The First Great Awakening took place in the 1730s and 1740s in the British North American colonies. It was a great religious revival among members of various Protestant denominations. Ministers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield led this religious revival and were known as New Lights. Those that opposed the Great Awakening were known as Old Lights. The ministers of the First Great Awakening preached that any individual could be saved by dedicating their life to Jesus. They rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. The First Great Awakening provided Americans across the colonies with a shared religious and cultural experience.
The First Great Awakening
During the eighteenth century, the British Atlantic experienced an outburst of Protestant revivalism known as the First Great Awakening. (A Second Great Awakening would take place in the 1800s.) During the First Great Awakening, evangelists came from the ranks of several Protestant denominations: Congregationalists, Anglicans (members of the Church of England), and Presbyterians. They rejected what appeared to be sterile, formal modes of worship in favor of a vigorous emotional religiosity. Whereas Martin Luther and John Calvin had preached a doctrine of predestination and close reading of scripture, new evangelical ministers spread a message of personal and experiential faith that rose above mere book learning. Individuals could bring about their own salvation by accepting Christ, an especially welcome message for those who had felt excluded by traditional Protestantism: women, the young, and people at the lower end of the social spectrum.
The Great Awakening caused a split between those who followed the evangelical message (the “New Lights”) and those who rejected it (the “Old Lights”). The elite ministers in British America were firmly Old Lights, and they censured the new revivalism as chaos. Indeed, the revivals did sometimes lead to excess. In one notorious incident in 1743, an influential New Light minister named James Davenport urged his listeners to burn books. The next day, he told them to burn their clothes as a sign of their casting off the sinful trappings of the world. He then took off his own pants and threw them into the fire, but a woman saved them and tossed them back to Davenport, telling him he had gone too far.
Another outburst of Protestant revivalism began in New Jersey, led by a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church named Theodorus Frelinghuysen. Frelinghuysen’s example inspired other ministers, including Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian. Tennant helped to spark a Presbyterian revival in the Middle Colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey), in part by founding a seminary to train other evangelical clergyman. New Lights also founded colleges in Rhode Island and New Hampshire that would later become Brown University and Dartmouth College.
In Northampton, Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards led still another explosion of evangelical fervor. Edwards’s best-known sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” used powerful word imagery to describe the terrors of hell and the possibilities of avoiding damnation by personal conversion. One passage reads: “The wrath of God burns against them [sinners], their damnation don’t slumber, the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them, the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened her mouth under them.” Edwards’s revival spread along the Connecticut River Valley, and news of the event spread rapidly through the frequent reprinting of his famous sermon.
The foremost evangelical of the Great Awakening was an Anglican minister named George Whitefield. Like many evangelical ministers, Whitefield was itinerant, traveling the countryside instead of having his own church and congregation. Between 1739 and 1740, he electrified colonial listeners with his brilliant oratory.
The Great Awakening saw the rise of several Protestant denominations, including Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists (who emphasized adult baptism of converted Christians rather than infant baptism). These new churches gained converts and competed with older Protestant groups like Anglicans (members of the Church of England), Congregationalists (the heirs of Puritanism in America), and Quakers. The influence of these older Protestant groups, such as the New England Congregationalists, declined because of the Great Awakening. Nonetheless, the Great Awakening touched the lives of thousands on both sides of the Atlantic and provided a shared experience in the eighteenth-century British Empire.
Source: Corbett, P.S., Janssen V., Lund, J., Pfannestiel, T., Vickery, P., & Waskiewicz, S. U.S. History. OpenStax. 30 December 2014.
The First Great Awakening – VIDEO
Scott, T. The Great Awakening: Study Guide. (2010, September 19). [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qTzC7rPcaY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6tELKki3k
Haynes, J. The First and Second Great Awakenings. (2017, April 30). [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6tELKki3k
Summary
The First Great Awakening spread across the British North American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. Two of the most prominent ministers of the First Great Awakening were Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Jonathan Edwards was known for preaching that unrepentant sinners would burn in hell. George Whitefield travelled widely to spread the evangelical message. All of the ministers of the First Great Awakening were known for their emotional sermons. The ministers of the First Great Awakening were known as the New Lights. The ministers who opposed the First Great Awakening were known as Old Lights. The First Great Awakening provided Americans in many different colonies with a shared religious experience.
