Great Awakening

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Great Awakening
First (c. 1730–1755)
Second (c. 1790–1840)
Third (c. 1850–1900)
Fourth (c. 1960–1981) view • talk • edit

The Great Awakenings were periods of rapid and dramatic religious revival in Anglo-American religious history, generally recognized as beginning in the 1730s. They have also been described as periodic revolutions in colonial religious thought.

Contents 1 Changes Amongst Religious Leadership 2 Religious Factions in the Awakening 3 Influence on political life 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading

[edit] Changes Amongst Religious Leadership

Ministers from various denominations supported the Great Awakening. Indeed, for an age of denominational strife and competition, the Awakening was strikingly ecumenical. Additionally, pastoral styles began to change. In the late colonial period, most pastors read their sermons, which were theologically dense and advanced a particular theological argument or interpretation. Leaders of the Awakening such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield had little interest in merely engaging parishioners minds; they wanted far more to elicit an emotional response from their audience, one which might yield the workings and evidence of saving grace. Some have argued that these new ministers eschewed logical or rational sermons, but this was patently not the case the vast majority of the time. Edwards, for instance, continued to preach an ardent and intellectual vision of Calvinism, with both sermons was his "transparent emotion, heartfelt sincerity,...[and] inexorable logic," which along with a sustained theme, could create quite the "cumulative impact."^[1]

[edit] Religious Factions in the Awakening

The division amongst ministers over the Awakening has tended to be described as a battle between "Old Lights" and "New Lights." In this taxonomy, Old Lights opposed the revivals in favor of traditional Christian religion, whereas New Lights saw the revivals as proof of a new outpouring of God's grace. However, this dichotomy obscures the sheer diversity of the Awakenings. Thomas Kidd has advanced a more nuanced argument, suggesting that there were three broad factions: antirevivalists, moderate Evangelicals, and radical Evangelicals. This argument is a far more convincing one, since some radicals terrified more moderate Evangelicals. For instance, James Davenport, who burned books and luxuries at public bonfires in order to humble human pretense and vanity--and once even threw his pants into the blaze^[2]--terrified both the antirevivalists and men in favor of the Awakening, such as Edwards himself.^[3]

[edit] Influence on political life

Since religion has often been used to support political platforms, the Great Awakenings have exerted significant influence on the politics of America. Joseph Tracy, the minister and historian who gave this religious phenomenon its name in his influential (and still, to many, definitive) 1842 book The Great Awakening, saw the First Great Awakening as a precursor to the War of Independence . The evangelical movement of the 1740s played a key role in the development of democratic concepts in the period of the American Revolution.^[4] The Roman authors read in the Enlightenment period taught an abstract ideal of republican government based on hierarchical social orders of king, aristocracy and commoners. It was widely believed by secular Enlightenment writers that English liberties relied on the balance of power divided between king, elite and commoners, and that social stability required hierarchal deference to the privileged class.^[5] “Puritanism … and the epidemic of evangelism of the mid-eighteenth century, had created challenges to the traditional notions of social stratification” by preaching that the Bible taught all men are equal, that the true value of a man lies in his moral behavior, not his class, and that all men can be saved. ^[6]

For another example, the abolition movement, part of the wider Second Great Awakening, eventually contributed to the crisis over slavery, which led to the American Civil War.^{[citation needed]}

The Third Great Awakening was a major influence in guiding the U.S. through the Great Depression and World War II.^{[citation needed]}

The idea of an "awakening" implies a slumber or passivity during secular or less religious times. Thus, awakening is a term which originates and is embraced often and primarily by evangelical Christians.^[7] In recent times, the idea of "awakenings" in US history has been put forth by conservative US evangelicals.^[8]

[edit] See also

• Bible belt
• Generations (book)

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Collection of Resources: Biographies, Essays, Sermon Texts, etc.
• Jim Wallis; "The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America"; 2008 HarperOne, ISBN 9780060558291
• Alan Heimert; Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966
• Robert William Fogel; The Fourth Great Awakening & the Future of Egalitarianism; 2000, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226256626
• Alan Heimert and Perry Miller ed.; The Great Awakening: Documents Illustrating the Crisis and Its Consequences; New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967
• Frank Lambert; Inventing the Great Awakening Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
• Frank Lambert; Pedlar in Divinity: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994
• William G. McLoughlin; Revivals, Awakenings and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977 (1978)
• Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield, 1997, Banner of Truth, ISBN 0851517129. This is a reprint of the original work published in 1842.
• Harry Stout; The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism;Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans, 1991