essay on the great awakening

The Great Awakening

Written by: thomas kidd, baylor university, by the end of this section, you will:.

• Explain how and why the different goals and interests of European leaders and colonists affected how they viewed themselves and their relationship with Britain

Suggested Sequencing

Before reading this Narrative, students should be familiar with the role of religion and challenges to religious authority in the New England colonies ( Anne Hutchinson and Religious Dissent and The Salem Witch Trials Narratives). This Narrative should be followed by the What Was the Great Awakening? Point-Counterpoint.

During a cool October 1740 morning in Kensington, Connecticut, Nathan Cole was hard at work in his field, as he had been since sunrise. Suddenly his labor was interrupted by a passing messenger’s shouts: at 10 o’clock the evangelist George Whitefield was going to preach in nearby Middletown. Nathan immediately dropped his tools in the field, ran to fetch his wife, and saddled his horse. He and his wife joined a throng of others hurrying along the roads to Middletown, afraid they would arrive too late to hear the famous preacher.

After receiving his degree from Oxford University, Whitefield had begun a life of itinerant preaching and evangelism. Rather than expounding on the intricacies of Christian doctrine, he appealed to the emotions of his listeners at home in England, and now, still only twenty-five years old, he had brought his new style to the American colonies. For weeks, Nathan Cole had heard reports that Whitefield’s preaching tour of the colonies was drawing huge crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. Many people in the audience experienced the “new birth” of evangelical conversion. Watching the celebrated preacher begin, Cole began to tremble. “My hearing him preach,” he wrote in his diary, “gave me a heart wound.”

Compare the two images of George Whitefield: (a) a 1774 portrait by engraver Elisha Gallaudet and (b) a 1763 British political cartoon entitled “Dr. Squintum’s Exaltation or the Reformation.” Dr. Squintum was a nickname for Whitefield, who was cross-eyed. What details can you find each in image that indicate the artists’ respective views of the preacher?

Whitefield’s message was simple: It was not enough to be baptized or go to church. Each individual must be converted by the Holy Spirit of God through a personal, wrenching examination of his or her own corruption and sinfulness. The youthful, twenty-five-year-old English minister held the crowd at Middletown spellbound with his masterful, emotional pleas that each person receive God’s gift of salvation and be “born again.” Countless listeners, including Nathan Cole, were converted.

Whitefield was not America’s first revival preacher. Just a few years earlier, Jonathan Edwards, a minister in Northampton, Massachusetts, had led a series of awakenings too. Possibly the greatest theologian the colonies had ever produced, Edwards was a master of rhetoric who preached on human sinfulness and the need for divine grace. Most famously, he delivered a 1741 sermon titled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God . Under Edwards’ preaching, a town-wide revival broke out in Northampton from 1734 to 1735. In London, Edwards published a compelling account of this revival, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God . As George Whitefield, England’s John Wesley, and other evangelical ministers read Edwards’ narrative, they realized they were part of a series of religious revivals that began in the colonies and spanned the Atlantic. They were in the middle of what historians came to call “The Great Awakening.”

This image shows the frontispiece of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, A Sermon Preached at Enfield, July 8, 1741 ,by Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was an evangelical preacher who led a Protestant revival in New England. This was his most famous sermon, the text of which was reprinted often and distributed widely.

Over the course of his seven preaching tours of the colonies, Whitefield reached 75 to 80 percent of the population, sometimes addressing crowds that approached thirty thousand listeners. His revivals were controversial. Local ministers resented Whitefield and other traveling preachers coming to their towns uninvited. When revivalists drew massive crowds and preached in public, local ministers and churches worried the preachers were undermining their spiritual authority. Worse, some evangelical preachers, such as New Jersey’s Gilbert Tennent, dared to suggest that many of the established church’s pastors were not converted. Tennent charged that some pastors were Christians only in name, because they had not yet experienced the “new birth.” He called true believers to leave the lukewarm established congregations and join new, “pure” churches.

In addition to challenging religious authorities, the revivals could also challenge social conventions. Following their conviction that all believers were equal before God, some evangelicals allowed women to “exhort,” or preach informally, during meetings. In Ipswich, Massachusetts, a gathering of evangelicals in 1742 was amazed when a “spirit of prophecy” filled a female convert named Lucy Smith. Smith preached the Gospel to this assembly for over two hours. White evangelicals even ordained converted African Americans and American Indians to preach or be missionaries, although typically only to their own communities. Some evangelicals began to argue that, in light of the Gospel’s implications, slave owning was sinful. These egalitarian impulses were unprecedented in colonial society and challenged racial and social hierarchies, especially in the South.

Evangelical teaching also challenged barriers based on social class. Uneducated, poor whites with no theological training often felt a strong calling to preach. Their sermons were frequently highly charged, even frenzied, displays of emotion and, according to some critics, resulted in indecent and immoral behavior. However, the messages of these radical preachers resonated with those lower on the social ladder. Common people and American Indians loved the emotional, radical preaching of James Davenport, a college-educated preacher in New England. In 1743, in New London, Connecticut, Davenport and his followers built a bonfire and instructed the audience to throw their religious books into it. Davenport then turned his eye to their fancy clothing (“cambric caps, red-heeled sho[e]s, fans, necklaces, gloves”), all of which deserved to be burned. Davenport led by example, pulling off his own pants and throwing them on the fire. But this action went too far for some audience members. A woman snatched his clothes off the flames and threw them in his face, and his audience rebuked him.

Many critics thought the emotional appeal of the “New Light” evangelical ministers was foolish and led to social chaos. The New Light ministers rejected the rationalism of the Enlightenment and appealed to the passions of the audience members rather than their reason, which resulted in emotional reaction and immediate conversion. The main source of opposition was conservative pastors of the established churches, particularly Anglicans and Congregationalists. These “Old Light” ministers insisted upon sober and rational sermons and religious practices and rejected the passionate New Light theology and style of the evangelical preachers. The Old Light ministers successfully banned the New Light ministers from preaching in several churches and towns.

By the late 1740s, the New England revivals had cooled, but the Great Awakening’s effects were widespread and long-lasting as the fervor continued to spread to the southern colonies in the ensuing decades. The revivals had weakened the hold of the established churches in colonial America, and large numbers of Christians joined new evangelical churches like those of the Baptists or Methodists.

The Great Awakening also contributed to colonial religious liberty by changing the balance of religious power. During the American Revolution and the struggle for individual liberty, Baptists used their new numbers and influence to challenge religious establishments, first in Virginia and then throughout the new nation. Many evangelicals called for an end to government-supported denominations, which received tax money and lands called “glebes” to support ministers and churches. After the Revolution, opposition to established churches helped inspire the First Amendment’s prohibition of the “establishment of religion” and its guarantee of “free exercise” of religion. The founders believed that freedom of conscience was an inalienable right of all individuals. The religious landscape of the new nation was never the same.

The Great Awakening helped prepare the colonies for the American Revolution. Its ethos strengthened the appeal of the ideals of liberty, and its ministers and the members of the new evangelical faiths strongly supported the Revolution. The drive for religious liberty against a tyrannical religious authority fed into the movement for civil liberty against the unjust political authority of the British in the 1770s. Likewise, the evangelical teaching that each individual believer was equal before God made it easier for people to accept the radical implications of democracy and to question authority. Thus, the same movement that sent Nathan Cole sprinting out of his field that October morning helped set the stage for American independence. The Great Awakening was the most significant religious and cultural upheaval in colonial American history, and helped forge U.S. civil and religious liberties emerging in the mid-eighteenth century.

Review Questions

1. Many historians believe the Great Awakening helped set the stage for the American Revolution. Which of these ideas best supports that argument?

• Evangelical teaching during the Great Awakening proposed that each individual believer was equal before God, which made it easier to accept the radical implications of democracy.
• Many Great Awakening preachers were political radicals.
• Churches under the Great Awakening were much more democratic than earlier churches had been.
• Great Awakening theology argued that only those who were among God’s “elect” would go to Heaven when they died.

2. How did local ministers feel about George Whitefield and other traveling preachers coming to their towns uninvited?

• They welcomed these popular preachers, who brought more people into their church.
• They worried that revivalists undermined their spiritual authority.
• They appreciated the chance to study the techniques of the traveling preachers.
• They were indifferent to the Great Awakening preachers.

3. Which of these was not a way in which the ministry of the Great Awakening challenged social conventions?

• Following their conviction that all believers were equal before God, some evangelicals allowed women to “exhort,” or preach informally during meetings.
• White evangelicals ordained converted African Americans and American Indians to preach or be missionaries
• Some evangelicals began to argue that, in light of the Gospel’s implications, enslaving people was sinful.
• Sometimes children were allowed to preach from the pulpit.

4. Who were the “Old Lights”?

• People who read books from the Enlightenment and did not attend church or meeting on Sundays
• Jewish residents of Newport, Rhode Island
• Elderly people admired for their knowledge of the Bible and scripture
• Ministers and their parishioners who insisted upon sober and rational religious practices and rejected the style of the evangelical preachers

5. Who were the “New Lights”?

• Critics who thought the emotional appeal of the evangelical ministers was foolish and led to social chaos
• Followers of Great Awakening evangelical preachers whose sermons were notable for their emotion and dramatic appeal
• People interested in Enlightenment interpretations of the Bible
• Enlightenment preachers who wanted to introduce their parishioners to concepts such as deism

6. It has been argued that the Great Awakening contributed to a decline in the importance of established religion during the second part of the eighteenth century, because

• people were alienated by the anti-intellectual quality of the sermons they had to listen to
• many ministers simply quit the profession and denounced any form of Christianity
• the revivals had weakened the hold of established churches in colonial America
• many Americans converted to Judaism or Islam

7. George Whitefield was immensely popular as a preacher in the colonies because

• he explained the intricacies of Christian doctrine with great precision and erudition
• he preached to small groups so he could get to know his audience
• he appealed to the emotions of his listeners, many of whom experienced the “new birth” of evangelical conversion
• he made his listeners feel good about themselves and reassured them that they would be admitted to Heaven

8. How did the Great Awakening affect laws in those states that supported an official religion through taxation?

• Members of the “new” religions resented being assessed for a church they did not attend, so they called for an end to the practice.
• The Great Awakening had little effect because members of these new religions took little interest in money, which they regarded as the invention of the Devil
• Members of new churches began demanding that they also be supported in proportion to their population in the colony.
• Baptists were able to get support, but Presbyterians were regarded as too radical and out of the mainstream.

Free Response Questions

• Explain how the Evangelical teaching of the Great Awakening challenged barriers based on social class.
• Explain how the Great Awakening laid some of the groundwork for the American Revolution.
• Explain the connections between the Great Awakening and the first clause of the First Amendment.

AP Practice Questions

“When I saw Mr. Whitefield come upon the Scaffold he looked almost angelical, a young, slim slender youth before some thousands of people with a bold undaunted countenance, and my hearing how God was with him every where as he came along it solumnized my mind, and put me into a trembling fear before he began to preach; for he looked as if he was Cloathed with authority from the Great God, and a sweet solemn solemnity sat upon his brow. And my hearing him preach gave me a heart wound; by Gods blessing my old foundation was broken up, and I saw that my righteousness would not save me; then I was convinced of the doctrine of Election and went right to quarrelling with God about it, because all that I could do would not save me; and he had decreed from Eternity who should be saved and who not.”

Nathan Cole in Connecticut, 1740

1. Which conclusion would a historian not draw from the excerpt provided?

• That Nathan Cole took only a slight interest in hearing George Whitefield
• That Nathan Cole took a tremendous interest in hearing George Whitfield
• That Nathan Cole was a farmer
• That Nathan Cole likely identified as an “New Light”

2. Based on the excerpt provided, how could a historian describe Whitfield’s appeal to his audience?

• Whitefield could not project his voice unaided to thousands of people.
• Whitefield looked a bit sloppy, but his audience overlooked that.
• Whitefield’s effect was almost overpowering.
• Whitefield was not a Calvinist preacher.

Primary Sources

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”: http://greatawakeningdocumentary.com/items/show/35

Suggested Resources

Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 . Chapel Hill: University Press of North Carolina, 1999.

Kidd, Thomas S. George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.

Kidd, Thomas S. The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents . Boston: Bedford, 2007.

Kidd, Thomas S. The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

Marsden, George M. A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards . Michigan: Eerdmans, 2008.

Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

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Great Awakening

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 6, 2024 | Original: March 7, 2018

The Great Awakening was a religious revival that impacted the English colonies in America during the 1730s and 1740s. The movement came at a time when the idea of secular rationalism was being emphasized, and passion for religion had grown stale. Christian leaders often traveled from town to town, preaching about the gospel, emphasizing salvation from sins and promoting enthusiasm for Christianity. The result was a renewed dedication toward religion. Many historians believe the Great Awakening had a lasting impact on various Christian denominations and American culture at large.

First Great Awakening

In the 1700s, a European philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment , or the Age of Reason, was making its way across the Atlantic Ocean to the American colonies . Enlightenment thinkers emphasized a scientific and logical view of the world, while downplaying religion.

In many ways, religion was becoming more formal and less personal during this time, which led to lower church attendance. Christians were feeling complacent with their methods of worship, and some were disillusioned with how wealth and rationalism were dominating culture. Many began to crave a return to religious piety.

Around this time, the 13 colonies were religiously divided. Most of New England belonged to congregational churches.

The Middle colonies were made up of Quakers , Anglicans, Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, the Dutch Reformed and Congregational followers.

Southern colonies were mostly members of the Anglican Church , but there were also many Baptists, Presbyterians and Quakers.

The stage was set for a renewal of faith, and in the late 1720s, a revival began to take root as preachers altered their messages and reemphasized concepts of Calvinism. (Calvinism is a theology that was introduced by John Calvin in the 16th century that stressed the importance of scripture, faith, predestination and the grace of God.)

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Jonathan Edwards

Most historians consider Jonathan Edwards, a Northampton Anglican minister, one of the chief fathers of the Great Awakening.

Edwards’ message centered on the idea that humans were sinners, God was an angry judge and individuals needed to ask for forgiveness. He also preached justification by faith alone.

In 1741, Edwards gave an infamous and emotional sermon, entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” News of the message spread quickly throughout the colonies.

