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2. History - Part 2

A hundred years from the coming of the Mayflower, America was thrown into a state of religious turmoil known as the Great Awakening. It was caused by the preaching of clergymen like the Puritan Jonathan Edwards, Presbyterian priest Gilbert Tennent, and the English evangelist George Whitefield.1 These ministers traveled between towns, reinvigorating the peoples' religious zeal. Karen Armstrong, author of The Battle for God, describes the Great Awakening in the town of Northampton, Connecticut:

…the people of Northampton had not been particularly religious, but in 1734 two young people died suddenly, and the shock (backed up by Edward's own emotive preaching) plunged the town into a frenzied religiosity, which spread like contagion to Massachusetts and Long Island. People stopped work and spent the whole day reading the Bible. Within six months, three hundred people in the town had experienced a wrenching "born-again" conversion. They alternated between soaring highs and devastating lows; sometimes they were quite broken and "sank into an abyss, under a sense of guilt that they were ready to think was beyond the mercy of God." At other times they would "break forth into laughter, tears often at the same time issuing like a flood, and intermingling with a loud weeping"…one man was so cast down, he committed suicide, convinced that his loss of ecstatic joy could only mean that he was predestined to Hell (pp. 78-79).

The revival was dying down, when it was reinvigorated by George Whitefield, during whose sermons "churches shook with the cries of those who imagined themselves saved, and the groans of [those] who were convinced that they were damned".2

Initially, the revivalists were welcomed by the ministers of the congregations where they preached. Before long, however, the methods of the itinerants and the fervent emotionalism of the revival drew criticism, being seen by a large proportion of the settled clergy as a threat to the established order. In addition to that, Revivalists often accused settled ministers of being unconverted and of leading their congregations to spiritual destruction.3

This led to a split of the Calvinist denominations into two factions. The Old Lights, led by the Boston minister Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauncy, believed that Christianity should be a rational and enlightened religion, and were appalled by the mass hysteria of the Great Awakening. The Old Lights tended to come from more prosperous, and, thus, more educated, sectors of society, while the lower classes tended to favor the breakaway New Lights, who often established their own denominations. The most notorious of this, was, of course, the split of the Presbyterian New Lights from the Presbyterian synod in 1741. The split was eventually healed in 1758, but in that time, the New Lights had acquired a separatist identity, which was crucial in the emergence of the fundamentalist movement of the late 19th century.4

The Great Awakening changed life in the Christian community. In revivalist churches power passed from the clergy to the laity. Instead of formal training and theological acumen, the test of leadership became the ability to appeal to the heart, to rouse men and women to seek salvation and a transformed life.5

The Great Awakening had another side effect. The ecstatic experiences of those who were exposed to the Great Awakening left them "with the memory of a blissful state of freedom".6 During the Revolution, these people would desire freedom, even though they could not understand the lofty ideals of the Enlightenment.

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Footnotes

1"Great Awakening", Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99

2Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 79

3"Great Awakening", Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99

4Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 80

5Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 3

6Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 80

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