Post on 31-Dec-2015
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Awakenings & Enlightenments
pp. 91-98
Pattern of Religions
Variety in colonial America
Difficult to impose any one religion on any large area
Church of England in VA, MD, NY, NC, SC, GA
Increased variety in Christian denominations
Catholics & Jews remained religious minorities & suffered persecution
The Great Awakening
Concerns about declining piety (reverence for God) & increased secularism
Began with increased religious fervor, 1730s-1740s
Esp. appealed to women & younger sons
Reflected desire to break away from families and start a new life
Great Awakening
Evangelists
John & Charles Wesley-Methodism
George Whitefield-see link
Jonathan Edwards-Puritan
Led to divisions between “New Light” revivalists & “Old Light” traditionalists
Some revivalists said book learning was a “hindrance to salvation”
G.A. caused a great upheaval in the culture of colonies
Enlightenment
Result of scientific & intellectual discoveries
In competition with the Great Awakening
Natural laws regulated workings of nature Francis Bacon, John Locke older ideas
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison were newer thinkers
Human reason Created progress & advanced knowledge
Enlightenment
Increased emphasis on the importance of education, politics, & government
Encouraged one to look at oneself, rather than look to God for guidance
Education
Emphasis on education in colonies, but work often interfered
MA law in 1647 required every town to have a school
Quakers set up church schools
Apprentices learned from craftsmen in cities: evening schools
Few children went beyond primary school years
Literacy rates in colonies were higher than in Europe Over ½ of white men could read and write
Education
Males had more educational opportunities, but females had primary home schooling and higher literacy rates
African slaves had few chances at schooling
Literacy discouraged, so there was no questioning of status
Most Natives preferred to educate their children in their own way
Due to increased literacy, almanacs were published and circulated (p. 94-95)
First Colleges Tied to religion & training of preachers but had wide-ranging curricula—
Logic, ethics, physics, geometry, astronomy, Latin, Greek, etc.
Harvard, 1636, MA
William & Mary, 1693, VA
Yale, 1701, CT
College of New Jersey (Princeton), 1746
King’s College (Columbia), 1754, NY
Academy of College of Philadelphia (Penn, Ben Fr.)
Offered mechanics, chem., agri., gov’t., commerce, languages, 1st medical school
The Spread of Science
Increased interest in scientific knowledge
At colleges
By amateurs & scientific societies Ben Franklin—Kite experiment proved that
lightning & electricity were the same; invented the lightning rod
Cotton Mather—Inoculation against small pox
Concepts of Law & Politics
In comparison to England court procedures were simpler & punishments were different
Stocks, branding irons, whipping posts, ducking stools
Royal government was far away, so colonies had a large measure of self-rule
Voted for colonial assemblies
Royal governors had limited powers
Colonies largely were independent of Parliament