Joseph McKeen

Joseph McKeen (1735–1807) was a prominent New England Congregationalist minister and founding principal of Bowdoin College, whose theological writings reflected the moderate Calvinist orthodoxy of late eighteenth-century American Protestantism. His Election Sermon exemplifies the genre's role in articulating connections between religious covenant and civic responsibility during the early republic. McKeen's intellectual legacy shaped both institutional religious education and the broader discourse on faith's relationship to democratic governance in post-Revolutionary America.