1. The Great Awakening & Enlightenment

2. The Great Awakening 1730-1740 gave colonists a shared national religious experience

3. Reasons for The Great Awakening
People felt that religion was dry, dull and distant
Preachers felt that people needed to be concerned with inner emotions as opposed to outward religious behavior
People in New England can read and interpret the Bible on their own

4. George Whitefield
Puritan Minster who used raw emotional sermons to reach all classes of colonists
Preached that “good works” and “godly lives” would bring you salvation
Forced to give sermons in open areas (revivals)

5. Jonathan Edwards a Puritan Minster terrified listeners with his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

6. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
“There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men's hands cannot be strong when God rises up. The strongest have no power to resist him, nor can any deliver out of his hands. -- He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of difficulty to subdue a rebel, who has found means to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the numbers of his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no fortress that is any defence from the power of God….”

7. Outcomes of the Great Awakening
Birth of deep religious convictions in the colonies
New churches built to accommodate new members
Colleges founded to train new ministers

8. Outcomes of the Great Awakening
Encouraged ideas of equality and right to challenge authority
Birth of charity and charitable organizations

9. The Enlightenment
A movement in the 1700’s that rejected traditional ways of life and looked for a more rational and scientific way to explain the world we live in
It was an emphasis on the sciences and reason to explain things

10. Enlightenment Arguments
Generally we are good and it our environment that influences us
The use of science and reason could answer life’s mysteries
Science and reason could also answer man’s questions concerning government and himself

11. Outcomes of the Enlightenment
Great surge of literacy in the colonies
Newspapers and book publications increase
Schools are synonymous with new towns and villages
Deism, God is the great clock maker

12. Outcomes of the Enlightenment
People are born with natural rights
Government has an obligation to protect those natural rights
Kings have no right to govern people, people empower government