How Did Religious Movements Affect The American Revolution

During the 17th and 18th century the “Age of Reason” the philosophers showed many new ways of showing natural laws within nation, government, and rights that helped mankind. As the philosophers went to discuss political, religious, economics, and social questions they helped shape the democratic world we live in today.

The Great Awakening also played a role in government and society. The Great Awakening was based on a wave of rivals that were an attempt to keep churches and religion from dying in an era that believed that nature held more answers that the Bible. The Great Awakening allowed for ministers like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards to share their ideas about God’s vengeful supremacy and for the first time sermons were being aimed at colonist’s hearts, instead of their heads. These revivals awakened and refreshed the colonists, allowing them to forget the anxiety and uncertainty that they had about America at the time, as well as Great Britain affect on their new home. The sermons communicated the message that every soul in fact was important to God, as well as that both men and women had to choose to be saved, making religion a very personal experience that once was very generalized.

As the Age of Enlightenment gradually came to an end, the British American colonists were ready to progress beyond the ideology of human reason and depend solely on biblical revelation. During the eighteenth century, a great movement known as the First Great Awakening swept through Protestant Europe and America, leaving a permanent impact on

They had many important supporters, but a vital one who sparked it, was Jonathan Edwards who was “the Yale minister who refused to convert to the Church of England, became concerned that New Englanders were becoming far too concerned with worldly matters” (U.S History 7b.). Because many people value wealth more than John Calvin's religious principles, Edward became livid and asserted that “‘God was an angry judge, and humans were sinners!’” (U.S History 7b.). Many people refused to listen to him, which caused Edward to spark The Great Awakening. Later in the 1740’s when George Whitefield a “a minister from Britain who toured the American colonies” (U.S History 7b.), started to express his religion perspective with sorrowness and pettiness, which magnetize the audience’s narrow mind and captivate them to hear him. His words were so captivating, he was able to “converted slaves and even a few Native Americans. Even religious skeptic Benjamin Franklin emptied his coin purse after hearing him speak in Philadelphia” (U.S History 7b). The Great Awakening was a vital event which helped all Americans to search for their religious freedom. It was the first event that all the colonies could share and worship cohesively, but it also caused political

By the beginning of the 18th century, there was an unmistakable feeling in the American Colonies that its intemperate society had become too comfortable and assertive, and had forgotten its original intentions of religious prosperity. The result was a revitalization of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s, a movement known as "The Great Awakening". This revival was part of an evangelical upsurge occurring simultaneously in England, Scotland, Germany, and other inhabitants on the other side of the Atlantic. In all these Protestant cultures, a new Age of Faith had arisen contrasting the currents of the Age of Enlightenment, advocating the belief that being truly religious meant relying on

Upon the conclusion of his writing Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England, Jonathan Edwards reiterates his main point, that the Great Awakening is a blessing and should be embraced to improve the wellbeing of individuals and the country. Edwards believes that the Great Awakening is the will of God. God created the revival as a result of His love for man. Therefor individuals must accept and promote this activity, and as a result of the intense glorification of God, man’s soul will spiritually raise. Additionally, the Great Awakening will improve the country as a whole. Edwards wrote that God created New England, and it is man’s job to care for and secure it; and the promotion of this period of religious restoration will protect it against evils. Jonathan Edwards believes that the Great Awakening is to be encouraged since it is God’s desire, as a result, the acceptance of it will benefit not only individuals, but also the country as a whole.

The Enlightenment Era was a period during the eighteenth century. Its philosophers, often called “the philosophs” attempted to refute the previously held religion-based system by creating arguments based solely on reason, and thus create a completely rational system of thought. But, the question of whether they were as reason-based in their thinking as they attempted to be, given the 11 documents, is unanswerable. While some of the documents are useful to judge this, they are by no means a complete and comprehensive overview of the period’s style of thinking, and some of the documents are entirely unhelpful.

