1.
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards, 1741
The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ.—That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.
You probably are not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell, but do not see the hand of God in it; but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw his hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to hold up a person that is suspended in it.
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.
2.
NationalHumanitiesCenter, TeacherServe website
Author: Christine Leigh Heyrman
Department of History, University of Delaware
The earliest manifestations of the American phase of this phenomenon—the beginnings of the First Great Awakening—appeared among Presbyterians in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Led by the Tennent family—Reverend William Tennent, a Scots-Irish immigrant, and his four sons, all clergymen—the Presbyterians not only initiated religious revivals in those colonies during the 1730s but also established a seminary to train clergymen whose fervid, heartfelt preaching would bring sinners to experience evangelical conversion. Originally known as “the LogCollege,” it is better known today as PrincetonUniversity.
Religious enthusiasm quickly spread from the Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies to the Congregationalists (Puritans) and Baptists of New England. By the 1740s, the clergymen of these churches were conducting revivals throughout that region,
These early revivals in the northern colonies inspired some converts to become missionaries to the American South. In the late 1740s, Presbyterian preachers from New York and New Jersey began proselytizing in the Virginia Piedmont; and by the 1750s, some members of a group known as the Separate Baptists moved from New England to central North Carolina and quickly extended their influence to surrounding colonies. By the eve of the American Revolution, their evangelical converts accounted for about ten percent of all southern churchgoers.
The First Great Awakening also gained impetus from the wide-ranging American travels of an English preacher, George Whitefield. Although Whitefield had been ordained as a minister in the Church of England, he later allied with other Anglican clergymen who shared his evangelical bent, most notably John and Charles Wesley. Together they led a movement to reform the Church of England (much as the Puritans had attempted earlier to reform that church) which resulted in the founding of the MethodistChurch late in the eighteenth century.
3. Cause and effect of the Great Awakening; Establishment of Schools
1636 - Harvard College, the first higher education institution in what is now the United States, is established in Newtowne (now Cambridge), Massachusetts.
1638 - The first printing press in the American Colonies is set up at HarvardCollege.
1640 - Henry Dunster becomes President of Harvard College. He teaches all the courses himself!
1642 - The Massachusetts Bay School Law is passed. It requires that parents assure their children know the principles of religion and the capital laws of the commonwealth.
1647 - The Massachusetts Law of 1647, also known as the Old Deluder Satan Act, is passed. It decrees that every town of at least 50 families hire a schoolmaster who would teach the town's children to read and write and that all towns of at least 100 families should have a Latin grammar school master who will prepare students to attend HarvardCollege.
1690 - John Locke publishes his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which conveys his belief that the human mind is a tabula rasa,or blank slate, at birth and knowledge is derived through experience, rather than innate ideas as was believed by many at that time. Locke's views concerning the mind and learning greatly influence American education.
1693 - John Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education is published, describing his views on educating upper class boys to be moral, rationally-thinking, and reflective "young gentlemen." His ideas regarding educating the masses are conveyed in On Working Schools, published in 1697, which focused on the importance of developing a work ethic.
1693 - The College of William and Mary is established in Virginia. It is the second college to open in colonial America and has the distinction of being Thomas Jefferson's college.
1730s-The Great Awakening challenges Enlightenment’s rationalist approach to religion.
1743 - Benjamin Franklin forms the American Philosophical Society, which helps bring ideas of the European Enlightenment, including those of John Locke, to colonial America. Emphasizing secularism, science, and human reason, these ideas clash with the religious dogma of the day, but greatly influence the thinking of prominent colonists, including Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
1746-Great Awakening preacher William Tennant established the College of New Jersey, later to be called PrincetonUniversity.
1751 - Benjamin Franklin helps to establish the first "English Academy" in Philadelphia with a curriculum that is both classical and modern, including such courses as history, geography, navigation, surveying, and modern as well as classical languages. The academy ultimately becomes the University of Pennsylvania.
1764-Rhode Island College, later BrownUniversity, was established.
1766-Queens College, later RutgersUniversity, was established.
1769-Dartmouth College established
4. Eerdman’s Handbook of Christianity in America, edited by Mark A. Noll
The number of Americans actually converted during the Awakening is hard to ascertain. Early estimates ranged from several thousand to half a million, although the latter figure is quite high given a total colonial population around one million in 1740. In New England, where again records are best, the years of revival witnessed a marked increase in the number of people joining the church (often the only reliable guide to measure conversions).
