The Great Awakening The big picture context: Late 1600s – early

1700s

The pendulum of religion in the colonies was swinging towards religious diversity throughout the colonies

The diverse opportunities brought many to the colonies and swung the pendulum away from the piety of the early settlers.

1734 Northampton, MA Revival 1729—Jonathan

Edwards became the Northampton pastor

1734—Congregation experienced an upswing in attendance and converts• 300 new converts

1734 Revival Important similarities with the Salem

Witch Craze

Began with local town’s youth and resulted in challenges to authority

Northampton was a town in transition• Land became more consolidated in fewer hands • Younger generations left landless and jobless

Frustration was funneled through religion

The Great Awakening

George Whitfield, English priest and graduate of Oxford University in 1730s• Noted for persuasive and

powerful preaching

Used theatre techniques to engage congregations during sermons

1738—Set sail to build an orphanage in Georgia

Whitfield’s Impact Toured and preached throughout the

American colonies by invitation and garnered acclaim for his intense sermons

Benjamin Franklin estimated he could be heard by 30,000 people by voice alone• Franklin became Whitfield’s American publisher

Each city’s acclaim attested to Whitfield’s talents and the Pietist message of the Great Awakening

“Whitfield could throw an audience into a paroxysm just by the way he pronounced the word, ‘Mesopotamia.’”

—David Garrick

Great Awakening Spreads Jonathan Edwards invited Whitfield to

Northampton—the Revival in western Mass. was greater than in 1734

Edwards was poised to follow Whitfield’s wake and develop the Great Awakening’s philosophic rationale

Edwards delivered his landmark sermon in 1741, “Sinners, in the Hands of an Angry God”

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; he is of purer eyes than to

bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times

more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful

venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him

infinitely 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 to be ascribed to

nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that

you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you

closed your eyes to sleep…

Legacy of the Great Awaking Divisions grew amongst different

congregations in different states

New Lights—Embraced the Great Awakening and a turn towards more enthusiastic and mystical relationship with God

Old Lights—Most church authorities that rejected Whitfield and the anxieties religious “enthusiasm” represented

Legacy of the Great Awaking

350 new churches throughout the American colonies

50,000 new converts

New Lights created several new colleges:• Dartmouth, Brown, Rutgers, Princeton, etc.

The cultural impact of the Great Awakening was felt more acutely at the time

Legacy of the Great Awaking

Mass marketing of Whitfield’s sermons undermined the traditional colonial elite’s authority in the 1700s

Revived New England’s dormant idea of mission—to be a “City Upon a Hill”

The Awakening empowered individuals to question and fire church leaders