The Great Awakening started with a series of revivals in the 1730s, which took a unique and more emotional approach to the Bible (Foner 157). These dramatically changed the face of religion in the colonies, even leading to the growth of several new Christian denominations, such as the Baptists and the Methodists (Foner 159). This importantly was done after a time period where the religion of the colonies was increasingly favoring Anglicanism, with most colonial churches in 1700 being “either Congregational… or Anglican” (Foner 114). The Great Awakening’s renewed religious diversity was thus an important step away from the increasingly overbearing English influence, and therefore a step toward American cultural divergence. Additionally, the Great Awakening decreased the value Americans attributed to “established elites” (160); it was more important how the individual interpreted the Bible as opposed to how established churches did. This change of thinking applied beyond religion; it meant that Americans no longer looked to the largest “established elite”, the British monarchy, for cultural advice and influence, instead increasing their confidence to look inward and develop their own divergent

The First Great Awakening, was a religious revitalization movement that came through the Atlantic region, and even more so in the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, forever impacting American religion & is widely known as the most important event for American religion during the eighteenth century. The First Great Awakening was inspired by an English Methodist known as George Whitefield along with other ministers, when many people in the rural areas rejected the Enlighted and rational religion that came from the Cosmopolitan pulpits and port cities. George Whitefield began this movement with speaking tours through the colonies (“The Great Awakening”).

During the 1600’s two major movements or ideas appeared in the American colonies. The Great Awakening and Enlightenment. These two movements separated the population in a sense. One focused heavily on science while the other saw this as a kind of turning away from god and tried to turn people back towards god.

Popular mythos regarding the foundation of the American colonies is rooted in a vision of America as a land of religious freedom. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, a new picture of colonial religion had emerged, one in which dominance- not tolerance- was the ideal. This period of religious uniformity bred a growing culture of resentment and exclusion, eventually culminating in the Great Awakening, a widespread religious resurgence in the mid-eighteenth century. With an unprecedented level of success, the Great Awakening spawned a new age of sectarian diversification and inclusion as it swept through the British North American colonies.

“…The American Revolution is inconceivable in the absence of the context of ideas which have constituted Christianity. The leaders of the Revolution in every colony were imbued with the precepts of the Reformed faith” (Amos, Gardiner, & Dembski). The founding of America was affected by many events in history—events and religious teachings such as the Enlightenment and Rutherford’s Lex Rex. There were many trials for Christians in England. However, these troubles impacted the Founders of America, spurring them on toward independence. Such occasions were the Reformation, two revolutions which took place in England during the beginnings of America, and finally, the flight of Puritans and the Great Awakening that occurred in America. These historical events in the Christian Church were part of the prompting which led to America’s

The foremost denominations within America before the country’s independence were Congregationalists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Quakers, Methodist and Baptists. These are referred to as the orthodox denominations. Roman Catholics were in a small community in Maryland as well has Catholic Indian missions. However, the Congregationalists, Anglicans, Quakers and Presbyterians were the raining sects in America. During the Revolution, including the Confederation years, church attendance dramatically dropped. The Enlightenment consisted of multiple philosophers that were able to convince Americans that thinking on one’s own was enough for truth and reason. The philosophers stated how the Bible was a book of contradictions; with its wisdom, in addition to mythology and irrational nonsense. After the revolution, the Anglican Church took another hit with decline in membership. Most of their ministers had been Loyalist to Great Britain during the American

The American revolution had been a very secular issue. The Founding Fathers demonstrated their position by creating a separation of church and state in the first amendment of the Constitution. This lead to a series of religious revivals in the US between the 1790’s and the 1830’s. This are known today as the Second Great Awakening, this events altered fundamentally the character of American religion. At the beginning of the Revolution, there were three prominent religious denominations: Congregationalists (descendants of Puritan churches), Anglicans (Episcopalians) and the Quakers. By the end of 1800, Evangelical Methodism and Baptists were the fastest-growing religions in the nation.

Great Awakening – the religious revival that occurred during the 1700’s; starting in Massachusetts and later the rest of the English colonies, it was a religious hysteria with preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield giving moving sermons on the punishments awaiting sinners in hell; shows unity of early America.