Joseph Bellamy

Joseph Bellamy (20 February 1719 - 6 March 1790) was an American Congregationalist pastor and a leading preacher, author, educator and theologian in New England in the second half of the 18th century.

Born in Cheshire, Connecticut as the son of Matthew Bellamy and his wife Sarah Wood, he graduated from Yale in 1735 and studied theology for a time under Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts. He was licensed to preach when scarcely eighteen years old, and from 1740 until his death was pastor of the Congregational church at Bethlehem, Connecticut.

Of his 22 books, the best known was True Religion Delineated (1750), which won for him a high reputation as a theologian and was reprinted several times both in England and America. Despite the fact that with the exception of the period of the Great Awakening, when he preached as an itinerant in several neighboring colonies, his active labors were confined to his own parish, his influence on the religious thought of his time in America was probably surpassed only by that of his old friend and teacher Jonathan Edwards.

This influence was due not only to his publications, but also to the school or classes for the training of clergymen which he conducted for many years at his home and from which went forth scores of preachers to every part of New England and the middle colonies.

In Western Connecticut, Old Light Congregationalism was more popular than New Light, and Bellamy faced opposition from many of his fellow ministers in the area. One minister, Gideon Hawley, wrote to Bellamy in 1763, asserting, "I don't know of but two clergymen however in the country that appear to like your principles."

Bellamy's system of divinity was in general similar to that of Edwards. During the American War of Independence he was loyal to the American cause. The University of Aberdeen conferred upon him the honorary degree of D.D. in 1768. He was a powerful and dramatic preacher.

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