Edwards was known for his passion and energy. He generally preached in his home parish, unlike other revival preachers who traveled throughout the colonies.

Edwards is credited for inspiring hundreds of conversions, which he documented in a book, “Narratives of Surprising Conversions.”

George Whitefield

George Whitefield, a minister from Britain, had a significant impact during the Great Awakening. Whitefield toured the colonies up and down the Atlantic coast, preaching his message. In one year, Whitefield covered 5,000 miles in America and preached more than 350 times.

His style was charismatic, theatrical and expressive. Whitefield would often shout the word of God and tremble during his sermons. People gathered by the thousands to hear him speak.

Whitefield preached to common people, slaves and Native Americans . No one was out of reach. Even Benjamin Franklin , a religious skeptic, was captivated by Whitefield’s sermons, and the two became friends.

Whitefield’s success convinced English colonists to join local churches and reenergized a once-waning Christian faith.

Other Leaders

Several other pastors and Christian leaders led the charge during the Great Awakening, including David Brainard, Samuel Davies, Theodore Frelinghuysen, Gilbert Tennent and others.

Although these leaders’ backgrounds differed, their messages served the same purpose: to awaken the Christian faith and return to a religion that was relevant to the people of the day.

Basic Themes of the Great Awakening

The Great Awakening brought various philosophies, ideas and doctrines to the forefront of Christian faith.

Some of the major themes included:

• All people are born sinners
• Sin without salvation will send a person to hell
• All people can be saved if they confess their sins to God, seek forgiveness and accept God’s grace
• All people can have a direct and emotional connection with God
• Religion shouldn’t be formal and institutionalized, but rather casual and personal

Old Lights vs. New Lights

Not everyone embraced the ideas of the Great Awakening. One of the leading voices of opposition was Charles Chauncy, a minister in Boston. Chauncy was especially critical of Whitefield’s preaching and instead supported a more traditional, formal style of religion.

By about 1742, debate over the Great Awakening had split the New England clergy and many colonists into two groups.

Preachers and followers who adopted the new ideas brought forth by the Great Awakening became known as “new lights.” Those who embraced the old-fashioned, traditional church ways were called “old lights.”

Second Great Awakening

The Great Awakening came to an end sometime during the 1740s.

In the 1790s, another religious revival, which became known as the Second Great Awakening, began in New England. This movement is typically regarded as less emotionally charged than the First Great Awakening. It led to the founding of several colleges, seminaries and mission societies.

A Third Great Awakening was said to span from the late 1850s to the early 20th century. Some scholars, however, disagree that this movement was ever a significant event.

Effects of the Great Awakening

The Great Awakening notably altered the religious climate in the American colonies. Ordinary people were encouraged to make a personal connection with God, instead of relying on a minister.

Newer denominations, such as Methodists and Baptists, grew quickly. While the movement unified the colonies and boosted church growth, experts say it also caused division among those who supported it and those who rejected it.

Many historians claim that the Great Awakening influenced the Revolutionary War by encouraging the notions of nationalism and individual rights.

The revival also led to the establishment of several renowned educational institutions, including Princeton, Rutgers, Brown and Dartmouth universities.

The Great Awakening unquestionably had a significant impact on Christianity . It reinvigorated religion in America at a time when it was steadily declining and introduced ideas that would penetrate into American culture for many years to come.

The Great Awakening, UShistory.org . The First Great Awakening, National Humanities Center . The Great Awakening Timeline, Christianity.com . The Great Awakening, Khan Academy .

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Course: US history   >   Unit 2

• Society and religion in the New England colonies
• Politics and native relations in the New England colonies
• Puritan New England: Plymouth
• Puritan New England: Massachusetts Bay
• The Middle colonies
• Lesson summary: New England and Middle colonies
• The Navigation Acts
• The Enlightenment

The Great Awakening

• The consumer revolution
• Developing an American colonial identity
• Colonial North America

• The Great Awakening was an outburst of Protestant Revivalism in the eighteenth century.
• The beliefs of the New Lights of the First Great Awakening competed with the more conservative religion of the first colonists, who were known as Old Lights.
• The religious fervor in Great Britain and her North American colonies bound the eighteenth-century British Atlantic together in a shared, common experience.

The First Great Awakening

Jonathan edwards and george whitefield, what do you think, want to join the conversation.

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What was the Great Awakening? Key Figures and Events

The event that has become known as the Great Awakening actually began years earlier in the 1720s. And, although the most significant years were from 1740-1742, the revival continued until the 1760s.

Many of the early Puritans and pilgrims arrived in America with a fervent faith and vision for establishing a godly nation. Within a century the ardor had cooled. The children of the original immigrants were more concerned with increasing wealth and comfortable living than furthering the Kingdom of God. The same spiritual malaise could be found throughout the American colonies. The philosophical rationalism of the Enlightenment was spreading its influence among the educated classes; others were preoccupied with the things of this world.

When Theodore Frelinghuysen , a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, came to begin his pastoral world in New Jersey during the 1720's, he was shocked by the deadness of the churches in America. He preached the need for conversion, a profound, life-changing commitment to Christ, not simply perfunctory participation in religious duties. Presbyterian Gilbert Tennent was heavily influenced by Frelinghuysen and brought revival to his denomination. Tennent believed the deadness of the churches was in part due to so many pastors having never been converted themselves. His book On the Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry caused quite a stir!

Origins of the Great Awakening 

Many of the early colonists had come to the new world to enjoy religious freedom, but as the land became tamed and prosperous they no longer relied on God for their daily bread. Wealth brought complacency toward God. As a result, church membership dropped. Wishing to make it easier to increase church attendance, the religious leaders had instituted the Halfway Covenant , which allowed membership without a public testimony of conversion. The churches were now attended largely by people who lacked a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Sadly, many of the ministers themselves did not know Christ and therefore could not lead their flocks to the true Shepherd. Then, suddenly, the Spirit of God awoke as though from an intense slumber and began to touch the population of the colonies. People from all walks of life, from poor farmers to rich merchants, began experiencing renewal and rebirth.

The faith and prayers of the righteous leaders were the foundation of the Great Awakening. Before a meeting, George Whitefield would spend hours--and sometimes all night--bathing an event in prayers. Fervent church members kept the fires of revival going through their genuine petitions for God's intervention in the lives of their communities.

The early rays of the Great Awakening began with Theodore Frelinghuysen of the Dutch Reformed Church in New Jersey. Through his ministry, the hearts of his church members were changed. It was the young people who responded first and experienced the regeneration of becoming new creations. They, in turn, spread the message to their elders. Thus began the first spark of the Great Awakening.

In 1727, about the time that Frelinghuysen and Tennent were seeing a revival in New Jersey, Jonathan Edwards went to Northampton, Massachusetts to become assistant minister to his grandfather Solomon Stoddard. Stoddard had ministered at Northampton almost sixty years and during that time had seen five periods of revivals or "harvests," as he called them. Stoddard recognized that a church goes through periods of spiritual refreshing and depression: There are some special Seasons wherein God doth in a remarkable Manner revive Religion among his People. God doth not always carry on his work in the church in the same proportion...there be times wherein there is a plentiful Effusion of the Spirit of God, and Religion is in a more flourishing Condition.

Jonathan Edwards, Father of the Great Awakening

Pictured Above: Portrait of Jonathan Edwards

The preacher's monotone voice filled the church in Northampton, Massachusetts. As the brilliant Jonathan Edwards spoke, he kept his eyes focused on the back wall of the church. Gently, Edwards' words began to sink into the hearts of the assembly, and although his method of speaking lacked enthusiasm, his words were powerful. Revival followed.

During the 1730s, the church in Northampton felt the stirring of the Holy Spirit, moving them from their lukewarm apathy to an awakening of their souls. Delivering his most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," on July 8, 1741, in Enfield, Connecticut, Edwards helped spread the revival. A great commotion swept over the people and they began wailing, crying, and screeching loudly. Frequently Edwards asked the congregation to control themselves so he might finish his sermon. As a result of his preaching and the work of the Spirit, lives began to change and complete towns were transformed.

The most prominent theologian of the Great Awakening was Jonathan Edwards. Not a powerful speaker, Edwards still managed to spread the revival. From his brilliant mind, he constructed one of the most impressive sermons ever preached. He also wrote many books and pamphlets describing the events he saw in his own church. The only son in a family of eleven children, Edwards was born on October 10, 1703. At the young age of thirteen, he entered Yale (not unusual during that era of history) and graduated in 1723. Four years later Jonathan married the remarkable and virtuous Sarah Pierpont. Faithfully Sarah helped Edwards in his ministry and personal endeavors. In 1727, Edwards became the assistant minister at the Northampton church. When his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, died, Jonathan became the minister and served in that church for nearly twenty-four years. He spoke boldly against the Halfway Covenant. Since many of the members who promoted the Halfway Covenant were merchants (or river gods, as Edwards called them), they were able to make most of the decisions for the community, thus giving them the power over the rest of the populace. Edwards did much to help alleviate the tyrannical practices that followed.

In the 1730's, when Jonathan Edwards became the minister at Northampton, he found only spiritual deadness in the church. He was concerned about the immorality of the young people and began visiting them in their homes. In 1734 he preached a series of sermons on justification by faith alone. "By December," wrote Edwards, "the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in. Revival grew, and souls did as it were come by floods to Christ." Over a six month period, Edwards recorded three hundred conversions. He wrote a book, Narratives of Surprising Conversions, describing the revival and its effects on the life of the town.

The Far-Reaching Revival 

In his Treatise Concerning Religious Affections , Edwards emphasized that true religion must affect the heart. In The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, Edwards taught from I John 4 what the evidence of a true revival and work of the Spirit would be. The individual would be confirmed in the truth of the gospel, that Jesus was the Son of God and the Savior of people (vs. 2-3). The convert would avoid sin and worldly lust (vs. 4-5). He would have a greater regard for the Holy Scriptures, accepting their truth and divine origins (v. 6). Finally, his life would evidence a love to God and his fellow man (vs. 6ff.) Edwards' printed works describing and analyzing the revival in Northampton were read throughout the American colonies and Britain. They stimulated ministers on both sides of the Atlantic to begin praying and looking for a revival.

Great Awakening Crowds - the people came  "en mass"

George Whitefield , an Anglican evangelist and friend of John and Charles Wesley, not only traveled throughout Britain bringing the gospel of Christ, but he also made seven trips to America between 1738 and 1770. He was probably the most well-traveled man in the colonies and drew large crowds wherever he spoke. A widespread revival was most clearly seen during his second journey (1739-1741). As he toured the colonies, he would daily preach to large crowds in the open air; the crowds were too large for the churches.

Pictured Below: A Portrait of George Whitefield

Ben Frankin and George Whitefield

Benjamin Franklin was fascinated with Whitefield's speaking ability and the effects his teaching had on the people. Though Franklin never openly became a Christian himself, he did become a friend of Whitefield's and his publisher in America. He was impressed with the change Whitefield's gospel preaching brought on society. Franklin wrote that It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.

While Edwards was the most prominent theologian of the time, by far the most influential and famous evangelist of the Great Awakening was George Whitefield. He was born in England and educated at Oxford, where he met and became friends with John and Charles Wesley. During his spare time at college, he visited the poor and those in prison. On June 20, 1736, at the age of twenty-two, he became an ordained minister. God blessed him with an amazing ministry, and wherever he spoke revival accompanied him. At the Wesley brothers' request, he joined them in Georgia to continue his ministry. After a few months, he returned to England and again reached thousands through his preaching. He became well-known in both the Colonies and Great Britain. His preaching spread revival and a new birth to the hearts of those who listened.

Unfortunately, many ministers became jealous of his God-given ability. In Bristol, the churches refused to allow him the use of their buildings. Undeterred, Whitefield preached outside On more than on occasion he addressed 30,000 people. He spoke persuasively with a loud, commanding, and pleasant voice. With weighty emotion and dramatic power Whitefield presented the gospel message to the masses, spreading the light of Christ with vigor and enthusiasm. He also united the independent movements of the Great Awaking and bound the separate colonies into a unit. Breaking through denominational boundaries he once said, "Father Abraham, who have you in heaven? Any Episcopalians? No! Any Presbyterians? No! Any Independents or Methodist? No, no, no! Whom have you there, then Father Abraham? We don't know those names here! All who are here are Christians--believers in Christ, men who have overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of his testimony. Oh, is that the case? Then God help me, God help us all, to forget having names and to become Christians in deed and in truth!" During his life, he made seven tours of the colonies and preached 18,000 sermons! There was hardly a portion of the colonies that did not feel his influence and love.

Old Lights vs. New Lights

Not everyone welcomed the beliefs of the Great Awakening. One of the principal opinions of the opponents was Charles Chauncy, a minister in Boston. Chauncy was especially critical of Whitefield’s preaching and instead supported a more traditional, formal style of religion.

By about 1742, a debate over the Great Awakening had divided the New England ministry and many colonists into two factions.

Preachers and followers who embraced the new ideas brought forth by the Great Awakening became distinguished as “new lights.” Those who affirmed the old-fashioned, traditional church ways were designated “old lights.”

Effects and Results of the Great Awakening

The Great Awakening in America in the 1730s and 1740s had tremendous results. The number of people in the church multiplied, and the lives of the converted manifested true Christian piety. Denominational barriers broke down as Christians of all persuasions worked together in the cause of the gospel. There was a renewed concern with missions, and work among the Indians increased. As more young men prepared for service as Christian ministers, a concern for higher education grew. Princeton, Rutgers, Brown, and Dartmouth universities were all established as a direct result of the Great Awakening. Some have even seen a connection between the Great Awakening and the American Revolution --Christians enjoying spiritual liberty in Christ would come to crave political liberty. The Great Awakening not only revived the American church but reinvigorated American society as well.

The significant working of God during the Great Awakening was far-reaching. Truly converted members now filled the pews. In New England, during the time from 1740 to 1742, memberships increased from 25,000 to 50,000. Hundreds of new churches were formed to accommodate the growth in church-goers. For the first time, the individual colonies had a commonality with the other colonies. They were joined under the banner of Christ. Clearly, their unity gave them strength to face the impending danger of war with England. Not only did the Great Awakening unite the colonies religiously but also politically. After being freed from inner sin, the colonists also sought freedom from external tyrants. The motto of the Revolutionary War was, "No King but King Jesus!"

