Great Awakening 1 Running head: GREAT AWAKENING ESSAY

00000Great Awakening Essay Donald G. Campbell Grand Canyon University

HTH-379 History of Christianity Jun 06, 2011 (O101) 0 Professor Mark Traeger July 17, 2011

Great Awakening 2 0000000000000 00000 Great Awakening Essay This essay will examine the importance of the Great Awakening and its impact on the church. This was a religious revival in British North America, parts of Europe and England. It is of great significance and set the tone for evangelism and missionary spirit for about twenty years. During the 1720 to 1740 period British North America experienced a religious revival that is now referred to as The Great Awakening Religious revival. This is related to a movement tied to Quietism or Pietism in Europe mostly driven by preachers like John Wesley. This was a Protestant evangelical response to rationalism and formalism. This movement had strong roots to Calvinist philosophy. Calvin, emphasized the omnipotence of God and the salvation of the elect by God's grace alone. The preachers in this movement encouraged sinners to fear punishment as well as be inspired to accept the grace of God which they knew was unearned. (Eph 2 NIV) 8-10 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast (Shelley, B. 2008). Among the great preachers of that time was George Whitefield (1714 1770). Whitefield was preaching to large crowds in the colonies that were inspired by his manner of preaching in 1740. Whitefield would enjoy his moment of triumph while has toured New England. He was welcomed by officials and ministers in towns and the country of the colonies. He was blessed by business people willing to close their shops to allow thousands of interested parties to listen to his sermons and speeches. George Whitefield was only 26 years old and some thought he was too young for this type of success. On his visit to Boston he found all meetinghouses except King's Chapel open to him. He was "admired and followed beyond any man that ever was in America" as quoted from Benjamin Colman. Another great preacher was Jonathan Edwards who helped in this movement by inspiring people to the Great Awakening. Whitefield, the most famous of the itinerant ministers as he spoke to people gathered together in the thousands. Some

Great Awakening 3 meetings had as many as 15,000 listeners attending in an open air environment at Boston and Philadelphia. There were controversies regarding these events. The message was often an emotional delivery that included a desperate need for the "New Birth" of the conversion experience. The presses were running nonstop with articles both favorable and condemning. Congregations and denominations divided into Old Light and New Light, Old Side and New Side (Noll, M. 2000). Although The Great Awakening Religious revival was presented by men, it was God and the Holy Scriptures that inspired the delivers and those that wanted to receive the message. It was a new message with emphasis on a personal religion. This great event in New England inflamed by men like Jonathan Edwards caused a remarkable number of new Baptists and also had a hand in shaping modern Unitarianism (Strong 1836-1921). Other men were involved in this great effort. Gilbert Tennent 1703-64, was an American Presbyterian clergyman, a leading preacher of the Great Awakening. His family moved to Pennsylvania in 1718 and he became a pastor at a church in New Brunswick, N.J. He would become a leader in the movement among his own Presbyterians in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. He was a friend of George Whitefield and made an evangelistic trip in 1740-41 with George Whitefield to New England. All did go well for his efforts as some of the conservatives in his own body of believers sought to resist his efforts and this led to a schism in 1741. He was successful in using his talents to heal the difference between the two views. He like some the others made efforts to help College of New Jersey (now Princeton).

Some in the colonies were more moderate and conservative as clergymen and were bothered by the emotionalism of these evangelicals. There were often discord and disorder that bothered the conservative wing of the opposition. The conservative element took exception to

Great Awakening 4 men like Whitefield as he went from one destination to another as he took the existing clergy to task. There were elements of sexism and racial undertones as both females and African Americans became involved. The converts and evangelical pastors would in turn rebuke their counter points for being lacking in piety and grace, uninspiringly and cold. The battle lines were drawn in each body of believers regarding this new challenge to authority of the clergy. The challenge was, conversion a matter of the head or of the heart. Conclusion - The polarizing of these early colonists was amplified by the first Great Awakening. Conservative groups like Quakers and Anglicans were to increase their membership as they condemned the excesses of the Great Awakening. On the other side Methodists and Baptists made significant gains that can be attributed to the more radical elements of the Great Awakening. The Presbyterians and the Congregationalists being the largest group of American church going public were somewhat split between the conservative and liberal positions. Ultimately even civil units of governments were involved in some of the disputes as various churches lobbied colonial legislatures for disestablishment, an end to the favored status of Anglicanism in the southern colonies and Congregationalism in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Those women and men that were converts during the First Great Awakening had gone against their traditional church authorities in supporting their new convictions. There were those that had rejected their pastors for being less evangelical than their new standards and some had challenged the legitimacy of state-supported churches. These were people that had learned the value of self-determination and disliked the standing hierarchies of privilege and deference.

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00000000000000 0000000000 Great Awakening Essay References NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society Noll, M. (2000). Turning Points: Decisive moments in the history of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. ISBN-13: 9780801062117 Shelley, B. (2008). Church history in plain language (3rd ed.). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. ISBN-13: 9780718025533 Strong A. (1836-1921) Systematic Theology Vol. 3