Second Great Awakening Research Paper

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.

In essence, the Great Awakening was a religious awakening. It started in the South. Tent camps were set up that revolve around high spirited meetings that would last for days. These camp meetings were highly emotional and multitudes of people were filled with the Spirit of God. These meeting, were sponsored mainly by Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterians, and met social needs as well as spiritual needs on the frontier. Since it was hard for the Baptist and Methodist to sustain local churches,

The First Great Awakening was a religious revival that swept across Colonial America in the 18th century. The First Great Awakening changed the colonists attitudes toward religion and helped pave the way for the American Revolution. It impacted the way colonists worshipped and gave them a sense of independence. This paper will look at the cause and effect of the First Great Awakening.

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

Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield are credited with crafting the Great Awakening. Their famous sermons and encouragement had tens of thousands of people flocking to their revivals. The encouragement and enlightenment that religious beliefs are within the individual, created many denominations of churches. People did begin to question the old teachings and began to branch out creating their own sect of Christianity. The more people questioned and challenged the Church of England the more people united and developed an interest in higher education. The need to read and train ministers was at the forefront of the newly created denominations of

During the eighteenth century, there was an outburst of religious revival, known as the Great Awakening. Starting in Northampton, Massachusetts, the Great Awakening had a huge impact and spread throughout the colonies. It was ignited by a pastor named Jonathan Edwards in the 1740s. Edwards believed that the lack of good works called for the need of complete dependence on God’s Grace. This caused Edwards to create a sermon about how not doing good works will result in God being angry with you and you will be sent to hell.

For example, the Congregational and Presbyterian churches split between those supporting its teachings and those condemning them. Jonathan Edwards expressed his ideas in The Great Awakening to the people in a series of sermons. Edwards was angry just like God was that humanity kept sinning, he was preaching that everyone who would repent could be saved and those who didn’t would go to hell. With a booming voice just like Edwards’, George Whitefield also spread The Great Awakening ideas and attracted huge audiences as he reached out to all the colonies. Whitefield’s idea and message from God was that the average person with faith and sincerity could understand the gospels and readings from the Bible just as well without depending on ministers and pastors to lead and teach them. The Great Awakening also brought emotion into the system. Emotionalism became part of the routine in Protestant services. The ministers and pastors lost some of their power because of the impact The Great Awakening had. People now studied and lived the Bible in their own spaces on their own. This event in history also lead to separation of church and state. The Great Awakening taught the colonists that relying on higher power such as ministers for religious decisions was not needed. Now with that impact it lead to another impact; the people also thought that if they could make their own religious decisions they could try making their own political

The main outcome of the Awakening was a resistance in contrast to spiritual law which leaked into different zones of colonial life. In spite of the fact that a religious development, the Awakening had ramifications in social and political circles also. Traditions of thoughtfulness and obligingness, the overseeing standards of life in the colonies, were put aside for a more difficult stage. The Great Awakening is generally partitioned into four times of American history. The initially happened while America was still a part of the English settlements. Such religious masterminds as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield urged a scholarly method to scripture. Amid this period, the houses of worship in the colonies were still particularly fixing

The religious revivals that took place during this movement had a major effect on the culture of the United States. This is so because it caused many new religions to branch off of Protestantism. Baptists, Methodists, and Congregationalists are a few of the many examples of these emergent religions. One man in particular, Aaron Lummus, describes the story of how he was converted to Methodism and how much it affected him: “My heart was filled with a calm peace, which I never felt before” (Lummus 4-11). His story shows just how powerful the conversions affected these people and how the newly converted could use their religious fervor to impact others and the US. Lummus himself later became one of many Methodist ministers, all of whom converted many others during this period. Many of these newly-formed Protestant religions are still active today, showing how significantly this movement affected the US even in present-day.

The Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening impacted American history because it revived religion and it was the most important to the abolition of slavery. Before the Second Great Awakening was another period of religious revival, known as the First Great Awakening. This revival took place between 1730 and 1740. In this revival, priests and church leaders told the colonists that God had already decided who was going to be saved, or who was going to be sent to heaven.

The Great Awakening was a revival of religious freedom. The central idea of this was having an internal emotional experience that brings one to God. George Whitefield arrived in Philadelphia in 1739. He was an Anglican Minister who was influenced by Methodism and he

Many people see American religious behavior or movements as similar and even identical-looking (at some times) to each other. This understanding is, however, simply inaccurate as best. Religious stirrings have spread throughout history in various different ways and channels. It is evident that the first European settlers in America developed colonies that prized religion very dearly. Many new colonists had even formed their colonists due to persecution in other countries where they could not practice what they were strongly convicted of. Once free to worship in the way they wished, religion, in many colonies, became strict and ritualistic. Many believed in one single faith, such as Puritanism or Separatism, and would not allow any heretical or contrary behaviors to be pursued. The people who had resented religious oppression would not allow other people in minority to practice what they felt was true. On the other hand, the Second Great Awakening, which materialized during the late 1700s and early 1800s, was a stark contrast to the stringent values the Massachusetts colonies had nurtured. Free thinking and new ideologies arose and abounded in the early 19th century. These two religious movements were far from being alike, even though they both centered around Christianity. The differences arose in the various doctrines, denominations, and dogmas the people held to in those two situations. These differences are important to understand in order to truly appreciate our

The Second Great Awakening is a major and fascinating portion of America’s history. Thousands of people were thrown into a religious awakening, while others were dismayed at the events taking place during this time. During this awakening in the early nineteenth century, the religious culture of the United States was strengthened due to a combination of a new religious freedom and hoards of people heading to camp revivals to experience the new “revived and saved” phenomena. The years before the Second Great Awakening were filled with harsh religious limitations and an implied sense of what religion one should be. When it was decided that there would be separation between church and state, many worried that religion would fade out in America;

In the Northern states, and during the Second Great Awakening, many Americans became involved in evangelical work and had become eager to share the Protestant faith. Although, the Second Great Awakening “reasserted the egalitarian ideals which drew more women than men”, and it also favored women and their reform activities (DuBois & Dumenil, 2012, p.151). Therefore, the revivalism that expanded during the antebellum period is what introduced a number of social reform movements to improve America overall. With the new conversions and the growing interest in religion, women were influenced to help improve all aspect of life including the political, economical, and social problems; therefore they started by “supporting their husband in missionary

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”).