Excerpts provided form  Amy Puetz: The Great Awakening

Article Photo Credit: WikimediaCommons

Great Awakening, History.com

First Great Awakening, Wikipedia.org

The Great Awakening, Khanacademy.org

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The Great Awakening in America, also known as Evangelist Revival, had tremendous social and political results in the 30s and 40s. Read a summary including facts, causes, affects, and influential leaders.

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History Resources

The Great Awakening

By the gilder lehrman institute, historical background.

The most important religious development in colonial America was the introduction of religious revivals known as the Great Awakening. Religious revivals first appeared in England, Scotland, and Germany, and ultimately spread to the colonies. The fervor of these revivals represented a reaction against the formality of Congregational churches. A leading figure in the Great Awakening was the clergyman Jonathan Edwards, who attempted to reconcile Calvinism and the Enlightenment.

Significance

The Great Awakening in the colonies, unlike in Europe, crossed class lines. This is significant in the development of a common American identity. At the same time, the Great Awakening produced a splintering of American Protestantism.

Essential Question

Did the Great Awakening contribute to the colonists’ desire to declare their independence from England? Explain.

Learning Objectives

• Students will be able to explain, in writing, what is meant by the Great Awakening.
• Students will be able to contrast the "ways to salvation" among the followers of predestination (Puritans) and the revivalists.
• Students will be able to define "licentiousness," "lewd," "frolicking," and "Arminianism."
• After reading "Great Awakening: The Christian History," students will be able to relate the reading to the issues that gave rise to the Great Awakening.
• Students will write a paragraph explaining the beliefs of the Great Awakening.
• Students will interpret Jonathan Edwards’s speech "A Faithfull Narrative of the Surprising Work of God."

Ask students to write what they think is meant by "freedom of religion" as found in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Ask students to determine if there is any mention of religion in the body of the Constitution.

• Distribute to each student a copy of Notes on the Great Awakening (pdf) . As the teacher calls on students to explain each bullet point, students take notes.
• Distribute  The Christian History (pdf)
• Review the meaning of "licentiousness," "lewd," and "frolicking."
• Break students into groups of two. Working together, the team revises spelling and grammar to reflect modern English.
• Students describe what is meant by "Dullness of Religion."
• Students describe what the article states regarding the behavior of the youth in paragraph 3.
• Students describe why and how the behavior of the youth changed.
• Have students define "Arminianism."
• Have students interpret each paragraph and conduct a discussion.
• Distribute  A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (pdf) .

Students write an essay answering the essential question: Did the Great Awakening contribute to the colonists’ desire to declare their independence from England? Explain.

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"An Appraisal of the Great Awakening"

Author : King, Martin Luther, Jr. (Crozer Theological Seminary)

Date : November 17, 1950 ?

Location : Chester, Pa. ?

Genre : Essay

Topic : Martin Luther King, Jr. - Education

King wrote this essay for American Christianity (Colonial Period) taught by Raymond J. Bean at Crozer Theological Seminary. 1  Bean lectured on the development of Christianity in the United States from the arrival of the Spanish missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century through the origins of religious liberalism in the early nineteenth century. King was given three options for his term paper topic: the relationship between Catholics and Protestants in the colonies, the relationship between Baptists and the rise of democracy in America, and the Great Awakening in colonial America. His paper on the Great Awakening contains a detailed description of the lives of the ministers who led the movement and the various revivals that occurred between 1720 and 1775. King provides little analysis of either the social and political origins or the consequences of the Great Awakening and no discussion of its role in the development of African-American Christianity. He places great emphasis on the deep religious emotion involved in the revivals and the power of their evangelical preaching. Bean gave King an A for both the paper and the course.

The great spiritual revival of religion in the eighteenth century is usually termed the Great Awakening of 1740, because its chief intensity, in this country, culminated about that time. However it would be a mistake to confine this momentous movement to that year. It commenced more than a decade before that date and continued with power more than a decade after it. It would be well nigh impossible to set forth every single cause of this great religious revival, since social phenomena are usually tied up with a complexity of causes. But some of the causes are quite apparent. Probably the first factor that lead to colonial revivalism was the failure of organized religion to reach the masses. For years organized religion in the American colonies had been a matter of the few. During the early colonial period there were undoubtedly more unchurched people in America, in proportion to the population, than was to be found in any other country in Christendom.\[Footnote:] See Sweet, The Story of Religion in America, p. 5.\ Even in State Churches, as in New England and the Southern colonies, only a comparatively small proportion of the total population were members of the church. It was this situation which necessitated the development of new techniques to win people to the church, and this new method was revivalism. The Great Awakening was the first serious attempt to bring religion to the masses in the American Colonies.

The gradual decline of emotional fervor was also a factor which led to the Great Awakening. Religion had become unemotional, with a type of preaching unconducive to revivals and conversion. It was this situation which led to the necessity for the Half-Way Covenant. 2  More and more individuals came to feel that there were certain “means” which might be used in putting the soul in a position to receive the regenerating influence of the Spirit of God. Reliance on these “means” rather than the miraculous power of God led to a cold and unemotional religion.\[Footnote:] Ibid, p. 65\ 3  No wonder Jonathan Edwards came on the scene emphasizing justification by faith and the sovereignty of God. From the moment of his landing in America Theodore Frelinghuysen had noticed this lack of emotional fervor in religion, and he spent most of his time  preah  {preach}ing against the formality and dead orthodozy that had permeated the Dutch churches in America. Such was the general religious situation when the new and highly emotional reaction set in which we know as the Great Awakening.

A third factor which led to colonial revivalism was the awareness on the part of religious leaders of a breakdown in moral standards. During the latter years of the seventeenth century and the early years of the eighteenth century New England ministers on every hand were raising their voices against the immoral tendencies then existing. In 1688 Willian Stoughton stood before the Massachusetts legislature and said, “O what a sad metamorphasis hath of later years passed upon us in these churches and plantations! Alas! How is New England in danger to be buried in its own ruins.” Increase Mather observed ten years later that “clear, sound conversions are not frequent. Many of the rising generation are profane Drunkards, Swearers, Licentious and Scoffers at the power of Godliness.” 4

A survey of the subjects of sermons preached at this period also reveals the low state of religious life at that time. In 1700 Samuel Willard preached on “The Perils of the Times Displayed.” In 1711 Stephen Buchingham preached from the theme, “The Unreasonableness and Danger of a People’s Renouncing Their Subjection to God.” In 1730 William Russell’s theme was, “The Decay of Love to God in Churches, Offensive and Dangerous.”\[Footnote:] I am indebted to Sweet for this list of sermons. See his, Religion In Colonial America, p. 273.\ 5  These and many other subjects could be cited as examples of the uniform denunciation on the part of ministers of the religious conditions of their times. The times were ripe for a new emphasis in religion. 6

The Revival in the Middle Colonies

Colonial Revivalism began in the Middle Colonies under the dynamic preaching of Theodore J. Frelinghuysen. He may properly be called the first outstanding revivalist. Frelinghuysen came to America in 1720 at the call of three congregations which had been formed among the Dutch settlers in central New Jersey. Religiously he found the people cold and unemotional with little desire beyond outward formalism. Being educated under pietistic influences, he naturally revolted against this prevelant trend. His first sermon was a call to an inner religion in contrast to conformity to outward religious duties. This passionate preaching soon brought a cleavage among Frelinghuysen’s parishioners. On the one hand there were the well-to do whose only desire was to preserve the Dutch Church as a symbol of their Dutch nationality. On the other hand there were the poorer people and the younger generation who were quite in accord with the pietistic teachings of Frelinghuysen.

The conflict between these two parties became so intensified that there were even reverberations in Holland. The group opposing Frelinghuysen soon took their complaints to Domine Boel, one of the Dutch collegiate ministers of New York, who labeled Frelinghuysen a heretic. But this did not at all silence the young domine. He continued to preach and even publish sermons defending his views. Converts continued to streem in, and finally Frelinghuysen was able to reach many of his former opposers. The height of this revival came in 1726 when the ingathering of new converts was particularly large. Frelinghuysen eventually came to the point of gain gin {ing} the support of the majority of Dutch ministers, although the division thus created in the Dutch Church was not healed until toward the end of the colonial period.

The Frelinghuysen revival among the Dutch in central New Jersey was highly significant in preparing the way for the next phase of the Middle Colony revival, that among the Scotch-Irish. The most influential figures in this phase of the revival were the graduates of William Tennent’s “Log College” at  Nosaming  {Neshaminy} in Pennsylvania.

The Tennent family consisted of the father, William, and four sons, Gilbert, John, William, and Charles, all five able ministers of the gospel. The senior Tennent, although a powerful preacher, received his chief fame as an educator of young men for the Presbyterian ministry. His school was established primarily for the education of his own sons, but later other young men were admitted. It was not long before this school was derisively called “Log College” by Tennent’s opponents, and as such it has passed into history. The classical training obtained at this institution was by no means of light quality. This fact is validated by the scholarly attainments of many of these men; but the chief distinction of these men was their evangelical zeal. Gradually Log College graduates were spreading over central Jersey, and they were preaching a militant revivalism which was sweeping the whole region. 7

Giblert Tennent, who was educated for the ministry by his father, was destined to be the heart and center of the revival movement among the Presbyterians. He was the most distinguished member of the noted Tennent family, and by all standards of measurement an able preacher. When he was called to the Presbyterian church at New Brunswick Domine Frelinghuysen was at the height of his revival, and the Dutch minister gave him a hearty welcome and encouraged his members to do the same.

The Scotch-Irish revival mounted high throughout the seventeen-thirites with new converts coming in on every hand. In 1738 the New Brunswick Presbytery was formed, made up of five evangelical ministers, three of whom were Log College men. The reason why these revivalists desired to be formed in a separate presbytery is not far to seek. It is to be noted that opposition to the revival began to manifest itself among the more conservative Presbyterian ministers who had received their training in Scottish universities. These men set out to block the progress of the revivalists by passing certain laws in the Synod requiring all candidates for ordination to present diplomas either from New England or European colleges. This law was obviously aimed at the revivalists, most of whom were Log College graduates. So it can now be seen that a separate presbytery was formed by the Log College men  of their own kind.  {in order that they might license and ordain men of their own kind.} John Rowland, a recent Log College graduate, was immediately licensed by the New Brunswick Presbytery, a challenge aimed at the conservatives. 8  Thus the Presbyterian ministers in New Jersey were soon divided into two parties, viz., “Old Side” and “New Side.”

Such was the general situation among the Presbyterians in the middle colonies when George Whitefield appeared on the American scene. 9  Landing at Lewes, Delaware, in August 1739, Whitefield immediately began his first American evangelistic tour. 10  One characteristic which he had on his arrival and which he retained throughout his life was a great catholic spirit. On his voyage to America he even lent his cabin to a Quaker preacher, who held meetings there.\[Footnote:] Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 16.\ 11  Also Whitefield was quite tolerant toward the Baptists, though he himself held the Episcopal theory of ordination and of the real presence of Christ in the elements of the Lord’s Supper.\[Footnote:] Ibid., No. 4, pp. 7, 12, 24.\ In England he freely collected money for the Lutherans of Georgia\[Footnote:] Ibid., No. 3, p. 7.\ and enjoyed fellowship with the Moravians, though they were not in full accord with his Calvinism.\[Footnote:] Ibid., No. 3, p. 97.\ 12  On one occasion, preaching from the balcony of the courthouse in Philadelphia, it is said that Whitefield cried out: 13  “Father Abraham, whom have you in Heaven? Any Episcopalians?’ ‘No.’ ‘Any Presbyterians?’ ‘No.’ ‘Have you any Independents or Seceders?’ ‘No.’ ‘Have you any Methodists?’ ‘No!’ ‘no!’ no!!’ ‘Whom have you there?’ ‘We don’t know these names here. All who are here are Christians—believers in Christ—men who have overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of his testimony.’ ‘Oh, is this the case? Th us {en} God help us, God help us all, to forget party names, and to become Christians in deed, and in truth.”\[Footnote:] Quoted from Sweet, The Story of Religion in America, p. 142.\

The preaching ability of this moving spirit of the Great Awakening cannot be exaggerated. His reputation in this area had been established even before his appearance on the American shores. One of the colonial newspapers tells of the great concourse of people that filled the church of St. Mary Magdalene, London, long before the time of service and of several hundred persons in the street who in vain endeavored to force themselves into the church and past the constables stationed at the door to preserve the peace. Such was the mad desire to see and hear the eloquent youth who had volunteered to go to Georgia as a missionary.\[Footnote:] See Maxon, The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies, p. 42.\ 14  In speaking of the powerful delivery of Whitefield Tracy says, “Probably, in simply delivery, no man since Demosthenes, has ever surpassed Whitefield as a public orator.”\[Footnote:] Joseph Tracy, “The Great Awakening,” The Christian Review. September, 1844.\

Whitefield arrived in Pennsylvania in the winter months of 1739. This was his first visit to the Northern Colonies. Great multitudes flocked to hear him. No building being sufficiently large to accomodate the people, he frequently preached from the gallery of the court house on Market Street. It was said that “his voice was distinctly heard on the Jersey shore, and so distinct was his speech that every word was understood on board of a shallop at Market Steet wharf, a distance of upwards of four hundred feet from the court house. All the intermediate space was crowded with his hearers.”\[Footnote:] Quoted from F. G. Beardsley, A History of American Revivals, p. 36.\ During his visit at Philadelphia he had intercourse with members of the Society of Friends, and was treated very kindly by many of them. He speaks of them as honest, open-hearted, and true.\[Footnote:] Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 47.\ The Presbyterian and Baptist ministers came to his lodgings to tell of their pleasure in hearing “Christ preached in the Church.”

The most cherished intercourse that young Whitefield had on his visit to Philadelphia was that with the old gray-headed William Tennent, of Neshaming. Whitefield says in his journal that Tennent was a great friend of the Erskines, and just as they were hated by the judicatories of the Church of Scotland, and as his Methodist associates were dispised by their brethren of the Church of England, so too were Tennent and his sons treated by the majority of the synod. But just as surely as Elijah overcame the prophets of Baal, so would the few evangelicals overcome their opposers, thought Whitefield.\[Footnote:] Ibid, p. 31.\ The aged founder of the Log College had made the journey of twenty miles from Neshaming to hear this great spiritual leader, and the result was an alliance between Whitefield and the New Brunswick Presbyterians.

