The First Great Awakening: 1720 — 1740’s



The First Great Awakening: 1720 - 1740’s

Gerald Wilson

Revivals. They are a part of our culture, especially here in the South, and a part of the religious experience of many. The Great Awakening, which began in 1720, with the preaching of Theodore J. Frelinghuysen in the area around New Brunswick, New Jersey, was truly our first American Revival on a large scale. Many of the things that prompted this revival also prompt our revivals today. Let’s look at the causes of the revival known as the Great Awakening and see if they have any modem counterparts. First, the American Colonists were ripe for an emotional religious experience because the ideas of the philosophical movement in Europe, especially France, known as the Enlightenment with the emphasis on “scientism” and humanism were drifting into America. The basic idea of scientism that impinged on religion was that the universe was ordered and to understand it we needed no divine revelation, only logic. This was supported by the idea of the Humanists, that man—the human species, was essentially good and could with his/her mind understand the universe. Some religious leaders saw this humanism as “hubris”, that is “arrogance,” and indeed, this is what led to the Fall as revealed in Genesis 3. And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Humanism, hubris, arrogance-these led to the fall and are present among us now sayeth the revivals then—and now?

The second factor leading to the Great Awakening lay in the conditions of life as the Eighteenth Century moved along. In brief, life got better; there was less “need” for God. This reflects a human factor in society and in our personal lives. I remember something former Governor and President of Duke University Terry Sanford said when asked about prayer in schools. He responded “As long as there are tests, there will always be prayer in schools.’ I also note that attendance at Duke Chapel increases each semester as we move toward exam time.

Third, and all of these factors are closely intertwined, there was just a general apathy towards religion; religion lost its intensity and this led to the decline of Puritanism with its demands on the individual. Religion suffered from both apathy and respectability! So a new revival, perhaps a new reformation was called for. The New England Puritans saw themselves as God’s new “chosen people,” but by the 1720’s they seemed to be more like God’s “frozen people!”

We’ve looked at the causes of the Great Awakening, now let’s look at its development. It began, as noted earlier, in 1720 in the area around New Brunswick, New Jersey. The pastor of four Dutch Reformed Churches, Theodore J. Frelinghuysen, came to America bringing with him what one religious authority has labeled a “fervent piety.” He saw what we might call the moribund state of American Religion. I Love that word “MORIBUND;” it means “stagnant, dying” and determined that there needed to be an ‘awakening” of religious devotion and activity: hence, the Great Awakening.

Though there were many participants, and critics of the Great Awakening, two of the participants demand our special attention. The first, and one that we probably know better from our study of American literature than from history or religion, was Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was perhaps the greatest religious mind America has ever produced. Let’s listen to part of Edward’s most famous sermon which many of us have read, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully revoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince, and yet ‘tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment...

0 sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in! ‘Tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full offire and of wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of Divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder...

It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite, horrible, misery....

How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh! That you would consider it, whether you be young or old!

Note two things about that sermon, first, it was not typical of Edwards, but it was typical of the Great Awakening. Edwards was an intellectual preacher who wrote closely and carefully argued sermons and read them word for word. This just wasn’t his style, but it was effective!

Second, note the little phrase in the sermon, “this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again.” Something big is really is happening here. Edwards was a strict Calvinist and Calvinists believe that God is absolute-absolutely sovereign, as they say. The Puritan Edwards believed that God alone determines who is “elected to salvation,” “saved” as we would say. No person can do anything to affect his or her salvation. God does it all. But Edwards has now said if a person really wants salvation and lets God know, he or she is “born again,” God will look favorably upon him or her. In short, a person can now do something to affect his or her salvation. The prime mover in this is no longer God, but rather the individual. This view of salvation as coming by reason of an emotional conversion experience places primary emphasis on the emotional experience of the individual.

