1. Intellectual Foundations of 18th Century America
Puritanism
The Great Awakening
The Enlightenment

2. The Great Awakening (1730s-1760s)
• Political Change
Upsetting the status quo
Attack on the established church - Loosened ties [new denominations formed (Methodist, Baptist, etc.)
Equal opportunity for salvation [importance of individual]
Best fit the frontier and the common Man
Equality [age, sex, or social status didn’t matter when it came to salvation]
Individualism

3. The Debate “Old Lights” Puritan Tradition [intellectual] Contract
Reason and Logic over emotion [basis of faith]
Well educated [education]
Ordered liberty
Community responsibility before individual freedom
“New Lights”
A New Theology
Anti-intellectual - not uneducated and opposed to education [see Jonathan Edwards]
Revivalists [emotional]
Progressive
Tied America together
Nationalism
“New Light” promise [slavery should end]

4. Leading Ministers of the Great Awakening:
Jonathan Edwards
George Whitefield
Gilbert Tennent
Promoted religion of the “heart” while de-emphasizing religion with the intellect

5. Outcomes of the Great Awakening
Reinvigorated American Protestantism
New Congregations over New/Old splits
Strong strain of anti-intellectualism created
Conversion - a message to which anyone can respond
New Colleges - Princeton - William and Mary
Eroded authority of organized religion
Political democracy?

6. Secularism and Individualism
God’s presence is not emphasized
[“watchmaker” concept]
Notion of the perfectibility of society
Deists, Unitarian Universalists

7. First Great Awakening

8. Enlightenment - the Age of Reason
Education - important to perfect society
Moved from Europe to North America
Natural Law
Man can know and understand them (Aristotle)
Judge institutions by them and fix them.
Individual perfected society by fixing unnatural laws
Scientific approach guided life
Outcome:
Reduced the power of organized religion by removing the sense of God’s presence
While many acknowledge a sovereign God and his Providence, they viewed him as distant and aloof.

9. Reshaping the Intellectual Climate of the 18th Century
1. Toleration
2. Secularism - Materialism, Frontier Preoccupation
3. Reason
Historians believe that the Great Awakening and
Enlightenment were responsible for the creation
of values appropriate to the coming revolution
and the establishment of a new nation.