From Encyclopædia Britannica Article

'Edwards' influence on the intellectual character of American Protestantism for a century after his death was very pronounced, and he was widely read in the British Isles. In a general revolt against Puritanism and Calvinism after the U.S. Civil War (1861–65), Edwards' prestige declined, and he was remembered mainly as a hell-fire preacher or as an abstruse, absent-minded metaphysician. In the 1930s and after, he was rediscovered by theologians reacting against liberalism and by secular scholars seeking to delineate the “American mind.” Edwards' ability to combine religious intensity with intellectual rigour and moral earnestness, the cosmic sweep of his theological vision, his emphasis on faith as an “existential” response to reality, his insistence that love is the heart of religion, and his uncompromising stand against all forms of idolatry are some of the reasons his life and writings are again being seriously studied.'

Thomas A. Schafer

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Article on Edwards, which is in the public domain, can be accessed here