Great Awakening Outline Notes

Great Awakening Outline Notes

Great Awakening: On the Road to Revolution

3 major steps that changed the American intellectual climate in a way that laid the groundwork for Revolution:

1)The Great Awakening

2)The French and Indian War

3)The Enlightenment

The Great Awakening, which emphasized a personal experience of God, is hard to study.

"...hard to define, being one of those popular movements which have no obvious beginning or end, no pitched battles or legal victories with specific dates, no constitutions or formal leaders, no easily quantifiable statistics and no formal set of beliefs." – Paul Johnson, historian

Overview:

WhoMany Preachers. Most famous were Jonathon Edwards and George Whitefield

WhatA religious movement that spread through the colonies – Emotionalism – Personal connection CATHARTIC

WhereThe American colonies. There were some sectional differences

When1730s to 1740s

WhyDry intellectualism (Reverend Lovejoy) and secularism (Halfway Covenant; commercialism; failure of Salem WT) People wanted emotionalism. Frontier influence (Madeline Stowe quote)

Origins: American and English (Tennant’s orgin): American PHENOMENON

American: Personal experience of Christ – Gilbert Tennant

Jonathon Edwards – Hellfire and Damnation “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God!”

George Whitefield – “lung boy” -- Southern colonies

(True confessions: Importance of vocabulary as a class marker)

Hurts Anglican church. Rich/poor division (Which is geographic in South) – Baptists and Methodists

ITINERENT

American churches divide: New Lights/ Old Lights

Consequences of the Great Awakening:

Undermines established institutions (Churches)

"Father Abraham, Whom have you in heaven? Any Episcopalians? No! Any Presbyterians? No! Any Independents or Seceders, New Sides or Old Sides, any Methodists? 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..." -- Whitefield

Emphasis on individualism

People get used to pitting individualism vs. institutions (eventually vs. crown)

Preview of politics/ mob, er, I mean, public gatherings

Mass communication/ community life/ increased newspaper base and readership (awk – rephrase)

Exceptionalism

"...what is now seen in America....and the very uncommon and wonderful circumstances and events of this work, seem to be me strongly to argue that God intends it as the beginning or forerunner of something vastly great." – America is different! Jonathon Edwards

Link Exceptionalism to the City on the Hill

Importance?

Debate: My graduate school in mid 90s: Road to Revolution

Morgan v. Beard

Ideas v. Economics in history