First Great Awakening

Introduction

Many scholars have debated on whether the Great Awakening was actually “great”. There has been a vast amount of studies dedicated to how the Great Awakening was perceived during the actual time of the events.

Emily Miller- Todd wrote, “Jon Butler, in his 1982 revisionist article, moved towards Charles Chauncy’s original claim that the revival was a ‘small Thing.’ He argued that there was not enough evidence to give the revivals the title The Great Awakening. He rejected the assertion that a cohesive revival ‘swept’ through the colonies. . . Instead, Butler saw a number of heterogeneous, scattered, local awakenings spread over a thirty-year period. The most he was willing to concede . . . was [to] ‘a short-lived Calvinist revival in New England during the 1740s.’”

She continues, “Since Butler’s revisionist article, Joseph Conforti has also agreed that the Great Awakening was an invention. He argued that later revivalists were reading back into history to support their own agenda. Frank Lambert similarly argues that the Great Awakening was an invention, but his argument differs from Butler and Conforti. Lambert argues that ‘the colonial revivalists themselves constructed The Great Awakening—not the term, but the idea of a coherent, intercolonial revival.’ Lambert includes in support of his argument an exploration of how evangelicals expected, understood, encouraged, explained, and discussed the revivals—therefore, ‘inventing’ them. Thomas Kidd argues that Butler helpfully encouraged historians to reevaluate what is actually meant by ‘the Great Awakening.’ However, Kidd maintains that the Great Awakening was more than escalating conversations among a few theologians and historians. Kidd contend[s] that there was, indeed, a powerful, unprecedented series of revivals from about 1740 to 1743 that touched many of the colonies and that contemporaries remembered for decades as a special visitation of the Holy Spirit.”

Context of the Event

One article states, “As explained by historian Christine Leigh Heyrman, "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."”

Five important preachers of the First Great Awakening:

Jonathan Edwards

George Whitfield

Theodore Freylinghuysen

William Tennent

Gilbert Tennent

However, the two significant characters of the period were Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield.

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards lived from 1703-1758. He is known as the influential American theologian that was just as sound in theology as he was in philosophy. Edwards was a phenomenal revivalist, because he was capable of addressing the rational opposition against Christian dogma. In response to the cultural opposition, he mainly argued that God is sovereign and holy. This sort of preaching challenged the staunch attitude of Christianity and criticized the skepticism of the day.

Many have argued that the First Great Awakening was preceded by smaller revivals within the area. Jonathan Edwards was thought to have led revivals in Northampton, MA before there was ever any idea of a Great Awakening.

One author recounts,

The only son in a family of eleven children, Jonathan Edwards succeeded his maternal grandfather as pastor of a church in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1728. In 1737, he published A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, his account of the extraordinary religious revival that began in his church in Northampton in 1734 and other nearly communities. That revival is considered to be a harbinger of the Great Awakening, which began in earnest a few years later. In 1746, Edwards published his first major treatise, Religious Affections, which both defended the Great Awakening and criticized what he considered to be the movement's excesses. These published accounts are why Edwards is considered to be "the principal intellectual interpreter of, and apologist for, the Awakening" (from "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic," accessible via the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource, American Memory). After being dismissed from his position as pastor at Northampton in 1750 (by a vote of one, for his discipline of young people for reading "immoral" literature and for his refusal to give communion to unconverted church members), Edwards supervised a boarding school for Indian boys and completed several major theological works. He is generally considered one of America's most important and most original philosophical theologians. Shortly after being appointed president of Princeton University, Edwards died after contracting smallpox in 1758.

George Whitfield

George Whitfield is recognized as America’s first “celebrity” preacher. He was not only a great preacher. He was a well known and widely-sought-after preacher. It is said, “approximately 80% of all American colonists heard him preach at least once.” In a time where only the royal citizens of the colonies were known by colonial America, George Whitfield’s name was among the noble.

One of the most popular evangelists of the Great Awakening, George Whitefield was born the son of innkeepers in Gloucester, England in 1714. In 1738 he traveled to Georgia, the first of seven trips to America. In 1739, after a year-long return to London where he was ordained as a minister in the Church of England, Whitefield traveled to Philadelphia. His popularity when he left the city was so great that his farewell sermon had to be moved to an open field in order to accommodate the enormous crowd. A sermon in Boston reportedly was attended by 30,000 people, which was more than the entire population of the city at the time. Whitefield was known for his lively and dramatic preaching. According to historian Harry S. Stout, "He was not 'acting' as he preached so much as he was exhibiting a one-to-one correspondence between his inner passions and the biblical saints he embodied" (Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), 106). In his sermons, Whitefield spoke out against established churches, encouraging colonists to seek a revived form of Puritanism that did not require institutional churches. He also preached about the spirituality of American slaves, encouraging slave owners to acknowledge their slaves' spiritual freedom. He traveled throughout the colonies, from Georgia to New England, winning admirers and adherents, including Benjamin Franklin. After delivering over 18,000 sermons in his lifetime, Whitefield died in 1770 in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Christianitytoday.com included an article that stated,

America’s Great Awakening was sparked largely by Whitefield’s preaching tour of 1739–40. Though only 25 years old, the evangelist took America by storm. Whitefield’s farewell sermon on Boston Common drew 23,000 people—more than Boston’s entire population. It was probably the largest crowd that had ever gathered in America.

In his search for God before his conversion, Whitefield fasted to the point that he broke his health and, under doctor’s orders, was confined to bed for seven weeks.

Whitefield preached at both Harvard and New Haven College (Yale). At Harvard it was reported that “The College is entirely changed. The students are full of God.” Yet Harvard’s leading professors later wrote a pamphlet denouncing Whitefield.

Brutal mobs sometimes attacked Whitefield and his followers, maiming people and stripping women naked. Whitefield received three letters with death threats, and once he was stoned until nearly dead.

Whitefield usually awoke at 4 A.M. before beginning to preach at 5 or 6 A.M. In one week he often preached a dozen times or more and spent 40 or 50 hours in the pulpit.

Conclusion

According to Dr. Allen Guelzo,

Almost 350 new churches were built as a result of the Awakening. About 50,000 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.

The Great Awakening had substantial cultural impacts. The mass marketing of Whitefield’s sermons weakened the control of the colonial elite over the media of the 1700s. 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.