After nine days at Philadelphia, Whitefield journeyed toward New York, preaching at Burlington, and at New Brunswick, the home of Gilbert Tennent. In New York Whitefield preached in the Presbysterian church, as well as in the fields where great throngs assembled. While in New York Whitefield had the opportunity of listening to a sermon preached by Gilbert Tennent in the Presbyterian church. Whitefield left convinced that he had never before heard such a searching discourse.\[Footnote:] Ibid, p. 35.\ So deeply was he moved by the truth presented by his new friend that his own method of preaching was sensibly changed by his intercourse with the Tennents.

Journeying back to Philadelphia Whitefield accepted the previously given invitation of Jonathan Dickinson, Presbyterian pastor at Elizabethtown. In his sermon Whitefield preached against both ministers and people who contented themselves with a bare, speculative knowledge of the doctrines of grace, “never experiencing the power of them in their hearts.”\[Footnote:]  Op. cit.  {Ibid.,} p. 40)\

Coming again to New Brunswick the evangelist met several of the leaders of the evangelical movement in the Middle colonies. Among them was Domine Frelinghuysen, whom Whitefield called, the “beginner of the great work in these parts.”\[Footnote:] Ibid., p. 41.\ Another was John Cross, Presbyterian pastor of Basking Ridge. Still another was James Campbell, of Newtown, Pennsylvania. These men were greatly moved by the evangelical zeal of Whitefield.

Finally Whitefield reached Philadelphia after triumphs in three provinces. The enthusiasm of the people mounted higher and higher. It is estimated that his farewell congregation at Philadelphia numbered ten thousand.\[Footnote:] Maxon, The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies, p. 52.\ 15  “After five stirring days he left Philadelphia, accompanied by one hundred and fifty horsemen, stopping and preaching at various points until he reached White Clay Creek, the home of Charles Tennent.”\[Footnote:] Ibid., p. 52.\

The year 1740 marks the high tide of the revival in the middle colonies. It was in this year that Gilbert Tennent preached his famous sermon on “Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.” It was a terrible arraignment of men who enter the ministry as a trade, with no dynamic religious experience. Unconverted themselves, they were unconcerned, though many years passed without a conversion in their congregations.\[Footnote:] Gilbert Tennent, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.\ Whitefield’s preaching had touched all classes of people, including the deistic Franklin who became a life long admirer of the evangelist. The revival became exceedingly popular with the common people. But from the beginning the revival had aroused criticism, and unfortunately the revivalists were partly responsible for it because of their tendency to be censorious of those who did not agree with them.

Opposition to the revival among the Presbyterians came to a head at the meeting of the synod in 1740, when the evangelicals were excluded from membership in the synod by the conservatives. The evangelicals attempted to undo the action taken in 1741, but when this failed they formed, in 1745, the New York Synod at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. From this year until 1758 the Presbyterians in the colonies were divided into two distinct bodies. The evangelical or New Side party grew with rapid proportions, while the conservative or Old Side party made very little progress. At the time of the separation the Old Side numbered twenty-five ministers, while the New Side numbered twenty-two. In 1758 when the schism was healed the Old Side had decreased to but twenty-two, while the New Side had grown by leaps and bounds numbering seventy-two.\[Footnote:] Sweet, The Story of Religion in America, p. 143.\ 16  “These years of separation mark the unmistakable triumph of the revival party within the Presbyterian Church.”\[Footnote:] Ibid., p. 143.\

The great revival in the middle colonies was quite influential in the rise of many educational institutions. Many graduates of William Tennent’s Log College went out and established log colleges, or private schools, modeled after that of their Alma Mater. One such school founded on the model of the Log College was that established by Samuel Blair at Fogg’s Manor in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Another such school was that established at Nottingham, Pennsylvania, by Samuel Finley. Of greater importance than both of these was the establishment by the New York Synod of the College of New Jersey. This college was established in 1746 with Jonathan Dickinson as its first president. As the years passed by this institution became stronger and stronger. As Sweet succinctly states, “The College of New Jersey, as Princeton was called in its early years, admirably served the purpose of its founding and poured a stream of zealous young men into the ministry of the Presbyterian Church.”\[Footnote:]  Op. cit.,  {Ibid.,} p. 145.\

The founding of the University of Pennyslvania came indirectly out of the Great Awakening. When Whitefield first came to Philadelphia he was permitted to preach in the Established Church of the city, but on his later visits this was denied him, and it became necessary for him to preach on the courthouse steps. Finally Whitefield’s friends conceived the idea of erecting a building to accommodate the great crowds who wished to hear him. 17  Benjamin Franklin, a great admirer of Whitefield, discribes the erection of the building thus: “Sufficient sums were soon received to procure the ground and erect the building, which was a hundred feet long, and seventy broad. Both house and ground were vested in trustees,” of whom Franklin was one, “expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion, who might desire to say something to the people of Philadelphia.”\[Footnote:] Ibid., p. 146.\ It was here that Whitefield preached when he visited the city, and it was here that the Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, of which Gilbert Tennent was pastor, worshiped for nine years. In 1753, largely through the efforts of Franklin, the building was chartered as the “College Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphis,” which finally (1791) became the University of Pennsylvania. 18  Today there stands in one of the quadrangles of that great university a life-size statue of George Whitefield.

The Great Awakening In New England

At the center of the Great New England Awakeni gn {ng} stands Jonathan Edwards, the minister of the church at Northampton. Edwards was called to the church at Northampton as a young man, fresh from graduate study and a tutorship at Yale, there he became the colleague and ultimately the successor of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. Northampton was a prosperous, intelligent and growing community of some two hundred families. The church was famed in New England for its long history of spiritual vigor. The church and the community at this time, however, was going through a state of religious and spiritual decline. Because of this it became Edward’s purpose to foster a warmer and deeper piety, and to redeem the community from its moral laxity. With a tremendous earnestness combined with “an almost oriental fertility of imagination, and intellectual acumen,” Edwards set out to do this job, and at the end of the winter of 1734–1735 “there was scarcely a single person in the town, old or young, left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world.”\[Footnote:] Edwards “Works,” Vol. IV, p. 23.\ Beginning with a single young woman prominent  amont  {among} the “social company keepers” of the town, it overspread the community, until, when springtime came, this little village of two hundred families sheltered “three hundred souls savingly brought home to Christ.”\[Footnote:]  Op. cit.,  {Ibid.,} pp. 18, 28.\ From Northampton this movement spread like wild fire in all directions, to South Hadley, Suffield, Sunderland, Deerfield, Hatfield, West Springfield, Long-meadow, Enfield, Springfield and Hadley.\[Footnote:] Edwards, “Thoughts on Revivals,” p. 148.\

From the beginning Edwards preached sermons on justification by faith, the justice of God in the damnation of sinners, and the excellency of Christ. In these sermons the doctrine of the sovereignity of God was strongly emphasized. Through Adam’s fall man had lost the divine image and was therefore unable to make any move toward God; only God could make the move. Man has the rational power to turn to God, but he lacks the moral power. God is under no obligation to save anyone. However special grace is communicated to such as he has chosen to salvation; all others are left to die in their sins. Satisfaction must be made for the sins of those who are foreordained to salvation. Such satisfaction was made in the vicarious sacrifice on the cross by Jesus Christ. Such in brief were the elements of Edward’s theology. The influence of such doctrines upon the minds of those who had contented themselves with a barren morality can better be imagined than described.

Edwards’ method of arousing the sinner was quite different from that of most revivalists. He was never an extemporaneous preacher. He always took his entire manuscript into the pulpit, and his eye never seemed to rest upon his audience, but flashed continually from his manuscript to the opposite wall. However with these strange personal characteristics there was an extraordinary power of fascination in him. In speaking of the amazing power of Edwards Davenport says, “By dint of prodigious intellectual strength, by the wonderfully vivid imaging forth of premises which seem absurd to us but were as fundamental to his auditors as their own being, by the masterly marshalling of terrible argument, he wrought out an appeal to the fears of his hearers which stirred them to the very depths of their souls. They wept, they turned pale, they cried aloud. Some fainted, some fell into convulsions, some suffered thereafter from impaired health and some lost their reason.”\[Footnote:] Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, p. 108.\ Chapell has this to say of Edwards’ sermons: “Under the spell of those powerful sermons time and place were all swallowed up in the terrible realities of the eternal world. Once when he preached on the judgment some of his auditors really expected to see the Lord coming in the clouds as soon as the sermon closed. And when he preached at Enfield his famous sermon entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” from the graphic text, “Their feet shall slide in due time,” such was the influence upon the congregation, which had assembled in a careless mood, that some of them actually caught hold of the benches to save themselves from slipping into hell.”\[Footnote:] Chapell, The Great Awakening, p. 56.\ It was this powerful preaching which was responsible for more than three hundred professed conversions in the first year of the revival in Northampton. About May 1735 the excitement began to die down, probably because the “physical power to endure excitement was exhausted.” But in 1740 the revival reappeared, not only in the Northampton vicinity, but in almost every church throughout New England.

Whitefield arrived on the shores of New England in this heated year, 1740. He was accepted with a deal of enthusiasm. Newport and Boston gave him an immense hearing. The students at Harvard heard him gladly “and under the spell of his matchless oratory men wept, women fainted and hundreds professed conversion.”\[Footnote:] Sweet, The Story of Religion in America, p. 132.\ 19  Leaving Boston in October, Whitefield journeyed toward Northampton, and there he met Jonathon Edwards. Edwards was delighted to have him visit Northampton, and himself sat in his own pulpit weeping like a child, as that matchless preacher swayed with his burning pathos the numerous auditors.

Gilbert Tennent also came up from New Jersey and preached with great emotional fervor throughout southern Massachusetts and Connecticut. Later came James Davenport of Long Island, who “more than any other man … embodied in himself and promoted in others, all the unsafe extravagances into which the revival was running,” and who declared “that most of the ministers of the town of Boston and of the country are unconverted, and are leading their people blindfold to hell.” 20

The New England revival ended with great success in numerical terms. During the years from 1740 to 1742 there were between 25,000 to 50,000 out of a total population of 300,000 added to the church.\[Footnote:] Ibid, p. 133.\ Testimonies of moral changes were heard throughout the colonies and there is no doubt but that the whole moral and religious life of New England was raised to a higher plane. 21

The Revival In The Southern Colonies

In the south the revival did not commence until 1743, and in Virginia the work was carried on principally by laymen in the face of more or less opposition from the Established Church. Here and there throughout the province were to be found men and women hungering for the bread of life, who had become dissatisfied with the abuses of the church.

At Hanover there were a group of such who had been moved greatly by the preaching of Whitefield at Williamsburg in 1740. During the year 1743, Mr. Samuel Morris, one of their number came into possession of a small volume of Whitefield’s sermons and a few of Luther’s books. Morris invited his neighbors to his home and read them in their hearing. Week after week they met together in one another’s houses where these books were read. Finally, the group grew so large that no ordinary house could accommodate them, and special houses were built, the first such building being called Morris’s Reading House.\[Footnote:] Ibid, p. 148.\ Thus the revival was propagated with spiritual quickening throughout the region. At length there were visits made by Rev. William Robinson, a graduate of the “Log College,” who devoted his labors to the neglected districts among the new settlements of Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina. Under his ministrations many were converted and the revival was given a fresh impetus.

This in brief is the rise of Presbyterianism in Virginia. From time to time brief visits were made to this region by other outstanding ministers, among whom were Revs. Gilbert Tennent, Samuel Finley, William Tennent, Samuel Blair, and finally the noted evangelist George Whitefield.\[Footnote:] F. G. Beardsley, A History of American Revivals, p. 46.\ These men were highly accepted and their coming was followed by many converts. But persecutions and seasons awaited them. They were brought into conflict with civil authority and harassed in many ways. In the face of all this embarrassment, the feeble companies of believers grew and churches multiplied, until at length Samuel Davies came to them to minister permanently. Within a short time, through his influence, the churches grew by leaps and bounds. The people were very happy to see Mr. Davies come to their colony, and with tones of joy they exclaimed: “How joyfully were we surprised before the next Sabbath, when we unexpectedly heard that Mr. Davis was come to preach so long among us; and especially, that he had qualified himself according to law, and obtained the licensure of four meetinghous{es} among us, which had never been done before! Thus, when our hopes were expiring, and our liberties more precarious than ever, we were suddenly advanced to a more secure situation. Man’s extremity is the Lord’s opportunity. For this seasonable instance of this interposition of divine providence, we desire to offer our grateful praises; and we importune the friends of Zion generously to concur in the delightful employ.”\[Footnote:] Quoted in Tracy, The Great Awakening, p. 384.\

Such was the rise of Presbyterianism in Virginia. Notwithstanding many troubles from the partisans of the Church of England, who had the government of the colony in their hands, Presbyterianism continued to gain strength, and the work went forward with uninterrupted success until the commencement of the Revolutionary struggle.