This new emphasis on the individual and the importance of an emotional religious experience led to a new type of preaching - preaching aimed at the heart, the emotions, not the mind, the intellect, as was Puritan preaching. The most prominent of these new preachers was George Whitefield, a young English preacher who landed in Philadelphia in 1739. In the next few years he would travel throughout the colonies, and with a combination of theology and theatre, attract huge crowds as he preached the necessity of an emotional experience as part of the salvation process. A person can know he or she has been saved if the person has had the conversion experience and the resulting “feeling” of salvation.

So powerful was Whitfield as a preacher that even the hard-nosed intellectual Benjamin Franklin fell under his spell. As Franklin said in his Autobiography, he decided to go to hear Whitefield preach but resolved not to contribute a cent when the collection plate was passed around. But what happened as Whitefield was preaching, in Franklin’s words: “I began to soften and concluded to give the copper. Another strike of his oratory made me asham’d of that, and determin’d me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably, that I empty’d my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all.”

As a result of internal conflicts in the established churches between those who favored the new emotional approach to religion, the so-called “New-Lights” and those who saw this emotional approach as anti-intellectual, the “Old Lights,” along with some non-religious factors, The Great Awakening had largely faded out by the middle of the 1740’s. But its implications for the future of the British North American Colonies, soon to be the United States, were numerous.

Let’s turn to some of the results of the Great Awakening.

First, the position of man — and I use this term as it was used at that time, but by using it we are to refer to men and women — the position of people is elevated. Humans are no longer “worm” as the Puritans would say, but rather they are God’s worthy creatures. If Christ died for men and women, then we are obviously valuable. Thus we have the beginning of the elevation and ennobling of the ‘common man” in American History. There was a further implication resulting from this newly elevated status; before The Great Awakening, the emphasis was on God; now the emphasis is on people’s response to God.

The second result of the Great Awakening, and certainly growing out of the elevated status of people, was a changed concept of the church. Before The Great Awakening there had been the effort to make people conform to a single church. After The Great Awakening, with the down-playing of theology and the new emphasis on emotional conversion experiences, the idea grows up that the church is whatever you want it to be. Before, the church had been forming people; now people formed the church. There are two results of this. First, this led to the rise of many denominations and sects. Second, it led to the concept of toleration. Intolerance existed when the effort was to make everyone conform to a single church. With this new concept, tolerance came about both naturally and of necessity.

Third, as a result of the Great Awakening many African Americans and Native Americans came into the Protestant Churches. As oppressed peoples, who had been denied educational opportunities, the emotional elements of “The New Light’ Protestants had great appeal to them.

Fourth, there was a tending towards externalization of religion. That is, a person’s actions become important in identifying a person as a Christian. The emphasis is now on “works” rather than profession of faith alone. Martin Luther’s “man is saved by faith alone” is supplemented with “by their works shall ye know them.”

Fifth, there is a new emphasis in education. Again, this is two-fold. First, the elevation of the Common People to a higher status certainly led to a desire for larger number to be educated. Second, the spread of religion and the desire of the “Old Lights” to see that the preachers were educated led to the founding of new colleges by the established denominations: the Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey, now Princeton, in 1746; the College of Rhode Island, now Brown, by the Baptists, in 1764; Queens College, now Rutgers University, in 1766 by the Dutch Reformed Church, and Dartmouth College as a Puritan Indian Mission school.

Sixth, and these results seem to flow from one another, there was increased opposition to established churches, that is, churches recognized as the official state church like the Congregationalists in some New England states and the Anglican (Episcopal Church) in some states in the South. Increasingly, there will be a demand for separation of church and state.

Seventh, the Great Awakening was the first truly national movement in the American Colonies. For the first time they really began to interact with one another. This will pave the way for inter-communications and interactions as we move toward Revolution.

Eighth and finally, perhaps most significantly, all of the results noted above led to the idea of Revolution. Defiance of one established institution like the church and the elevated status of people with its idea of the equality both contributed to the widening and quickening stream of revolutionary thought which will reach a climax in 1776.

There we have it-the first Great Awakening. Though it lasted for less than two decades in the Eighteenth Century, its consequences were timeless and are still a part of us as a nation and as individuals even unto today.

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