742 that have never before been published in their entirety. Collected and compiled by Reverend William McCulloch in what was Scotland's first oral history project, these personal accounts open a unique window into the early modern Scottish soul and shed new light upon an important chapter of British and American history.
In this first complete, unabridged and fully annotated edition of the Examinations, the editor offers an introduction and analysis of these fascinating narratives, and provides supplementary resources that will illuminate the text for the reader. In addition to preserving the narrative accounts in their original frame, the edition includes the proposed redactions and marginal comments of four prominent Church of Scotland clergy who assisted McCulloch with the project.
Keith Edward Beebe is Professor of Church History in the Department of Theology at Whitworth University, Spokane, Washington, and an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, USA.