1. Evangelical Christianity
Chapter by Mark Noll, “The Churches Become American, ”, from Old Religion, New World
“major shift in the character of Christianity… during the 18th century. The new element is usually identified as “pietism” on the continent or “evangelicalism” for Britian and North America.” – Noll, p. 51

2. Reformation A few key features: Identity based on difference
Confessions, catechism, professions of faith – propositional, rationalized faith
Established state churches
Heading towards bourgeois, middle class phenomenon

3. Reformation – Social-Political Legacy
1617 Jubilee
17th c. Satire

4. “a man may assent to three or three and twenty creeds… and yet have no Christian faith at all…” – John Wesley
Pietist Critique
- true religion does not consist in orthodoxy or right opinions/beliefs but deeper, in the heart
Philip Jacob Spener – Introduction to Johann Arndt’s True Christianity (1675)

5. John Wesley (1703-1791) Sanctification – Perfection Social action
George Whitfield ( )
Transform Reformation into modern Protestant Evangelism

6. Revivalism First Great Awakening, 1730s-1770s Gilbert Tennent
George Whitfield
Jonathan Edwards
Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists
Rejection
Anglicans, Quakers,
gains
Dissension; splits

7. Lorenzo Dow (d. 1834) – Methodist; “jerking”

8. Baptists

9. New York City skyline with 18 churches 1771 woodblock
Religious Tolerance; “Denominationalism”
1st Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – Jefferson: “ a wall of separation between church and state.”

10. Appeal? Contexts?
What could account for the tremendous appeal of evangelical Christianity to men and women on both sides of the Atlantic in the later half of the 19th c.?