What is the significance of the first great awakening

Like everything else, the revival could not continue forever. In , a chastened Gilbert Tennent led the reunion of the Presbyterian churches he and his father had helped divide. The Awakening also promoted a vast questioning of traditional authority, offering a uniquely American way of dealing with tension and uncertainty about its national meaning and identity.

Almost new churches were built as a result of the Awakening. About 50, American converts filled the new churches and the already established ones. Furthermore, the pro-Awakening factions—the new lights and the new side—built new colleges: Dartmouth, Brown, Rutgers, and Princeton.

They were all established by people who supported the Awakening and were eager to train clergy who would continue to support its principles. Learn more about the Second Great Awakening. The Great Awakening had substantial cultural impacts. The movement also inspired religious conversion and encouraged Americans, principally through missionary work, to see themselves as exporters of ideas to other cultures.

As a result of the Great Awakening, citizens of New England, as well as other Americans, regained their sense of mission that had been dormant for years. The Awakening also sparked a change in the most authoritarian institutions in British North America: the church. This was because people were allowed to question and sometimes to dismiss their leaders. Learn more about the Rejection of Empire. The Great Awakening was the first religious revival in American history.

Through cataclysmic events such as world earthquakes in and , expectations of the new millennial age increased. The colonists viewed these as divine signs, and so when questions arose about the Antichrist they turned to the Catholics. They considered the pope to be the enemy during the French and Indian War, and celebrations in Boston and in other places, Anti-Pope Day furthered Protestant zeal. Anti-Catholicism was one of the most prominent traits in the colonies prior to the revolution.

This attitude was significant in the New England way of life and existed not only in the churches but also in taverns, newspapers, and schools. Despite political or theological differences between colonists, one common understanding shared by all was an opposition to Roman Catholicism. They found him in George III, who needed to be expelled from the colonies in order to bring forth the new age of righteousness.

The religious fervor spawned by the Great Awakening provided the catalyst for political and military action necessary for fulfillment of religious expectations. The crusade against the Catholics provided the necessary focal point over the course of the 18th Century until the new crusade against the British took over. This movement deemphasized the higher authority of church doctrine and instead put greater importance on the individual and his or her spiritual experience. How do you think the First Great Awakening affected the development of government in the colonies?

Based on this reading, the greatest effect of this revolution is against the authoritarian religious over the […]. Many recognize the same hero of restoration in Ted Cruz. It should surprise no one that there are […]. Many began to crave a return to religious piety. Around this time, the 13 colonies were religiously divided. Most of New England belonged to congregational churches.

Southern colonies were mostly members of the Anglican Church , but there were also many Baptists, Presbyterians and Quakers. The stage was set for a renewal of faith, and in the late s, a revival began to take root as preachers altered their messages and reemphasized concepts of Calvinism. Calvinism is a theology that was introduced by John Calvin in the 16th century that stressed the importance of scripture, faith, predestination and the grace of God.

Most historians consider Jonathan Edwards, a Northampton Anglican minister, one of the chief fathers of the Great Awakening. He also preached justification by faith alone. Edwards was known for his passion and energy. He generally preached in his home parish, unlike other revival preachers who traveled throughout the colonies. George Whitefield, a minister from Britain, had a significant impact during the Great Awakening.

Whitefield toured the colonies up and down the Atlantic coast, preaching his message. In one year, Whitefield covered 5, miles in America and preached more than times.

His style was charismatic, theatrical and expressive. Whitefield would often shout the word of God and tremble during his sermons. People gathered by the thousands to hear him speak. Whitefield preached to common people, slaves and Native Americans. No one was out of reach. The Great Awakening brought various philosophies, ideas and doctrines to the forefront of Christian faith.

The Church of England in Early America. Divining America Advisors and Staff. That revival was part of a much broader movement, an evangelical upsurge taking place simultaneously on the other side of the Atlantic, most notably in England, Scotland, and Germany.

In all these Protestant cultures during the middle decades of the eighteenth century, a new Age of Faith rose to counter the currents of the Age of Enlightenment, to reaffirm the view that being truly religious meant trusting the heart rather than the head, prizing feeling more than thinking, and relying on biblical revelation rather than human reason.

The earliest manifestations of the American phase of this phenomenon—the beginnings of the First Great Awakening—appeared among Presbyterians in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Led by the Tennent family—Reverend William Tennent, a Scots-Irish immigrant, and his four sons, all clergymen—the Presbyterians not only initiated religious revivals in those colonies during the s but also established a seminary to train clergymen whose fervid, heartfelt preaching would bring sinners to experience evangelical conversion.

By the s, the clergymen of these churches were conducting revivals throughout that region, using the same strategy that had contributed to the success of the Tennents. In emotionally charged sermons, all the more powerful because they were delivered extemporaneously, preachers like Jonathan Edwards evoked vivid, terrifying images of the utter corruption of human nature and the terrors awaiting the unrepentant in hell.

These early revivals in the northern colonies inspired some converts to become missionaries to the American South. In the late s, Presbyterian preachers from New York and New Jersey began proselytizing in the Virginia Piedmont; and by the s, some members of a group known as the Separate Baptists moved from New England to central North Carolina and quickly extended their influence to surrounding colonies. By the eve of the American Revolution, their evangelical converts accounted for about ten percent of all southern churchgoers.

Although Whitefield had been ordained as a minister in the Church of England, he later allied with other Anglican clergymen who shared his evangelical bent, most notably John and Charles Wesley. Together they led a movement to reform the Church of England much as the Puritans had attempted earlier to reform that church which resulted in the founding of the Methodist Church late in the eighteenth century.