The Connecticut churches, for example, admitted on the average about eight peopleeach per year in 1739 and 1740,but then about thirty-three per year in 1741 and 1742.
Similar gains took place in Massachusetts.
The picture changes somewhat, however, if long-term trends are analyzed. Very soon after the revival the average number of admissions dropped considerablybelow where they had been in the 1730s.
While it is true that these figures do not fully reflect the formation of new "Separate" and Baptist churches, they do seem to suggest that revival did not drastically increase the total number of people actually joining the church with a profession of faith over the entire period, 1730-1750.
It seems rather to have concentrated church admissions in the years of its great impact.
The one imponderable with these figures is the question whether conversions and admissions to church would have continued at their old rate without a revival. It is possible that the Awakening, while not increasing the rate of conversion when calculated over the long run, did keep that rate at its former level when it otherwise might have fallen.
For the other colonies it is very difficult to obtain accurate figures for the revival's effect. In the middle colonies, the Presbyterians who favored revival did grow much more rapidly than those who did not.
The Baptists were in fact the greatestbeneficiaries of the Great Awakening. The number ofBaptist churches throughout the colonies rose dramatically in the generation after the revival (from 96 in 1740 to 457 in 1780, a number in the latter year which exceeded the total of Anglican churches). And the renewal of the Baptists in New England eventually had great impact throughout the land. Baptist emigrants from New England moved as far south as the Carolinas during the 1750s to begin what would become a tremendous expansion of Baptist churches in that region.
5. James Henretta, America’s History, 7th edition
The original Puritans were intensely pious Christians, but their spiritual zeal had faded over the decades. In the 1730s, Jonathan Edwards restored that zeal…in the Connecticut RiverValley. News of Edward’s success stimulated religious fervor up and down the Connecticut RiverValley. George Whitefield, a prominent follower of John Wesley, the founder of English Methodism, attracted a huge crowd of enthusiasts from Georgia to Massachusetts. But the Great Awakening was controversial. Conservative ministers-passionless “Old Lights” condemned the revivalist meetings. New Lights embraced the new changes. The Great Awakening undermined legally established churches and tax-supported ministers. 125
“separatist” churches were founded.
In the Southern colonies were the Church of England was legally established, the Great Awakening triggered social conflict. Prominent, landowning planters held the power in the churches and used their control of parish finances to discipline ministers. Soon, a democratization of religion challenged the dominance of both the Church of England and the planter elite. …revivals across the Tidewater region threatened the social authority of the Virginia gentry. Religious pluralism threatened the tax-supported status of the Church of England. Virginia governor William Gooch denounced the New Light ideas as “false teachings” and Presbyterian churches were closed.
…Thousands of white farm families were converted…even slaves were welcomed at Baptist revivals. Baptist preachers repudiated social distinctions and urged followers to call one another “brother” and “sister.” Attacks on revivalists occurred often. The Baptist revival in the Chesapeake challenged customary authority in families and society but did not overturn it. Still, the Baptist insurgency infused the lives of poor tenant families with spiritual meaning and empowered yeoman to defend their economic interest. As Baptist ministers spread Christianity among slaves, the cultural gulf between blacks and whites shrank, undermining one justification for slavery and giving some blacks a new religious identity.
6. The Great Awakening’s Effects from
Towards an American Identity
Revivalism in the colonies did not form around a complex theology of religious freedom, but nevertheless the ideas it produced opposed the notion of a single truth or a single church. As preachers visited town after town, sects began to break off larger churches and a multitude of Protestant denominations sprouted. The older groups that dominated the early colonies – the Puritans and the Anglicans – eventually began a drastic downward trend in popularity. Although they accounted for about 40% of American congregations as late as 1760, that number eventually dropped to under 2.5% by 1790.
The social effect of multitudes of new denominations was not, however, a fracturing of communities, but a unifying drive which helped to create a “national consciousness”.
The effect of Great Awakening unity was an attitude that went against the deferential thinking that consumed English politics and religion. Rather than believing that God’s will was necessarily interpreted by the monarch or his bishops, the colonists viewed themselves as more capable of performing the task. The chain of authority no longer ran from God to ruler to people, but from God to people to ruler.