First Great Awakening

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The First Awakening (or The Great Awakening) was a Christian revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of deep personal revelation of their need of salvation by Jesus Christ. Pulling away from ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made Christianity intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual conviction and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality.

It brought Christianity to African slaves and was a monumental event in New England that challenged established authority. It incited rancor and division between old traditionalists who insisted on the continuing importance of ritual and doctrine, and the new revivalists, who encouraged emotional involvement and personal commitment. It had a major impact in reshaping the Congregational church, the Presbyterian church, the Dutch Reformed Church, and the German Reformed denomination, and strengthened the small Baptist and Methodist denominations. It had little impact on Anglicans and Quakers.

Unlike the Second Great Awakening, which began about 1800 and which reached out to the unchurched, the First Great Awakening focused on people who were already church members. It changed their rituals, their piety and their self-awareness. To the evangelical imperatives of Reformation Protestantism, 18th century American Christians added emphases on divine outpourings of the Holy Spirit and conversions that implanted within new believers an intense love for God. Revivals encapsulated those hallmarks and disseminated the newly created evangelicalism into the early republic.

International dimension

The evangelical revival was international in scope, affecting predominantly Protestant countries of Europe. The emotional response of churchgoers in Bristol and London in 1737, and of the Kingswood colliers with white gutters on their cheeks caused by tears in 1739 under the preaching of George Whitefield, marked the start of the English awakening. Historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom sees it as part of a "great international Protestant upheaval" that also created Pietism in Germany, the Evangelical Revival and Methodism in England. Revivalism, a critical component of the Great Awakening, actually began in the 1620s in Scotland among Presbyterians, and featured itinerant preachers.

American colonies

Although the idea of a "great awakening" has been contested by Butler (1982) as vague and exaggerated, it is clear that the period was a time of increased religious activity, particularly in New England. The First Great Awakening led to changes in Americans' understanding of God, themselves, the world around them, and religion. In the Middle and Southern colonies, especially in the "back country" regions, the Awakening was influential among Presbyterians. In the southern Tidewater and Low Country, northern Baptist and Methodist preachers converted both whites and blacks, enslaved and free. The whites especially welcomed blacks into active roles in congregations, including as preachers. Before the American Revolution, the first black Baptist churches were founded in the South in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia; in Petersburg, Virginia, two black Baptist churches were founded. Samuel Davies, a Presbyterian minister who would later become the fourth president of Princeton University, was noted for converting African slaves to Christianity in unusually large numbers, and is credited with the first sustained proselytization of slaves in Virginia.

Jonathan Edwards

The revival began with Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts. Edwards came from Puritan, Calvinist roots, but emphasized the importance and power of immediate, personal religious experience. Edwards was said to be 'solemn, with a distinct and careful enunciation, and a slow cadence.' His sermons were powerful and attracted a large following. The Anglican preacher George Whitefield, visiting from England, continued the movement, traveling across the colonies and preaching in a more dramatic and emotional style, accepting everyone into his audiences.

Winiarski (2005) examines Edwards's preaching in 1741, especially his famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." At this point, Edwards countenanced the "noise" of the Great Awakening, but his approach to revivalism became more moderate and critical in the years immediately following.

George Whitefield

The arrival of the young Anglican preacher George Whitefield probably sparked the religious conflagration. Whitefield, whose reputation as a great pulpit and open-air orator had preceded his visit, traveled through the colonies in 1739 and 1740. Everywhere he attracted large and emotional crowds, eliciting countless conversions as well as considerable controversy. The English minister George Whitefield, who declared the whole world his "parish," sparked the Great Awakening. God, Whitefield proclaimed, was merciful. Men and women were not predestined to damnation, but could be saved by repenting of their sins. Whitefield appealed to the passions of his listeners, powerfully sketching the boundless joy of salvation and the horrors of damnation. Critics condemned his "enthusiasm", his censoriousness, and his extemporaneous and itinerant preaching. His techniques were copied by numerous imitators both lay and clerical. They became itinerant preachers themselves, spreading the Great Awakening from New England to Georgia, among rich and poor, educated and illiterate, and in the back country as well as in seaboard towns and cities. The first new Congregational church congregation and worship building in Massachusetts in the Great Awakening period of 1730–1760 was at the newly incorporated town of Uxbridge. It was headed by the newly called Pastor Rev. Nathan Webb, a native of Braintree, who remained in the ministry there for the next 41 years. His student, Samuel Spring, served as a chaplain in the American Revolutionary War, and started the Andover Seminary and the Massachusetts Missionary Society.

Benjamin Franklin became an enthusiastic supporter of Whitefield. Franklin, a Deist who rarely attended church, did not subscribe to Whitefield's theology, but he admired Whitefield for exhorting people to worship God through good works. Franklin printed Whitefield's sermons on the front page of his Gazette, devoting 45 issues to Whitefield's activities. Franklin used the power of his press to spread Whitefield's fame by publishing all of Whitefield's sermons and journals. Many of Franklin's publications between 1739-1741 contained information about Whitefield's work, and helped promote the evangelical movement in America. Franklin remained a friend and supporter of Whitefield until Whitefield's death in 1770.

