Ebenezer Devotion

Ebenezer Devotion (1707–1770) was a prominent Connecticut clergyman and theologian whose writings, including *The Civil Ruler*, significantly shaped colonial American Protestant thought on the relationship between ecclesiastical and civil authority. As a leading figure in the Great Awakening's aftermath, Devotion articulated influential arguments regarding ministerial authority and the proper bounds of secular governance that resonated throughout the eighteenth-century colonies. His theological contributions helped establish frameworks for understanding religious liberty and civil responsibility that would inform subsequent American political and ecclesiastical discourse.