“We’ve suddenly discovered thousands of ministers and church leaders around the world who are very interested in him.”

Jonathan Edwards has gone global.

The maverick philosopher-theologian, who went on from Yale to become one of the nation’s leading religious thinkers, is in the midst of an international resurgence in popularity — more than 250 years after his death.

“The number of dissertations on Edwards doubles every decade. Outside the U.S., it triples,” says Kenneth Minkema, executive director of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University. “It’s clear; there’s this hunger for serious, thought-provoking religious reflection out there that isn’t pop psychology.”

Minkema will give a presentation on “Jonathan Edwards in New Haven” at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the New Haven Museum and Historical Society, 114 Whitney Ave.

So what’s the fuss all about?

Minkema says part of it has to do with Edwards’ unique place in history. He combined both the strict, Calvinistic beliefs of his Puritan forebears with a cutting-edge knowledge of physics, history, psychology and other disciplines.

“He used the sciences to say that behind all created matter, there is a force of energy created by God. It’s this force that holds atoms together,” Minkema says. “Edwards says God willed creation into existence moment by moment.”

The Jonathan Edwards Center recently made more than 100,000 pages of Edwards material available online.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed.]