Gilbert Tennent was a pietistic Protestant evangelist in colonial America. Born in a Presbyterian Scots-Irish family in County Armagh, Ireland, he migrated to America as a teenager, trained for pastoral ministry, and became one of the leaders of the Great Awakening of religious feeling in Colonial America, along with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. His most famous sermon, "On the Danger of an Unconverted Ministry," compared contemporary anti-revivalistic ministers to the biblical Pharisees described of the Gospels, resulting in a division of the colonial Presbyterian Church which lasted 17 years. While engaging divisively via pamphlets early in this period, Tennent would later work "feverishly" for reunion of the various synods involved.
Biography
Early life
Gilbert Tennent was born in a Presbyterian Scots-Irish family in County Armagh, Ireland, and raised in there, where he was home schooled by his father, William Tennent. In 1718 the family emigrated to Philadelphia. His father founded the Log College nearby, which trained many Presbyterian ministers; Gilbert was an assistant there, around 1725.
Role as an emissary
The frontier of Pennsylvania was unsettled in the 1760s, and in the aftermath of the French and Indian War, new Scots-Irish immigrants encroached on Native American land, later claiming Indian raids and killings; Reverend John Elder, a parson from Paxtang, known as the "Fighting Parson," helped organize the Scots-Irish frontiersmen into a mounted militia and was named Captain of the group, known as the "Pextony boys," later the "Paxton Boys." This settler band, acting as vigilantes, attacked the local Conestoga, a Susquehannock tribe living many of whom had converted to Christianity, and were living peacefully alongside their European neighbors since the 1690s, on land donated by William Penn. Because of a snowstorm, most of the Conestogas were out of their camp; those in camp were scalped or otherwise mutilated by the Paxton Boys, and most of the camp was burned down. After further such incidents, the Paxton Boys marched on Philadelphia in early 1764 to express grievance that their concerns for safety were not being met by the government, and while doing so further threatened the lives of about 200 Moravian Indians. In February 1764, Gilbert Tennent was one of a group of clergymen sent as an emissary by John Penn, Governor of Pennsylvania, to the marching frontiersmen.
