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The Great Awakening was a religious movement that swept across parts of the British colonies in North America in the mid-1700s. Protestant Christian preachers taught that good behavior and individual faith were more important than book learning and Bible reading.
- Overview
- The First Great Awakening
- Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield
- What do you think?
An explosion in religious revivalism rocked both England and the American colonies in the eighteenth century.
During the 18th century, the British Atlantic experienced an outburst of Protestant revivalism known as the First Great Awakening (a Second Great Awakening took 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 First 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.
One 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 imagery to describe the terrors of hell and the possibilities of avoiding damnation by personal conversion. 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 (pronounced "whit-field"). 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.
If you had lived during this era, would you have joined in the revivals of the Great Awakening? Why or why not?
Why do you think the ideas of the New Lights were appealing to Protestants?
Do you think cultural movements like the Great Awakening contributed to the separation between the American colonies and Great Britain, or did they bring people on both sides of the Atlantic closer together?
[Notes and attributions]
The Great Awakening Explained: The Great Awakening was a religious revival in the American Colonies during the 1730s and 1740s. The revival changed America's culture and brought many...
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Apr 3, 2019 · The Great Awakening was a series of reintroductions or revivals that had an impact on the English Colonies in North America during the 1730s and 1740s. The ‘Awakenings’ were the result of powerful preachings and religious movements.
Mar 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...
Great Awakening, religious revival in the British American colonies between about 1720 and the 1740s. It was part of the religious ferment that swept western Europe in the latter part of the 17th century and early 18th century. Learn more about the Great Awakening.
Many histories of the United States talk about the Great Awakening, the effort by some religious leaders and communities to revive and personalize piety in the eighteenth-century Protestant world, as one of the key events before the American Revolution.