Just five years previous to Samuel Davies’ departure from Virginia two separate Baptist preachers, Shubal Stearns and Daniel Marshall, had come down from Connecticut with their families and had settled in Berkeley county (in what is now West Virginia). Both had been converted by Whitefield’s preaching and they brought with them the spiritual fervor of the master revivalist. Both had been congregationalists, but soon became convinced of the validity of the Baptist view. Although neither of these revivalist had had a formal education, they were men of great natural ability and good common sense. There were already several congregations of Regular Baptists in Virginia, but they were by no means sympathetic with the revivalistic tendencies of Stearns and Marshall. However the coming of these two separate Baptists into the Southern Colonies marks the beginning of a new phase in the development of the Great Awakening. 22

Sandy Creek became the living center of the Separate Baptist as Hanover had become the center of Presbytarianism in the Southern Colonies. From a church of sixteen members formed by Stearns and Marshell families at Sandy Creek, the congregation grew within a relative short time to more than six hundred.\[Footnote:] Sweet, Religion In Colonial America, p. 303.\ 23  One of the things that made the Separate Baptist so popular with the masses was their novel type of preaching, appealing primarily to the emotions. The Presbyterians with their educated ministry had failed to reach the great mass of people, but the Separate Baptist with their uneducated and unsalaried ministry were well suited to the needs of the lower social and economic classes. Extreme emotional revivalism has always been more successful among people of little education than among people of higher educational attainments. The presence of even a few people of high educational attainments will tend to restrain emotionalism to a great degree. 24  This is why Presbyterians were always less overtly emotional than Baptists.\[Footnote:] This is the thesis of F. M. Davenport. See his, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, Chapter I\ 25

From the beginning the revivalistic Baptists were a despised people. “The strange mannerisms of their preachers, their odd whoops and whinning tones together with their emotional extravagances aroused digust and contempt.”\[Footnote:] Sweet, Religion In Colonial America, p. 304.\ One man is reported to have said that, “he had rather go to hell than be obliged to hear a Baptist in order to go to heaven.” But all of this did not stop the growth of the Baptist. After 1770 the growth of Separate Baptist was astounding. In 1771 at the first Baptist Association in Virginia there were fourteen churches and 1335 members. Two years later the number of churches had increased and the total membership had increased to more than four thousand.\[Footnote:] Ibid, p. 304.\

Another phase of southern revivalism was the Methodist phase. This phase gained impetue mainly through Devereux Jarratt and lay preachers sent to America by Wesley. Because of Jarratt’s cooperation with the Methodist lay preachers Methodism grew more rapidly in Virginia than anywhere else in America. In 1775 Jarratt accompanied Thomas Rankin, Wesley’s assistant in America, on a preaching tour of the southern colonies and into North Carolina. They preached to great crowds of people under trees and in “preaching houses. So great was the demand for preaching that Rankin speaks of preaching almost to the point of exhaustion. Jesse Lee, who was an eye witness to many of the revival scenes states: “In almost every assembly might be seen signal instances of divine power; more especially in the meetings of the classes … Many who had long neglected the means of grece now flocked to hear … This outpouring of the spirit extended itself more or less, through most of the circuits, which takes in a circumference of between four and five hundred miles.”\[Footnote:] Jesse Lee, A Short History of the Methodists, pp. 55, 56.\

The results of the revival are reflected in the statistics of the Virginia and North Carolina circuits. In 1774 there were only two circuits in the region, with a combined membership of 291; in 1776 the number of circuits had increased tremendously, with one circuit alone reporting 1,611 members. The following year there were six circuits with a combined membership of 4,379. In this same year the number of Methodists throughout all America was 6,968, which meant that two-thirds of all the Methodists in the colonies were found in Devereux Jarratt’s parish.\[Footnote:] Sweet, The Story of Religion in America, p. 154.\ 26  Such was the rise of Methodism in Virginia.

The Results of The Great Awakening

Having given a brief outling of the facts of the Great Awakening it now remains for me to sum up the results of this great movement. The chief value of a revival of religion is seen in its permanent results, that which lives on long after the first excitement has passed away. Bearing this in mind, let us see what were the results of the Great Awakening.

First it must be admitted that Church membership was greatly increased with the coming of the Great Awakening. Moreover, the practical influence of Christianity upon colonial society was greatly strengthened. To give an exact figure of the number of individuals converted during the revival would be quite impossible. However various estimates have been made. Careful historians have estimated that from 25,000 to 50,000 were added to the churches of New England in consequence of the Awakening.\[Footnote:] Tracy, op. cit., p. 388\ Now the population of the New England colonies in 1750 was 340,000. Assuming the smaller number of additions, which is a conservative estimate, to be correct, more than seven per cent of the entire population of these colonies would have been gathered into the churches as a direct result of the revival. A national awakening of similar power at the present time would result in the ingathering of more than nine million souls.

The increase in the Presbyterian and Baptist churches was proportionately larger. From 1740 to 1760 the number of Presbyterian ministers in American Colonies had increased from 45 to over 100. During this same period the Baptist churches in New England alone increased from 21 to 79.\[Footnote:] Beardsley, op. cit., p. 64.\ These and many other figures could be cited to show the numerical results of the Great Awakening. This movement, like a tidal wave swept over the colonies, and gathered multitudes into the church of God.

A second result of the Great Awakening was a Quickening along Missionary and Educational Lines. At this time there came a great concern for Indians and Negroes and underprivileged people in general. Out of this movement was forged the framework of the first anti-slavery impulse in America.\[Footnote:] Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, p. 317.\

The Great Awakening was conducted chiefly by men of education, “and it has left its decided record and invaluable monuments in the way of institutions of learning and religious literature.” We have shown above how the College of New Jersey and the Theological Seminary at Princeton grew out of Tennent’s Log College at Neshaming. Harvard and Yale received a great impulse from the revival, though they at first set themselves against it. Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, was a direct outgrowth of the Great Awakening. Brown University, at Providence, the parent of Baptist colleges, was founded during the Great Awakening. Rev. Chapell was quite right when he stated, “many of the colleges and seminaries of the present day largely owe their existence, or their influence as healthful fountains of truth, directly to the Great Awakening.”\[Footnote:] Chapell, op. cit., p. 135.\

A third Result of the Great Awakening was its influence upon Religious and Political Liberty. In New England, excepting the colony of Rhode Island, Congregationalism was established by law. In New York, Virginia and the South, Episcopalianism was the established religion. With the coming of the Awakening and the expansion of newer denominations the way was paved for the tolerance of conflicting opinions and a broader conception of liberty of conscience.

Only indirectly did the Great Awakening affect the political liberties of the colonies. But this indirect influence cannot be overlooked. As Dr. Beardsley has laconically stated: “The religious convictions of the American people, which so largely were called into being through the revival, served as a balance to the political revolution which resulted in independence and prevented it from being hurled into the vortex of anarchy and ruin, in which the French Revolution was swallowed up.”\[Footnote:] Beardsley, op. cit., p. 69.\

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. G. Beardsley, A History of American Revivals, (New York, 1904).

Warren A Candler, Great Revivals and the Great Republic, (Nashville, 1904).

F. L. Chapell, The Great Awakening of 1740, American Baptist Publication Society, 1903.

F. M. Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revival (New York, 1906).

Serens E. Dwight, The Life of President Edwards, (New York, 1830).

Jesse Lee, A Short History of the Methodists, in the United States of America, etc. (Baltimore, 1810).

Charles H. Maxson, The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies (Chicago, 1920).

W. W. Sweet, Religion In Colonial America (New York, 1949).

W. W. Sweet, The Story of Religion in America (New York, 1930).

Joseph Tracy, A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (Boston, 1842).

George Whitefield, Journals

1.  Raymond Joseph Bean (1917–1982) received a B.A. from the University of New Hampshire in 1941, a B.D. from Andover-Newton Theological School in 1944, and a Th.D. from Boston in 1949. He replaced Reuben Elmore Ernest Harkness as Crozer’s professor of church history during King’s last year at the seminary. Bean remained at Crozer until 1959, when he became minister of the First Baptist Church in East Orange, New Jersey. In 1966, he became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Manchester, New Hampshire.

2.  Half-Way Covenant: adopted at the Synod of 1662 in Massachusetts, the covenant stated that children whose parents had been baptised into the Congregational church but not yet had the conversional experience necessary to become full members—that is, “visible saints”—could be baptised by virtue of their parents’ “half-way” status. The covenant engendered great theological debate. While adoption of the covenant undermined the “purity” of the community of visible saints, it also increased the size of congregations. The covenant also allowed church fathers to continue to exert ecclesiastical control over the majority of the Puritan community.

3.  William Warren Sweet,  The Story of Religion in America  (New York: Harper & Row, 1950), p. 65: “Thus there came to be more and more reliance upon the use of ‘means’ and less and less upon the miraculous power of God, which led to a cold and unemotional religion.”

4.  Sweet,  Religion in Colonial America  (New York: Scribner, 1942), pp. 272–273: “A third factor which helped set the stage for colonial revivalism was the growing awareness on the part of the religious leaders of the decline of religion throughout the colonies. The sermons of the New England ministers during the latter years of the seventeenth and the early years of the eighteenth centuries are full of gloomy forebodings as to the future because of the low state of religion and public morals. ‘O what a sad metamorphosis hath of later years passed upon us in these churches and plantations! Alas! How is New England in danger to be buried in its own ruins,’ is the plaint of William Stoughton before the Massachusetts Legislature in 1668. Ten years later Increase Mather observed that ‘Clear, sound conversions are not frequent. Many of the rising generation are profane Drunkards, Swearers, Licentious and scoffers at the power of Godliness.’”

5.  Sweet,  Religion in Colonial America , p. 273: “A random survey of the subjects of the election sermons preached at this period show that almost all are of a piece in this respect—they were uniformly denunciatory of the religious conditions of their times. In 1700 Samuel Willard preached on ‘The Perils of the Times Displayed’; in 1711 Stephen Buckingham’s theme was ‘The Unreasonableness and Danger of a People’s Renouncing Their Subjection to God’; William Russell’s subject in 1730 was ‘The Decay of Love to God in Churches, Offensive and Dangerous.’”

6.  Sweet,  Religion in Colonial America , p. 273: “Times were ripe for some new emphasis in religion as well as a new type of religious leadership to meet the peculiar situation which the American colonies represented.”

7.  Sweet,  Religion in Colonial America , p. 276: “Gradually a group of Log College men came to be settled over churches in central New Jersey, and under their preaching developed a militant revivalism which swept the whole region.”

8.  Sweet,  Religion in Colonial America , p. 276: “Throughout the seventeen-thirties the Scotch-Irish revival mounted higher and higher, and new congregations were formed as converts increased and new communities were reached. In 1738 the New Brunswick Presbytery was erected, made up of five evangelical ministers, three of whom were Log College men. The principal reason why the revivalists desired to be formed into a separate presbytery was that they might license and ordain men of their own kind. Meanwhile opposition to the revival began to manifest itself among the older ministers who had received their training in the Scottish universities. These men now sought to control the situation by the enactment of laws in the Synod requiring all candidates for ordination to present diplomas either from New England or European colleges. This enactment was obviously aimed at the revivalists. But at the very time this was happening, John Rowland, a recent Log College graduate, was licensed by the New Brunswick Presbytery, a challenge aimed at the conservatives.”

9.  Sweet,  Religion in Colonial America , p. 276: “Such was the situation in central New Jersey when George Whitefield appeared on the American religious scene.”

10.  Sweet,  Religion in Colonial America , p. 277: “Landing at Lewes, Delaware, in August 1739, Whitefield immediately began his first American evangelistic tour.”

11.  Charles Hartshorn Maxson,  The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1920), p. 45: “On his voyage to America in 1739 he even lent his cabin to a Quaker preacher, who held meetings there.”

12.  Maxson,  Great Awakening , p. 45: “… with Baptists, though he himself held the Episcopal theory of ordination and of the real presence of Christ in the elements of the Lord’s Supper. In England he had collected money for the Lutherans of Georgia and enjoyed fellowship with the Moravians, but his Calvinism was a barrier to the fullest intercourse with them.”

13.  Sweet,  Story of Religion , p. 141: “On one occasion, preaching from the balcony of the courthouse in Philadelphia, Whitefield cried out: …”

14.  Maxson,  Great Awakening , pp. 41–42: “The  Virginia Gazette  tells of the great concourse of people that filled the church of St. Mary Magdalene, London, long before the time of service, and of several hundred persons in the street who in vain endeavored to force themselves into the church and past the constables stationed at the door to preserve the peace. Such was the mad desire to see and hear the eloquent youth who had volunteered to go to Georgia as a missionary.”

15.  Maxson,  Great Awakening , p. 52: “After these triumphs in three provinces Whitefield returned to Philadelphia. The enthusiasm of the people mounted higher and higher. It was estimated that his congregation at Germantown numbered five thousand people, and that his farewell sermon at Philadelphia had ten thousand hearers.”

16.  Sweet,  Story of Religion , p. 143: “In 1758 at the time of the reunion the Old Side had decreased and numbered but twenty-two, while the New Side had grown by leaps and bounds and numbered seventy-two.”

17.  Sweet,  Story of Religion , p. 145: “The founding of the University of Pennsylvania came indirectly out of the Great Awakening.… At first [Whitefield] was permitted to preach in the Established Church in that city, but on his later visits this was denied him, and it became necessary for him to preach in the fields or from the courthouse steps. Finally Whitefield’s Philadelphia friends conceived the idea of erecting a building to accommodate the great crowds who wished to hear him.”

18.  Sweet,  Story of Religion , p. 146: “In 1751, largely through the efforts of Franklin, the building was used for an academy, and two years later it was chartered as the ‘College, Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia,’ which finally (1791) grew into the University of Pennsylvania.”

19.  Sweet,  Story of Religion , p. 132: “Everywhere he was received with enthusiasm. Newport and Boston gave him an immense hearing. The students at Harvard heard him and under the spell of his matchless oratory men wept, women fainted and hundreds professed conversion.”

20.  Sweet,  Story of Religion , p. 133: “Such a minister was James Davenport of Long Island, who ‘more than any other man … embodied in himself and promoted in others, all the unsafe extravagances into which the revival was running,’ and who declared ‘that most of the ministers of the town of Boston and of the country are unconverted, and are leading their people blindfold to hell” (ellipses in original).

21.  Sweet,  Story of Religion , p. 133: “During the years from 1740 to 1742 there was a wonderful ingathering of members into the New England churches. Out of a population of 300,000, from 25,000 to 50,000 were added.… Similar testimonies of moral changes in other communities are numerous and there is no doubt but that the whole moral and religious life of New England was raised to a higher plane.”

22.  Sweet,  Religion in Colonial America , pp. 301–302: “Just five years previous to Samuel Davies’ departure from Virginia two Separate Baptist preachers from Connecticut, Shubal Stearns and Daniel Marshall, settled with their families on Opeguoin Creek in Berkeley county, in what is now West Virginia. Both had been converted under Whitefield’s preaching and they brought with them the fervor and spirit of that master revivalist. Both originally had been Congregationalists, but having become convinced of the futility of infant baptism they withdrew and joined the Baptists. Neither had had the advantage of a formal education, but they were men of superior natural ability and sound judgment. There were already several congregations of  Regular  Baptists in Virginia, but Stearns and Marshall soon found that they were out of sympathy with their revivalistic preaching.… The coming of these representatives of the revivalistic Baptists into the Southern Colonies marks the beginning of a new phase in the development of the Great Awakening.”

