Question
What factors caused the Great Awakening? Who were the major characters, and what were their contributions, and what were the consequences to colonial society?
Introduction and Thesis
Caused by declining church influence, participation and a breakdown in moral standards, the Great Awakening was led by prominent leaders Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield and led to the consequences of increased church participation and the development and reorganization of church denominations.
Body Paragraph 1 – Causes of the Great Awakening.
- Halfway Covenant
o Attempted to boost church membership and removed requirement for “spiritual conversion” for church membership.
o Came in 1662
o Emphasized corruption; strict religious piety sacrificed for wider religious participation.
o Church membership became more democratic as “elect” and “visible saints” diluted.
- Breakdown in moral standards
o Increase Mather: “Many of the rising generation are profane drunkards [and] swearers…”
- Traumas of revoking the charter of Massachusetts Bay Colony (1684)
o Conversion to Royal colony due to Restoration under Charles II
o Salem Witch trials shook foundations of Massachusetts
§ People began questioning church and civil leaders.
- Tedious sermons
o Churchgoers complained of tedious sermons
- Challenges of Liberal Ideas
o Jacobus Arminius, leading the arminians preached that individual free will and not divine decree will determine a person’s fate.
o Anne Hutchinson and antinomianism challenged predestination concept of Puritan belief.
- Reaction against rationality of Enlightenment period
o John Lock, Rousseau political theorists with their rational government theories including Treatise of Two Governments and republicanism
§ TF paved way for emotionalism.
- Increased immigration
o TF villagers move more far apart, reducing church attendance.
Body Paragraph 2 – Leaders and contributions to the Great Awakening
- George Whitefield
o Prominent orator
o Employed emotionalism
§ “made audiences shed tears of despair and joy”
o AR many sermons began to adopt to emotional type of sermons
§ TF denominations split into “Old Light” and “New Light” factions.
- Jonathan Edwards
o Began preaching powerful but gloomy message of revival to Congregationalists
o “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
§ Strong employer of emotionalism.
o Revived faith in predestination
§ Wrote Freedom of Will which argued people’s choices in life depended on character “inclined” either by God or by sinful human nature.
- John Wesley
o Helped birth of Methodist Church.
Body Paragraph 3
o Increased Church Membership
o Increased involvement of women
o Increased religious fervent
o More religious participation
o Clergymen split into old lights and new lights
o Old lights = skeptical of emotionalism of revivalists and did not use “emotional preaching”
o New light = ministers defended the Awakening for its role in revitalizing American religion.
o Begins religious evangelicalism
o Culture Wars that would impact American society later.
o Greater missionary work among the Native Americans
o Newer centers of learning = Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth
o First spontaneous mass movement of American people contributed to a growing sense of unity.
o Large growth in Baptist Church, birth of Methodist Church w/ John Wesley
o First black Baptist Church found.
o Presbyterian and Congregationalists split into Old Lights and New Lights
o Decrease in Anglican Church b/c of the rise of Methodist and Baptist Churches
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