The Great Awakening

Over time… Several generations had passed… Over time many of the colonists had slid away from their traditional Christian roots.

Revival 1730s – 1740s several prominent preachers come onto the scene… George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. Some estimates have been made that George Whitefield preached to six million people at a time when there was no television or radio. Huge Christian revival... Many whites, blacks, and natives are becoming Christian. Each of the races produced preachers/missionaries.

Enlightenment Thinking (Don’t Write This Slide) Great Awakening seen as a direct response to the Enlightenment. It was widely believed by secular Enlightenment writers that English liberties relied on the balance of power divided between king, elite and commoners, and that social stability required hierarchal deference to the privileged class.

Great Awakening Thinking People have the right to revolt against tyranny People have rights simply because they are human Sovereignty resides with the people A fundamental purpose of government is to protect people’s right Faith more important. People begin talking of equality

Significance The evangelical movement of the 1740s played a key role in the development of democratic concepts in the period of the American Revolution. Many argue that the Great Awakening was a precursor to the Revolutionary War and the Second Great Awakening is a precursor to the Civil War. Many more colleges planted to train up ministers and missionaries.

Colonial Colleges Harvard (1636) “Truth” William & Mary (1693) Yale (1701) “Light and Truth” Penn (1740) “Laws without morals are in vain” Princeton (1746) “Under God's Power She Flourishes” Columbia (1754) “In Thy light shall we see light” Brown (1764) “In God we hope” Rutgers (1766) “Sun of righteousness, shine upon the West also” Dartmouth (1769) “The voice of one crying in the wilderness”

“O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread.” "But with respect to love; it is plain by the Scripture, that persons may have a kind of religious love, and yet have no saving grace.“ -- Jonathan Edwards

“The Generality of Preachers talk of an unknown, unfelt Christ “The Generality of Preachers talk of an unknown, unfelt Christ. And the Reason why Congregations have been so dead, is because dead men preach to them.” --- George Whitefield