23.  Sweet,  Religion in Colonial America , p. 303: “As Hanover county was the center of an expanding Presbyterianism in the Southern Colonies, so Sandy Creek became the living center of the Separate Baptists. From a church of sixteen members formed by the Stearns and Marshall families at Sandy Creek, the congregation grew within a relatively short time to more than six hundred.”

24.  Sweet,  Religion in Colonial America , p. 302: “The Presbyterians with their educated ministry and elaborate creedal demands had failed to reach the great mass of the plain people. The  Separate  Baptists, however, with their uneducated and unsalaried ministry, their novel type of preaching, appealing primarily to the emotions, were well suited to the needs and mental capacities of the lower social and economic classes. Extreme emotional revivalism always has succeeded best among people of little education. But the presence of even a few people of higher educational attainments will tend to restrain the emotionalism of a large concourse of the less educated.”

25.  Sweet cited the source of this argument to “F. M. Davenport,  Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, A Study in Mental and Social Evolution , New York: 1905, Chapter I.”

26.  Sweet,  Story of Religion , p. 154: “The results of the revival are reflected in the statistics of the Virginia and North Carolina circuits. In 1774 there were but two circuits in the region, with a combined membership of 291; the following year there were 3 circuits with a membership of 935; in 1776 the number of circuits had increased, the Brunswich circuit alone reporting 1,611 members. The following year there were 6 circuits with a combined membership of 4,379. In this year the number of Methodists in America totaled 6,968, which meant two-thirds of all the Methodists in the colonies were found in the vicinity of Devereux Jarratt’s parish, a fact which would seem to indicate that this region was the cradle of American Methodism.”

Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954-1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival and Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.

©  Copyright Information

Journal of Unification Studies

Volume XXII - (2021)

The first great, or not so great, awakening and what it means for today.

• Platt, Roland

Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 22, 2021 - Pages 153-163

What we now call the American “Great Awakenings” are embedded in the history of the country, unique to America, and they have undoubtedly played a significant role in shaping the fabric of this nation. But did the First Great Awakening actually play a pivotal role in leading up to the War of Independence and the birth of the country? Was it the first inter-colonial event? Did it really have the effect of forging the hearts of the people to go to war against the greatest empire of its time? Would the Revolution have taken place and would America have the values it has now, had it not been for the First Great Awakening?

The Great Awakening Rebuffed

The First Great Awakening left an indelible mark on the development of America. With roots stretching back to the Christian Reformation of the 1500’s, the Great Awakening swept the young colonies with the fires of evangelical fervor. The revival shook the very foundations of colonial society. Following in its wake was a rebirth of reformed philosophy and theology that planted the seeds of self-government and political autonomy in the fertile soil of the Americas. By 1776, that seed had blossomed into a vibrant revolutionary movement that questioned the very fabric of Old-World society. [1]

This account by Kory Ray Quirion in ”The First Great Awakening: Revival and the Birth of a Nation” expresses the traditional interpretation of events. Conversely, Jonathan Butler’s article, “Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretive Fiction,” challenges some of the most entrenched ideas about the period of revivalism called the Great Awakening. While others before him had undermined aspects of the traditional interpretation, Butler sets out to deconstruct the “Great Awakening” model itself:

Butler challenges nearly every historian of note who had written about eighteenth century revivalism. Countering histories that dramatically described a movement that swept through all the British mainland colonies, Butler exposes some inconvenient and inconsistent facts about chronology, geography, and demography. For instance, in New England the revival spirit was dying out by 1745, whereas in Virginia revivalism not start until the 1750s. He contends revivals did not even touch half of the colonies, and even in some where revivals did occur, they had no effect on the majority of the population, such as in Pennsylvania where the Quakers, Germans, Baptists ignored them. He thereby questions whether the “Great Awakening” was really the first inter-colonial event or movement.

In addition according to Butler, there is little evidence that the revivals brought about a significant change in structure of authority in society and in the churches. As he puts it, “Tumult should not be confused with democracy. Social class, education, and wealth remained as important after 1730 in choosing town and church officers as they had been before 1730.” [3] He goes on to point out that there was little evidence that the revivals forged an inter-colonial unity or even that those groups affected by the revivals played any unique role in anti-British protest or the coming of the Revolution.

Butler further argues the itinerant preachers did not really successfully challenge the established churches’ authority, and that Jonathan Edwards’s influence was not felt until an entire century later. He also argues against the notion that new modes of communication (itinerant preachers and printed tracts) brought about the spread of egalitarian ideas throughout the colonies.

Most significantly, Butler points out that eighteenth century contemporaries never used the term “Great Awakening” when describing the revivals, as they were taking place as separate and isolated events. It was only some hundred years later that Joseph Tracy coined the term “Great Awakening” while trying to make sense of the events of the mid-eighteenth century. [4] He therefore concludes, “Historians should abandon the term ‘the Great Awakening,’ because it distorts the character of eighteenth-century religious life and misinterprets its relationship to pre-revolutionary American society and politics.” [5]

Historian Thomas Kidd, in “The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America,” also struggles to define a clear beginning and end to the Great Awakening. According to him the revival spirit continued during the 1760s in Virginia and even sporadically in the 1780s. He writes, there “was simply no clear break” between the First Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening in the nineteenth century: “There was, really, no Second Great Awakening, but rather a long-term turn toward Baptist and Methodist piety from the American Revolution to the Civil War.” [6]

Kidd also points out that key figures of the Revolution and leading figures of the new nation were not revivalist. As he noted, “Few of the most recognizable Founding Fathers were evangelicals. Virginia’s Patrick Henry was one of the only Founding Fathers directly influenced by the Great Awakening.” [7] Kidd goes so far as to agree with Butler’s conclusion that “the link between the revivals and the American Revolution is virtually nonexistent.” [8]

Butler and Kidd expose some significant provocative facts that challenge the more traditional view. And it is certainly true, history is not as simple as it appears. Perhaps the connection is not as black and white as it has seemed. But possibly while looking for direct cause and effect relationships between the revivals and the revolution, Butler and Kidd may overlook subtler and indirect influences of revivalism on pre-revolutionary American thought and life.

The Great Awakening Defended

Instead of getting caught up in details of whether this affected that, it is helpful to consider the broader approach of William McLoughlin in “‘Enthusiasm for Liberty’: The Great Awakening as the Key to the Revolution.” He quotes the anthropologist Kenelm Burridge who states that “no religious movement lacks a political ideology” and that all religions are basically concerned with how power is wielded. McLoughlin writes:

McLoughlin makes the point that “the impetus for revolt came from non-scientific sources, and one of the most important of these was pietistic religion.” [10] He doubts whether the rationalism of the Enlightenment alone would have moved the people to Revolution. Great preachers like Jonathan Edwards were filled with postmillennial optimism. Many Americans, as a result of the revivals, now saw themselves as God’s new Israel with a mission to prepare the way for the kingdom. According to McLoughlin,

McLoughlin describes how, through the revivals, a profound change took place in the hearts of the colonists, and a new found sense of identity was generated by the Great Awakening. He lists the following outcomes:

• A new conception of God's power and how it worked in sustaining social order and morality.
• A new conception of ecclesiastical order or the organization of church life.
• A new perception of the role of the ministry in persuading man to adopt the ways of God.
• A new understanding of how God intended to redeem mankind and the special role of Americans in that divine mission.
• A new definition of the relationship between church and state.
• A new understanding of true virtue and humanitarianism toward all poor and oppressed people—including black slaves and American Indians.

For McLoughlin, “All of these together added up to a new optimistic self-confidence, a new assurance of the importance of the individual vis à vis the authorities in society, and a new sense of inter-colonial unity stronger than the ties to the hub of the empire in London.” He notes, “If we can understand this transformation in thought and feeling, in 'principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections', we will see more clearly than we have how direct and immediate a role religion played in the making of the Revolution.” [12]

Pietism provided colonists with a religious ideology which understood that God's power is best exercised in the free and voluntary consent of the individual, that Americans were a chosen people, and that they had a destiny, and a responsibility to create a Godly and principled nation that would be free from corruption and tyranny. McLoughlin concludes,

Most historians agree that colonial newspapers played a big role in spreading the word of republican ideology throughout the colonies. With what spirit were they infused? Even Kidd acknowledges, “[T]here was an evangelical-inflected mode of persuasion that characterized many of the great Patriot tracts and speeches, including the non-evangelical Tom Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ and Henry’s ‘Liberty or Death’ oration.” [14] It seems that despite efforts to separate the Great Awakening and the American Revolution, they are deeply intertwined. The spirit and theological revival of the Awakening infused the minds and hearts of those who brought about the Revolution. This is what prepared the founding generation for the sacrifices and trials required for revolution and nation building.

In this regard, Quirion concludes:

Lessons Learned

In God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution , Kidd offers a comprehensive account of the role religion played during this transformative period. He argues that the most significant contribution Christianity made was its theological reinforcement of existing republicanism and natural rights philosophy. He uses examples of dissenting sects such as the Presbyterians and Baptists finding common ground with less devout men like Jefferson or Madison on the importance of God-given rights. He also points out how devotees of ancient republicanism could seek common ground with Calvinists on the threat of human corruption and the need for virtue. Both deists and orthodox could speak about how God is working in the destiny of nations. This consensus, built in the decades leading up to the Revolution, is what Kidd calls “civil spirituality.” [16]

History is not a simple series of consequential events, like a science experiment. Rather, the timing was right, the people were ready, many circumstances came into play, and the revivals of the eighteenth century provided the catalyst to bring together the previously separated colonies. In this sense the Great Awakening served as a melting pot for people of diverse backgrounds and faiths to forge a common understanding of how they wanted to live. This common vision is what moved their hearts to action. A few were so committed to the cause that they were willing to risk their lives for it. This spark ignited the Revolution and spread quickly since enough people had been animated by the vision.

Historical interpretation is not a simple matter. Kidd concludes wisely that we should be careful to draw hasty conclusions, from whichever side of the “Christian America” debate we stand. Events are not always unequivocal and believers and secularists should consider all sides of the story.

Interpretation depends on what lens we utilize to look at history. We can choose to look objectively, scientifically at facts and look for connections. The analysis will be correct, but may be missing something. Think of an analogy to the ocean. We can look at the surface, at how the waves are moving. But there are the deep ocean currents that are invisible to the eye that are moving the waters, even affecting the climate. By looking solely at the objects on the surface we may be missing a subtler spiritual feature, underlying it, a providence running through history, whether recognized or not.

John Adams, in correspondence of 1818, wrote of the events that led up to the Revolution:

Adams also testified to Rev. Jonathan Mayhew as the “morning gun of the Revolution.” In 1750, the twenty-nine-year-old pastor of the West (Congregational) Church of Boston delivered a sermon entitled “A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers,” [18] an exegetical study of Romans 13. This was promptly mass printed and resulted in a motto for the American Revolution, “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” Adams said anyone who wishes to understand the “principles and feelings that produced the Revolution” should read Mayhew’s sermon. He claimed that “everyone in the colonies” had read the Discourse, and he himself at the age of fourteen had done so repeatedly until “the Substance of it was incorporated into my Nature and indelibly engraved on my Memory.” [19]

It is good to remember that such ministers were among the best educated men of their time, well-educated not only in Scripture, but also in politics, science and philosophy. Based on this, it could be argued that the American Revolution was launched from the pulpits. Such a sermon as the Discourse provides a bridge between the radical Puritan past and the American Revolutionary future.

Historians will continue to debate the Great Awakenings based on the lens they use. But there is a moment described by Thomas Kidd which cannot be denied. It was in 1775. Some Continental Army troops had stopped in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where the “Great Itinerant” evangelist Whitefield’s body was buried (he had died in 1770). The officers went to the church, religiously dug up and opened Whitefield's tomb, and took remaining pieces of his clothing. They cut them into pieces, and passed them out among the soldiers. Kidd writes “For these soldiers, what Whitefield preached was what they fought for: the spirit of Christ and of liberty.” [20]

The spiritual revolution preceded the actual revolution, just as a century later a division in the churches preceded the Civil War in the country. Protestant denominations (Episcopal, Methodist, Baptists, and Presbyterian) all divided North and South prior to the nation being torn apart by war. Believers (and skeptics) should pay close attention to how God and the spirit are working in the religious world. We have considered how the First Great Awakening gave form to the nation and sustained it through its tumultuous birth. Now let us consider how it could be a force within the country during times of transition today.

A Unification Addendum

According to the Exposition of Divine Principle , in the process of building a righteous world there will be three renaissances, three reformations and three industrial revolutions, that is how the providence unfolds. [21] Based on this teaching, many Unificationists have been expecting, and working towards a Third Great Awakening in America.

In a landmark speech, “Christianity in Crisis,” delivered in 1973, Rev. Moon spoke of the serious and desperate need for a new Great Awakening:

That was the motivation with which Rev. and Mrs. Moon invested the next forty years in this country, i.e., to bring about the much-needed revival of Christianity which had become powerless to counter global communism and the breakdown in moral values. Even while facing major setbacks, this remained their focus. When Rev Moon was unjustly incarcerated in Danbury Federal Correctional Institution, he sent a message on the very first morning stating, “Share these words with the members: ignite the signal fire for Christianity according to the call of God.” [23]

Unificationists believe that if America is headed in the right direction, it can be a beacon of light and steer the world. But it is understood that America can only be the bearer of blessings to the world as long as the spirit Christianity is alive and united. “Christianity in Crisis” was delivered fifty years ago, and the message is just as relevant and critical then as it is today. Over the last five decades the Unification movement has worked tirelessly to empower Christianity and has poured immeasurable resources into conventions, conferences, rallies and publications towards this end.

