Philadelphia was also known as a Kingdom of Christ. Philadelphia thinkers were faithful Christians, believed in God and worked hard to deal with the social evils in Philadelphia. They thought religion was compatible with the enlightened rationality and argued “an enlightened science of nature was possible only when grounded in things known by faith: the existence of a deity both transcendent and immanent; the fall of human nature and the efficacy of Christ’s atonement; the reality of a particular and general providence, and the wondrous possibilities of a world transformed by grace.” Rather than measure everything merely based on rationality, Philadelphians believed the Christianity played a very important role in their studies on nature. In the Philadelphia circles, the enlightenment and the Christianity were compatible with each other, which greatly shaped the characteristics of Philadelphia thinkers.
As one member of this circle, Benjamin Rush was a typical Enlightened Christian. In Reid-Maroney’s view, Rush represented “the most articulate and complete expression of those modes of thought which we have identified to this point as the foundation of Philadelphia’s Christian Enlightenment.” In his early life, Rush was greatly influenced by the New Side, first at the Arch Street Church of Gilbert Tennent, then in the Nottingham Academy run by his uncle Samuel Finley, and at the College of New Jersey under Samuel Davies and John Redman. When Rush went abroad, he persisted his engagement with New Side culture. He not only visited the home of George Whitefield in London, but persuaded the Scottish divine John Witherspoon to accept the presidency of the College of New Jersey. In Reid-Maroney’s opinion, “the New Side tendency to regard medicine and divinity as callings with a common and sacred purpose in the imitation of Christ shaped his emerging sense of professional identity.” For Rush, he doubtlessly believed that his search for the practice of enlightened medicine was aided by grace.
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