Great Awakening

By the beginning of the 18th century, there was an unmistakable feeling in the American Colonies that its intemperate society had become too comfortable and assertive, and had forgotten its original intentions of religious prosperity. The result was a revitalization of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s, a movement known as "The Great Awakening". This revival was part of an evangelical upsurge occurring simultaneously in England, Scotland, Germany, and other inhabitants on the other side of the Atlantic. In all these Protestant cultures, a new Age of Faith had arisen contrasting the currents of the Age of Enlightenment, advocating the belief that being truly religious meant relying on biblical revelation rather than human reason.

The earliest occurrence of the American phase of this movement appeared among Presbyterians in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Led by Reverend William Tennent, the Presbyterians not only commenced religious revivals in those colonies during the 1730s but also established a seminary to train clergymen whose exhilarating style of preaching would bring sinners to experience evangelical conversion. Originally known as "The Log College," it is better known today as Princeton University.

Religious enthusiasm quickly spread from the Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies, to the Puritans and Baptists of New England. To some Puritans, it appeared that New Englanders had taken many of their blessings for granted, and were unconcerned with the theological beliefs their ancestors had brought to Massachusetts in the 1620s. The most distinct example of this “loss of purpose” was the adoption of the Half-Way Covenant by Congregational churches in 1662, an attempt made to expand church membership. Previously, only those who had demonstrated a personal experience of conversion - a new birth - could be church members and have their children baptized. Under the Half-Way Covenant, adults who did not have an apparent religious experience could have their children baptized as well, as long as they professed a belief in the basic principles of Reformed Christianity. Despite not being able to vote on church matters, they were welcomed as partial members of the congregation.

This trend of religious leniency would extend through the early 1700’s. Reverend Solomon Stoddard, pastor of the church of Northampton, Massachusetts, insisted that the sacrament of the Lord's Supper should have been available to all who lived outwardly pious lives and had a good reputation in the community, disregarding the absence of full membership of the church. He argued that it was both impossible and immoral for any human to distinguish the “sheep from the goats”, and that consequently, it was best to let God decide. In 1725, his congregation decided to bring in Stoddard’s young grandson, Jonathan Edwards, to assist him. When Stoddard died at age 87, the 24 year old Edwards was elected pastor.

Jonathan Edwards sought to return religion to its Calvinistic roots, and reawaken the fear of God in the hearts of sinners. His emotionally charged sermons evoked terrifying images of the utter corruption of human nature and the terrors awaiting the unrepentant in hell. Edwards was a powerful speaker and attracted a large following. His goal was not only to frighten his listeners into perceiving their total dependency on God, but to experience the reality of damnation through their senses. On July 8, 1741, he delivered his best known sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", in which he portrayed the sinner as a spider suspended by a thread:

"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 provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire . . . You have offended him more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment: it is ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to Hell last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world after you closed your eyes to sleep; and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into Hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending His solemn worship: yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into Hell."

He believed that genuine conversion involved the breaking down of the sinner's pride to the point at which he saw very clearly why he deserved damnation. The impact of his sermons brought society in the Connecticut Valley to remarkable conversion and interior reflection. He helped revivalism spread all over New England in different degrees throughout the decade.

The Great Awakening also helped spread by an Anglican from England, and who many refer to as the greatest evangelist of all time, George Whitefield. Whitefield was an ordained minister in the Church of England who, with the help of other Anglican clergymen (most notably John and Charles Wesley), led a movement to reform the Church of England. He made several trips across the Atlantic after 1739, preaching everywhere in