Unificationists contend the Divine Principle is the key Christianity is missing. It has been said that the kindling is dry and ready, and all that is needed is a spark. Since Rev. Moon’s ascension to the spirit world in 2012, Mrs. Moon has boldly and gracefully continued the mission. She has faced resistance and opposition, more from inside the movement than from outside. But due to her unchanging heart and steadfast approach, waters are beginning to part: ministers who persecuted Rev. Moon are opening their hearts and offering support. Well established Christian leaders, such as Bishop Noel Jones, the senior pastor of the City of Refuge megachurch, Los Angeles, are affectionately addressing her as the “Mother of Peace” and testifying to her.

In addition, perhaps for the first time, children of the Unificationists, the second generation, are excited about the mission of sharing the message with Christianity. Just two years ago the Young Clergy Leadership Coalition (YCLC) was created, and with the spirit of being “chosen” to be a blessing to the world, Unification young people are eagerly outreaching and engaging in fellowship with their Christian brothers and sisters.

In addition, a “Heavenly USA” team is serving as a bridge for young Unificationists to learn about and become involved in the vision of serving and igniting the youth of Christianity. By attending Christian church services, studying the Bible, and building relationships with Christian pastors, the Heavenly USA team has left an impact on many communities visited, creating a strong desire to maintain connection and collaboration between Christianity and the Unificationist movement. [24]

Today, world news may seem bleak. America, caught up in constant political turmoil and division, seems to be more than ever losing its place as the respected leader of the free and democratic world. A battle is waging over the very soul of this country and narratives are being pushed to even rewrite the origins and history of the United States.

All may seem lost when looking only at the surface… but it is a truism that great changes begin from a small group of committed people. The American Revolution was launched from the pulpits, and, as this study maintains, it was a spiritual shift that brought about change in the political and societal spheres. Unificationists on the cutting edge of recent developments believe they are finally seeing the first signs in America of a long awaited Third Great Awakening of Christianity.

[1] Kory Ray Thomas Quirion, “The First Great Awakening: Revival and the Birth of a Nation,” Bound Away: The Liberty University Journal of History, June 2016. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/ ljh/vol1/iss2/3/. Accessed October 4, 2021

[2] Jonathan Butler, “Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretive Fiction,” Journal of American History 69:2 (September 1982). https://www.jstor.org/stable/1893821?refreqid=excelsior%3Ada9832e58877561f55cefcf4e3354f62. Accessed October 4, 2021.

[4] Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (Boston: Charles Tappan, 1842). https://www.google.com/books/ edition/The_Great_Awakening/RxZkYTXHc5gC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover. Accessed October 4, 2021.

[5] Butler, “Enthusiasm Described and Decried.”

[6] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). https:// yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300158465/great-awakening

[7] Thomas Kidd, “‘American Demagogue’ Review: Preaching Revolution,” Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2019. https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-demagogue-review-preaching-revolution-11572389299. Accessed October 4, 2021.

[8] Kidd, The Great Awakening.

[9] William G. McLoughlin, “‘Enthusiasm for Liberty’: The Great Awakening as the Key to the Revolution,” Paper delivered May 3, 1977, at the Worcester Art Museum in conjunction with the American Antiquarian Society exhibition “Wellsprings of a Nation: America before 1801.” https://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/ 44539310.pdf. Accessed October 4, 2021.

[14] Kidd, “‘American Demagogue’ Review: Preaching Revolution.”

[15] Quirion, “The First Great Awakening.”

[16] Thomas Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (Basic Books, 2012). https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/thomas-s-kidd/god-of-liberty/ 9780465028900/. Accessed October 4, 2021.

[17] Letters from John Adams to Hezekiah Niles, 1818. https://founders.archives.gov/ documents/Adams/99-02-02-6854. Accessed October 4, 2021.

[18] Jonathan Mayhews, “A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers,” Sermon given in 1750. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=etas. Accessed October 4, 2021.

[19] Letters from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 1818. https://founders.archives.gov/ documents/Adams/99-02-02-6933. Accessed October 4, 2021.

[20] Kidd, “‘American Demagogue’ Review: Preaching Revolution.”

[21] Exposition of the Divine Principle (HSA-UWC, 1996), p 364.

[22] Sun Myung Moon, “Christianity in Crisis,” speech delivered on October 1, 1973. http://www.tparents.org/ moon-talks/sunmyungmoon73/SunMyungMoon-731001.htm. Accessed October 4, 2021.

[23] Hak Ja Han Moon, Mother of Peace, A Memoir (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Times Global Media Group, 2020), p. 150.

[24] Heavenly USA (est. 2018) is a branch of Generation Peace Academy, which is the youth leadership program of the Unification Church.

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Great Awakening(s) by Zachary Hutchins LAST REVIEWED: 29 August 2012 LAST MODIFIED: 29 August 2012 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0013

In the 19th century, religious historians coined the term great awakening to describe a series of widespread evangelical revivals concentrated in the British colonies between the years 1740 and 1743. During this period, now known as the First Great Awakening, thousands of individuals claimed to have experienced the new birth, a datable and often dramatically emotional conversion experience. Subsequent eras of revival noted for their longevity and fervor have since been dubbed the Second, Third, and Fourth Great Awakenings. This bibliography primarily catalogues texts associated with the First Great Awakening. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, individual preachers and congregations enjoyed isolated surges of religious fervor that led to the incorporation of new church members, but in the 1730s and 1740s, congregations throughout the British colonies, together with congregations across the Atlantic, in Scotland and England, reported a sustained increase of God’s grace (and church attendance). This transatlantic groundswell of evangelical activity originated in Northampton, Massachusetts, during the winter of 1733–1734, when Jonathan Edwards’s affective preaching and the untimely deaths of several residents caused many of the unconverted to fear for the state of their souls. Edwards recounted the religious excitement and conversion of his congregants in a personal letter that he eventually expanded for publication in London, which provided a template of successful, community-wide religious revival for English preachers, such as John Wesley and George Whitefield. Both became famous for preaching in the open air, where crowds numbering in the thousands would come to hear them speak. Many of the converts in those crowds experienced the emotional roller coaster of the new birth and sanctification by the Holy Spirit physiologically; these new believers moaned, shrieked, and shook their limbs uncontrollably. Social groups at the margins of colonial religious culture, including youth, women, impoverished families, and people of color, embraced this form of Christianity, in which they could participate with fewer restrictions. Critics of the revivals, commonly known as Old Lights, verbally attacked supporters of the revivals, or New Lights, for these emotional excesses. The most radical revivalists—men like James Davenport and Andrew Croswell—justified their defiance of social and religious conventions by appealing to the Holy Spirit, claiming that it caused and, therefore, excused the unusual behavior of their congregants. By the mid-1740s, thanks in part to Davenport’s inflammatory accusations that Old Light ministers, and even moderate evangelical preachers, were “carnal unconverted men,” the tide of public opinion had begun to turn against the excesses characteristic of radical revivals. Prominent preachers, such as Edwards and Whitefield, denounced the behavior of Davenport and other radicals, aligning themselves with moderate revivalists, such as Benjamin Colman and Jonathan Dickinson. In response, many radical evangelicals left the coalition of Congregational and Presbyterian churches at the crux of the North American revivals to become Baptists. This schism both marked and, in part, caused the end of the First Great Awakening. The Second Great Awakening commenced in Kentucky, with the 1801 Cane Ridge revival, and wound to a close shortly after William Miller’s failed prediction that Jesus Christ would return to the earth before 21 March 1844. This period of revival launched several major new religious denominations, including the Miller-inspired Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the “Mormon” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the Disciples of Christ. The Third Great Awakening began with the 1857–1858 holiness revival and was characterized by the social gospel movement, a push to combat social problems, such as poverty, racism, substance abuse, and crime, with Christian activism. No clear end point has been identified for the Third Great Awakening, but Dwight L. Moody, the period’s most famous preacher, died in 1899, and most scholars agree that the revivals diminished significantly in the early 1900s. The Fourth Great Awakening is a period whose dates are still contested. Some scholars, however, have pointed to a sustained period of elevated evangelical conversion rates between 1970 and 1990 as empirical grounds for identifying beginning and end points for the Fourth Great Awakening. Others have identified the early 20th-century ministries of Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson as an earlier, fifth period of awakening.

Although many books addressing one of the four commonly identified Great Awakenings have appeared, relatively few writers have attempted a comprehensive account of the three-hundred-year history of these recurring religious revivals. Sweet 1944 is one of the earliest attempts and predates the late-20th-century revivals some have identified as a Fourth Great Awakening. Balmer 1999 is a history of evangelicalism, not an account of the Awakenings, but the two topics overlap so frequently that this text is a suitable introduction for the general reader. Hardman 1983 approaches the topic biographically. Ahlstrom 2004 , McLoughlin 1978 , and McClymond 2004 provide the best scholarly overviews; McClymond’s introductory, bibliographic essay is the place that every scholar interested in awakenings and revivalism should start. Blumhofer and Balmer 1993 places the American Awakenings in an international context, whereas Taves 1999 examines 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century explanations for the physiological and supernatural excesses associated with revival.

Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.

A comprehensive history of American Christianity that provides a single narrative linking the first three Great Awakenings and situating these periods of revival with respect to other periods and movements in American religious history.

Balmer, Randall. Blessed Assurance: A History of Evangelicalism in America . Boston: Beacon, 1999.

Balmer, a religious historian, provides a history of the American evangelical movement that combines intellectual rigor and brevity; the ideal introductory text for students, despite several historical divergences between evangelicalism and Christian revivals in America.

Blumhofer, Edith L., and Randall Balmer, eds. Modern Christian Revivals . Papers presented at the conference “Modern Christian Revivals, a Comparative Perspective,” Wheaton College, 30 March–1 April 1989. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

A collection of essays on various periods of revival in colonial North America, Britain, Norway, China, Latin America, Canada, and the United States; these essays place American Awakenings in a global context.

Hardman, Keith J. The Spiritual Awakeners: American Revivalists from Solomon Stoddard to D. L. Moody . Chicago: Moody Press, 1983.

Brief cultural biographies of more than a dozen influential preachers emphasize the role that individuals played in promoting the Awakenings. Portraits of George Whitefield, John and Charles Wesley, and Samuel Mills situate the Awakenings in terms of an international evangelical movement.

McClymond, Michael J., ed. Embodying the Spirit: New Perspectives on North American Revivalism . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

McClymond, a professor of theology, extends McLoughlin’s foundational work and challenges several of his premises. McClymond’s introduction to this edited collection is the most comprehensive survey of the field in the early 21st century, and the essays offer new perspectives on revivals from the 18th to the 20th centuries.

McLoughlin, William G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977 . Chicago History of American Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

An essential text for any serious student of the awakening as a recurring religious phenomenon in American history. McLoughlin’s accounts of the Third and Fourth Great Awakenings continue to shape much of the subsequent scholarly discourse.

Sweet, William Warren. Revivalism in America: Its Origin, Growth, and Decline . New York: Scribner’s, 1944.

Sweet’s history of the Awakenings and revival culture is notable because it was one of the first to forecast an end to the Awakenings, predicting that a surge of secularism and science would forever discredit the emotional religion at the heart of evangelicalism.

Taves, Anne. Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

A history of the involuntary physiological behavior and supernatural phenomena associated with revivals, focusing on ecclesiastical, scientific, and psychological attempts to explain them.

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Jonathan Edwards (born October 5, 1703, East Windsor, Connecticut [U.S.]—died March 22, 1758, Princeton , New Jersey) was the greatest theologian and philosopher of British American Puritanism , stimulator of the religious revival known as the “ Great Awakening ,” and one of the forerunners of the age of Protestant missionary expansion in the 19th century.

Edwards’s father, Timothy, was pastor of the church at East Windsor, Connecticut; his mother, Esther, was a daughter of Solomon Stoddard, pastor of the church at Northampton , Massachusetts . Jonathan was the fifth child and only son among 11 children; he grew up in an atmosphere of Puritan piety , affection, and learning. After a rigorous schooling at home, he entered Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, at the age of 13. He was graduated in 1720 but remained at New Haven for two years, studying divinity. After a brief New York pastorate (1722–23), he received the M.A. degree in 1723; during most of 1724–26 he was a tutor at Yale. In 1727 he became his grandfather’s colleague at Northampton. In the same year, he married Sarah Pierrepont, who combined a deep, often ecstatic, piety with personal winsomeness and practical good sense. To them were born 11 children.

The manuscripts that survive from his student days exhibit Edwards’s remarkable powers of observation and analysis (especially displayed in “ Of Insects”), the fascination that the English scientist Isaac Newton’s optical theories held for him (“ Of the Rainbow”), and his ambition to publish scientific and philosophical works in confutation of materialism and atheism (“ Natural Philosophy”). Throughout his life he habitually studied with pen in hand, recording his thoughts in numerous hand-sewn notebooks; one of these, his “Catalogue” of books, demonstrates the wide variety of his interests.

Edwards did not accept his theological inheritance passively. In his “ Personal Narrative” he confesses that, from his childhood on, his mind “had been full of objections” against the doctrine of predestination —i.e., that God sovereignly chooses some to salvation but rejects others to everlasting torment; “it used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me.” Though he gradually worked through his intellectual objections, it was only with his conversion (early in 1721) that he came to a “delightful conviction” of divine sovereignty , to a “new sense” of God’s glory revealed in Scripture and in nature. This became the centre of Edwards’s piety: a direct, intuitive apprehension of God in all his glory, a sight and taste of Christ’s majesty and beauty far beyond all “notional” understanding, immediately imparted to the soul (as a 1734 sermon title puts it) by “a divine and supernatural light.” This alone confers worth on humanity, and in this consists salvation. What such a God does must be right—hence Edwards’s cosmic optimism. The acceptance and affirmation of God as he is and does and the love of God simply because he is God became central motifs in all of Edwards’s preaching.