Impact on individuals

The new style of sermons and the way people practiced their faith breathed new life into religion in America. Participants became passionately and emotionally involved in their religion, rather than passively listening to intellectual discourse in a detached manner. Ministers who used this new style of preaching were generally called "new lights", while the preachers who remained unemotional were referred to as "old lights". People affected by the revival began to study the Bible at home. This effectively decentralized the means of informing the public on religious matters and was akin to the individualistic trends present in Europe during the Protestant Reformation. The Awakening played a major role in the lives of women, especially, though rarely were they allowed to preach or take public roles.

The Awakening led many women to be introspective; some kept diaries or wrote memoirs. The autobiography of Hannah Heaton (1721–94), a farm wife of North Haven, Connecticut, tells of her experiences in the Great Awakening, her encounters with Satan, her intellectual and spiritual development, and daily life on the farm.

Schisms and conflict

The Calvinist denominations were especially affected. For example, Congregational churches in New England experienced 98 schisms, which in Connecticut also had impact on which group would be considered "official" for tax purposes. These splits were between the New Lights (those who were influenced by the Great Awakening) and the Old Lights (those who were more traditional). It is estimated in New England that in the churches there were about 1/3 each of New Lights, Old Lights, and those who saw both sides as valid.

See also

• American philosophy
• Second Great Awakening
• Christian revival

Further reading

Scholarly studies

• Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People (1972) (ISBN 0-385-11164-9)
• Bonomi, Patricia U. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America Oxford University Press, 1988
• Bumsted, J. M. "What Must I Do to Be Saved?": The Great Awakening in Colonial America 1976, Thomson Publishing, ISBN 0-03-086651-0.
• Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. 1990.
• Conforti, Joseph A. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition and American Culture University of North Carolina Press. 1995.
• Fisher, Linford D. The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Gaustad, Edwin S. The Great Awakening in New England (1957)
• Gaustad, Edwin S. "The Theological Effects of the Great Awakening in New England," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 40, No. 4. (Mar., 1954), pp. 681–706. in JSTOR
• Goen, C. C. Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740-1800: Strict Congregationalists and Separate Baptists in the Great Awakening 1987, Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 0-8195-6133-9.
• Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity 1989.
• Heimert, Alan. Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (1966)
• Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 1982, emphasis on Baptists
• Kidd, Thomas S. The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (2009) ISBN 0-300-15846-7.
• Kidd, Thomas S. God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (2010).
• Lambert, Frank. Pedlar in Divinity: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals; (1994)
• Lambert, Frank. "The First Great Awakening: Whose interpretive fiction?" The New England Quarterly, vol.68, no.4, pp. 650, 1995
• Lambert, Frank. Inventing the "Great Awakening" (1999).
• McLoughlin, William G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977 (1978).
• Schmidt, Leigh Eric. Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revivalism (2001)
• Schmotter, James W. "The Irony of Clerical Professionalism: New England's Congregational Ministers and the Great Awakening", American Quarterly, 31 (1979), a statistical study in JSTOR
• Stout, Harry. The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (1991)

Historiography

• Butler, Jon. "Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction." Journal of American History 69 (1982): 305-25. in JSTOR
• Goff, Philip. "Revivals and Revolution: Historiographic Turns since Alan Heimert's Religion and the American Mind." Church History 1998 67(4): 695-721. Issn: 0009-6407 full text online
• McLaughlin, William G. "Essay Review: the American Revolution as a Religious Revival: 'The Millennium in One Country.'" New England Quarterly 1967 40(1): 99-110. Jstor

Primary sources

• Jonathan Edwards, (C. Goen, editor) The Great-Awakening: A Faithful Narrative Collected contemporary comments and letters; 1972, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-01437-6.
• Alan Heimert and Perry Miller ed.; The Great Awakening: Documents Illustrating the Crisis and Its Consequences 1967
• Davies, Samuel. Sermons on Important Subjects. Edited by Albert Barnes. 3 vols. 1845. reprint 1967
• Gillies, John. Memoirs of Rev. George Whitefield. New Haven, CN: Whitmore and Buckingham, and H. Mansfield, 1834.
• Jarratt, Devereux. The Life of the Reverend Devereux Jarratt. Religion in America, ed. Edwin S. Gaustad. New York, Arno, 1969.
• Whitefield, George. George Whitefield's Journals. Edited by Iain Murray. London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1960.
• Whitefield, George. Letters of George Whitefield. Edited by S. M. Houghton. Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976.

External links

• Lesson plan on First Great Awakening
• The Great Awakening Comes to Weathersfield, Connecticut: Nathan Cole's Spiritual Travels
• "I Believe It Is Because I Am a Poor Indian": Samsom Occom's Life as an Indian Minister
• "The Joseph Bellamy House: The Great Awakening in Puritan New England", a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
• Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" text