A manifestation of philosophical, political, economic, institutional, and demographic changes, the Great Awakening was a multifaceted religious movement that swept through American Protestantism beginning in the 1720s the repercussions of which shaped the religious outlook of America’s founding generation. The movement’s ideological impetus had its beginnings in Europe in the late 1600s, when visionaries like Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke began to describe a universe different from the one previously conceived by religious theorists. This new concept involved a rational rather than capricious order to the universe, one in which, as New England Great Awakening preacher Jonathan Edwards proclaimed, God’s overpowering goodness was “irresistible.”
Out of the philosophical position of rationalism, residents of western Europe and the American colonies gained increasing understanding of and control over their world. Navigation instruments, printing presses, vaccinations against epidemics, and botanical innovations were among the discoveries and inventions that convinced these innovators that the world was subject to predictable laws. The result was erosion of the general belief in a vengeful God who would arbitrarily choose to save some souls and damn others. A forgiving God gained ascendancy, one who would grant “grace” (forgiveness and salvation) to anyone who would profess faith and dedication. These new ideas had had their origins in Europe, but they acquired special power in the North America colonies, where increasing ideological independence was bolstered by the growing number of people in whom profitable exports and plentiful, inexpensive land bred optimism. For many American yeoman farmers, merchants, and artisans, increasing economic independence convinced them that they could master and improve their own fate, with or without divine assistance. By 1720 church attendance had declined in all the American colonies.
At the same time American religion faced new institutional challenges. English colonists had been accustomed to a national church sanctioned by the government and supported by taxes levied on members and nonmembers alike. New Englanders had replicated this system, but with a Congregational instead of an Anglican Church. In the South and in parts of New York, the Anglican Church
In the SubjetSs, or zealous Promoters, of this Work have been inju-rioufly blamed.
Part IV. Shewing what Things are to be cor-redled or avoided, in promoting this Work, or in our Behaviour under it.
Part V. Shewing pofi-tivdy what ought lo be done to promote this Work,
Reigned, but in most of the colonies there were also vigorous alternative sects—Quakers, Mennonites, and Dutch Reformed, with a few Roman Catholics and Jews added to the mix. Traditional Native American—and even African—religious practices also attracted some English followers. Only in Pennsylvania were citizens free to join the church of their choice without also being taxed in support of the established denomination. Because there were few educational institutions to train ministers and no Anglican bishops in the colonies, there were not enough educated and credentialed religious officials to maintain theological discipline and consistency in American churches. American clergy had to return to England to be ordained, and often their congregations viewed them as incompetent, aloof, and uninspiring. The result by the 1720s was a restless mixture of institutions and individuals ripe for dramatic remodeling.
Transformation came in the form of “revivals” begun by local ministers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts as early as the 1720s. In the Raritan Valley region of New Jersey, much of the ideological leadership came from Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen, a Dutch Protestant immigrant of the pietist tradition who, worried that American Christians had grown too lax in the practice of their faith, preached stirring sermons differentiating between the “broad way” and the “narrow way.” The broad way was easier and more attractive, Frelinghuysen argued, but only the narrow way would result in “Eternal Life, everlasting Glory and everlasting Joy and Salvation.” Frelinghuysen’s emotionally stirring sermons prepared the way for Presbyterian evangelical preacher William Tennent, Sr., and his three sons to echo a similar message in Pennsylvania and in the western mountains of Virginia. Convinced that individual and community salvation required that community members dedicate themselves to serving the Lord, preachers like Frelinghuysen, the Tennents, and their followers stressed the importance of biblical scripture.
Their revival movement, which gathered momentum during the 1730s, followed a format similar to that of British minister John Wesley’s. He traveled through England and the colonial South preaching a religion that stressed social service to prisoners, slaves, and other oppressed people and a disdain for the liturgy of traditional Protestant churches. Wesley also emphasized a personal conversion experience frequently involving a dramatic and emotional public confession of sins and embracing of renewed faith, which one observer described as “bitter shrieking and screaming” and “convulsionlike tremblings.” The final spark of America’s Great Awakening was lit by rebel Anglican minister George Whitefield, who arrived from England, almost single-handedly coalesced a movement, and then left its expansion in the hands of an equally charismatic
New Englander, Jonathan Edwards. Edwards and other itinerant preachers responded to invitations that helped build a network of revivalist communities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and a few outposts in New York, Maryland, western Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina.
Wesley had worked with Whitefield in England, and the two had developed a compelling preaching style that drew thousands to hear them wherever they spoke. By 1741 Whitefield had become the first person who almost everyone in all the colonies had seen or heard of. Many men who had abandoned the boredom of church services turned out to hear Whitefield, and tens of thousands of women were drawn to carry out their own evangelizing. Jonathan Edwards’s wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards,
Some Thoughts
Concerning the prefent
Revival of Religion
NEW-ENGLAND,
And the Way in which it ought to be acknowledged Und promoted,
Humbly offered to the Publicfe, in a
TREATISE on that Subjed.
In Five Pa r t s ;
Part I. Shewing that the Work that has of late been going on in this Land, is a glorious Work of God.
Part II. Shewing the Obligations that all lat .under, to acknowlege, rejoice in and promote this Work, and the great Danger of the contrary.
World History