Under the influence of Puritan and other Reformed divines, the Cambridge Platonists , and British philosopher-scientists such as Newton and Locke , Edwards began to sketch in his manuscripts the outlines of a “ Rational Account” of the doctrines of Christianity in terms of contemporary philosophy . In the essay “ Of Being,” he argued from the inconceivability of absolute Nothing to the existence of God as the eternal omnipresent Being. It was also inconceivable to him that anything should exist (even universal Being) apart from consciousness ; hence, material things exist only as ideas in perceiving minds; the universe depends for its being every moment on the knowledge and creative will of God; and “spirits only are properly substance.” Further, if all knowledge is ultimately from sensation (Locke) and if a sense perception is merely God’s method of communicating ideas to the mind, then all knowledge is directly dependent on the divine will to reveal; and a saving knowledge of God and spiritual things is possible only to those who have received the gift of the “new sense.” This grace is independent of human effort and is “irresistible,” for the perception of God’s beauty and goodness that it confers is in its very nature a glad “consent.” Nevertheless, God decrees conversion and a holy life as well as ultimate felicity; and he has so constituted things that “means of grace” (e.g., sermons, sacraments, even the fear of hell) are employed by the Spirit in conversion, though not as “proper causes.” Thus, the predestinarian preacher could appeal to the emotions and wills of humankind.

At Stoddard’s death in 1729, Edwards became sole occupant of the Northampton pulpit, the most important in Massachusetts outside of Boston. In his first published sermon, preached in 1731 to the Boston clergy and significantly entitled God Glorified in the Work of Redemption, by the Greatness of Man’s Dependence upon Him, in the Whole of It , Edwards blamed New England’s moral ills on its assumption of religious and moral self-sufficiency. Because God is the saints’ whole good, faith, which abases man and exalts God, must be insisted on as the only means of salvation. The English colonists’ enterprising spirit made them susceptible to a version of Arminianism (deriving from the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius ), which was popular in the Anglican church and spreading among Dissenters; it minimized the disabling effects of original sin , stressed free will , and tended to make morality the essence of religion .

Against these ideas Edwards also delivered a series of sermons on “ Justification by Faith Alone” in November 1734. The result was a great revival in Northampton and along the Connecticut River Valley in the winter and spring of 1734–35, during which period more than 300 of Edwards’s people made professions of faith. His subsequent report, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737), made a profound impression in America and Europe, particularly through his description of the types and stages of conversion experience.

In 1740–42 came the Great Awakening throughout the colonies. George Whitefield , a highly successful evangelist in the English Methodist movement, and Gilbert Tennent , a Presbyterian minister from New Jersey , drew huge crowds; their “pathetical” (i.e., emotional) sermons resulted in violent emotional response and mass conversions. Edwards himself, though he held his own congregation relatively calm, employed the “preaching of terror” on several occasions, as in the Enfield sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741).

The Awakening produced not only conversions and changed lives but also excesses, disorders, and ecclesiastical and civil disruptions. Though increasingly critical of attitudes and practices associated with the revival, to the extent of personally rebuking Whitefield, Edwards maintained that it was a genuine work of God, which needed to be furthered and purified. In defense and criticism of the Awakening he wrote The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741), Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1742), and A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746).

In the Affections , Edwards insisted, against the revival critics’ ideal of sober, “reasonable” religion, that “the essence of all true religion lies in holy love,” a love that proves its genuineness by its inner quality and practical results. In 1749 he edited, with “Reflections,” the memoirs of David Brainerd , a young New Light revivalist who became a Presbyterian missionary to Native Americans and died in 1747. The volume became a highly influential missionary biography. Edwards’s Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer (1747), written in support of a proposed international “concert of prayer” for “the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth,” helped to remove a major ideological barrier to missionary activity by arguing that the worst of the “great tribulations” (prophesied in the book of Revelation to John as preceding the millennium) were already past and that the church could thus look forward to an increasing success of the gospel.

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Rule Britannia! The English Empire, 1660–1763

Great Awakening and Enlightenment

OpenStaxCollege

[latexpage]

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the significance of the Great Awakening
• Describe the genesis, central ideas, and effects of the Enlightenment in British North America

Two major cultural movements further strengthened Anglo-American colonists’ connection to Great Britain: the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment. Both movements began in Europe, but they advocated very different ideas: the Great Awakening promoted a fervent, emotional religiosity, while the Enlightenment encouraged the pursuit of reason in all things. On both sides of the Atlantic, British subjects grappled with these new ideas.

THE FIRST GREAT AWAKENING

During the eighteenth century, the British Atlantic experienced an outburst of Protestant revivalism known as the First Great Awakening . (A Second Great Awakening would take place in the 1800s.) During the First Great Awakening, evangelists came from the ranks of several Protestant denominations: Congregationalists, Anglicans (members of the Church of England), and Presbyterians. They rejected what appeared to be sterile, formal modes of worship in favor of a vigorous emotional religiosity. Whereas Martin Luther and John Calvin had preached a doctrine of predestination and close reading of scripture, new evangelical ministers spread a message of personal and experiential faith that rose above mere book learning. Individuals could bring about their own salvation by accepting Christ, an especially welcome message for those who had felt excluded by traditional Protestantism: women, the young, and people at the lower end of the social spectrum.

The Great Awakening caused a split between those who followed the evangelical message (the “New Lights”) and those who rejected it (the “Old Lights”). The elite ministers in British America were firmly Old Lights, and they censured the new revivalism as chaos. Indeed, the revivals did sometimes lead to excess. In one notorious incident in 1743, an influential New Light minister named James Davenport urged his listeners to burn books. The next day, he told them to burn their clothes as a sign of their casting off the sinful trappings of the world. He then took off his own pants and threw them into the fire, but a woman saved them and tossed them back to Davenport, telling him he had gone too far.

Another outburst of Protestant revivalism began in New Jersey, led by a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church named Theodorus Frelinghuysen. Frelinghuysen’s example inspired other ministers, including Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian. Tennant helped to spark a Presbyterian revival in the Middle Colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey), in part by founding a seminary to train other evangelical clergyman. New Lights also founded colleges in Rhode Island and New Hampshire that would later become Brown University and Dartmouth College.

In Northampton, Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards led still another explosion of evangelical fervor. Edwards’s best-known sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” used powerful word imagery to describe the terrors of hell and the possibilities of avoiding damnation by personal conversion ( [link] ). One passage reads: “The wrath of God burns against them [sinners], their damnation don’t slumber, the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them, the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened her mouth under them.” Edwards’s revival spread along the Connecticut River Valley, and news of the event spread rapidly through the frequent reprinting of his famous sermon.

The foremost evangelical of the Great Awakening was an Anglican minister named George Whitefield. Like many evangelical ministers, Whitefield was itinerant, traveling the countryside instead of having his own church and congregation. Between 1739 and 1740, he electrified colonial listeners with his brilliant oratory.

Not everyone embraced George Whitefield and other New Lights. Many established Old Lights decried the way the new evangelical religions appealed to people’s passions, rather than to traditional religious values. The two illustrations below present two very different visions of George Whitefield ( [link] ).

Compare the two images above. On the left is an illustration for Whitefield’s memoirs, while on the right is a cartoon satirizing the circus-like atmosphere that his preaching seemed to attract (Dr. Squintum was a nickname for Whitefield, who was cross-eyed). How do these two artists portray the same man? What emotions are the illustration for his memoirs intended to evoke? What details can you find in the cartoon that indicate the artist’s distaste for the preacher?

The Great Awakening saw the rise of several Protestant denominations, including Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists (who emphasized adult baptism of converted Christians rather than infant baptism). These new churches gained converts and competed with older Protestant groups like Anglicans (members of the Church of England), Congregationalists (the heirs of Puritanism in America), and Quakers. The influence of these older Protestant groups, such as the New England Congregationalists, declined because of the Great Awakening. Nonetheless, the Great Awakening touched the lives of thousands on both sides of the Atlantic and provided a shared experience in the eighteenth-century British Empire.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT

The Enlightenment , or the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural movement in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason over superstition and science over blind faith. Using the power of the press, Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Voltaire questioned accepted knowledge and spread new ideas about openness, investigation, and religious tolerance throughout Europe and the Americas. Many consider the Enlightenment a major turning point in Western civilization, an age of light replacing an age of darkness.

Several ideas dominated Enlightenment thought, including rationalism, empiricism, progressivism, and cosmopolitanism. Rationalism is the idea that humans are capable of using their faculty of reason to gain knowledge. This was a sharp turn away from the prevailing idea that people needed to rely on scripture or church authorities for knowledge. Empiricism promotes the idea that knowledge comes from experience and observation of the world. Progressivism is the belief that through their powers of reason and observation, humans could make unlimited, linear progress over time; this belief was especially important as a response to the carnage and upheaval of the English Civil Wars in the seventeenth century. Finally, cosmopolitanism reflected Enlightenment thinkers’ view of themselves as citizens of the world and actively engaged in it, as opposed to being provincial and close-minded. In all, Enlightenment thinkers endeavored to be ruled by reason, not prejudice.

The Freemasons were a fraternal society that advocated Enlightenment principles of inquiry and tolerance. Freemasonry originated in London coffeehouses in the early eighteenth century, and Masonic lodges (local units) soon spread throughout Europe and the British colonies. One prominent Freemason, Benjamin Franklin, stands as the embodiment of the Enlightenment in British America ( [link] ). Born in Boston in 1706 to a large Puritan family, Franklin loved to read, although he found little beyond religious publications in his father’s house. In 1718 he was apprenticed to his brother to work in a print shop, where he learned how to be a good writer by copying the style he found in the Spectator , which his brother printed. At the age of seventeen, the independent-minded Franklin ran away, eventually ending up in Quaker Philadelphia. There he began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette in the late 1720s, and in 1732 he started his annual publication Poor Richard: An Almanack , in which he gave readers much practical advice, such as “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Franklin subscribed to deism , an Enlightenment-era belief in a God who created, but has no continuing involvement in, the world and the events within it. Deists also advanced the belief that personal morality—an individual’s moral compass, leading to good works and actions—is more important than strict church doctrines. Franklin’s deism guided his many philanthropic projects. In 1731, he established a reading library that became the Library Company of Philadelphia. In 1743, he founded the American Philosophical Society to encourage the spirit of inquiry. In 1749, he provided the foundation for the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1751, he helped found Pennsylvania Hospital.

His career as a printer made Franklin wealthy and well-respected. When he retired in 1748, he devoted himself to politics and scientific experiments. His most famous work, on electricity, exemplified Enlightenment principles. Franklin observed that lightning strikes tended to hit metal objects and reasoned that he could therefore direct lightning through the placement of metal objects during an electrical storm. He used this knowledge to advocate the use of lightning rods: metal poles connected to wires directing lightning’s electrical charge into the ground and saving wooden homes in cities like Philadelphia from catastrophic fires. He published his findings in 1751, in Experiments and Observations on Electricity .

Franklin also wrote of his “rags to riches” tale, his Memoir , in the 1770s and 1780s. This story laid the foundation for the American Dream of upward social mobility.

Visit the Worldly Ways section of PBS’s Benjamin Franklin site to see an interactive map showing Franklin’s overseas travels and his influence around the world. His diplomatic, political, scientific, and business achievements had great effects in many countries.

THE FOUNDING OF GEORGIA

The reach of Enlightenment thought was both broad and deep. In the 1730s, it even prompted the founding of a new colony. Having witnessed the terrible conditions of debtors’ prison, as well as the results of releasing penniless debtors onto the streets of London, James Oglethorpe, a member of Parliament and advocate of social reform, petitioned King George II for a charter to start a new colony. George II, understanding the strategic advantage of a British colony standing as a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish Florida, granted the charter to Oglethorpe and twenty like-minded proprietors in 1732. Oglethorpe led the settlement of the colony, which was called Georgia in honor of the king. In 1733, he and 113 immigrants arrived on the ship Anne . Over the next decade, Parliament funded the migration of twenty-five hundred settlers, making Georgia the only government-funded colonial project.

Oglethorpe’s vision for Georgia followed the ideals of the Age of Reason , seeing it as a place for England’s “worthy poor” to start anew. To encourage industry, he gave each male immigrant fifty acres of land, tools, and a year’s worth of supplies. In Savannah, the Oglethorpe Plan provided for a utopia: “an agrarian model of sustenance while sustaining egalitarian values holding all men as equal.”

Oglethorpe’s vision called for alcohol and slavery to be banned. However, colonists who relocated from other colonies, especially South Carolina, disregarded these prohibitions. Despite its proprietors’ early vision of a colony guided by Enlightenment ideals and free of slavery, by the 1750s, Georgia was producing quantities of rice grown and harvested by slaves.

Section Summary

The eighteenth century saw a host of social, religious, and intellectual changes across the British Empire. While the Great Awakening emphasized vigorously emotional religiosity, the Enlightenment promoted the power of reason and scientific observation. Both movements had lasting impacts on the colonies. The beliefs of the New Lights of the First Great Awakening competed with the religions of the first colonists, and the religious fervor in Great Britain and her North American colonies bound the eighteenth-century British Atlantic together in a shared, common experience. The British colonist Benjamin Franklin gained fame on both sides of the Atlantic as a printer, publisher, and scientist. He embodied Enlightenment ideals in the British Atlantic with his scientific experiments and philanthropic endeavors. Enlightenment principles even guided the founding of the colony of Georgia, although those principles could not stand up to the realities of colonial life, and slavery soon took hold in the colony.

Review Questions

What was the First Great Awakening?

Which of the following is not a tenet of the Enlightenment?

Who were the Freemasons, and why were they significant?

The Freemasons were a fraternal society that originated in London coffeehouses in the early eighteenth century. They advocated Enlightenment principles of inquiry and tolerance. Masonic lodges soon spread throughout Europe and the British colonies, creating a shared experience on both sides of the Atlantic and spreading Enlightenment intellectual currents throughout the British Empire. Benjamin Franklin was a prominent Freemason.

Great Awakening and Enlightenment Copyright © 2014 by OpenStaxCollege is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

TeacherServe Essays

The First Great Awakening

By Heyrman, Christine Leigh (NHC Fellow, 1985–86)

What historians call “the first Great Awakening” can best be described as a revitalization of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s. That revival was part of a much broader movement, an evangelical upsurge taking place simultaneously on the other side of the Atlantic, most notably in England, Scotland, and Germany. In all these Protestant cultures during the middle decades of the eighteenth century, a new Age of Faith rose to counter the currents of the Age of Enlightenment, to reaffirm the view that being truly religious meant trusting the heart rather than the head, prizing feeling more than thinking, and relying on biblical revelation rather than human reason.

History / Education Studies / American History / Christianity / Thirteen Colonies / Puritans / First Great Awakening / Protestantism /

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