The People, Words and Effects of the Great Awakening Essay

The Great Awakening's effect in America started in New England, with the rousing teachings of a preacher named Jonathan Edwards, a Yale minister. He refused to convert to the Church of England, the major church at the time, since he believed that the Church was growing complacent and the citizens of New England becoming too absorbed with materialistic goods and principles. He believed that individual experiences were more important than the doctrines of the Church, and spoke against the Puritan belief that salvation needed to be earned by works. Instead, he preached that salvation was already offered to those who believed. George Whitfield, a British minister, also played a pivotal role in the spread of the Great Awakening, especially to the Middle and Southern colonies. He toured the

To begin, the Great Awakening took place during the early 1730’s. It was a period where religious revivals were spreading along the Atlantic coast. Preachers such as Jonathan Edwards would go around and try to get people back into Christianity. One reason why colonist turned away from Christianity was because of the Enlightenment. He would describe hell and heaven trying to convince colonist to rejoin christianity.

Beecher had to confront the new and more radical revivalism in Western New York which was led by Charles G. Finney. Finney challenged the Calvinist doctrines. He appealed to emotion instead of reason. Finney wanted people to feel the power of Jesus. He had adopted an extreme view that said Christians could be totally free of sin or be as perfect as their Father in Heaven. During Finney's revivals, it was not uncommon for people to fall to the floor in fits of excitement. Finney left behind him strong and active churches. Eastern opposition gradually weakened.

Called the “Son of Thunder”, George Whitefield’s released his powerful voice to spread his message. He constructed messages which revolved around the concept that humankind could never know or reach God because of original

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

During the 19th century there was the Second Great Awakening. This was Christian revival movement that started in the year 1790 and gained momentum in 1800. It taught the Arminian theology that everyone could be saved through religious revivals. It gained millions of new members and was even responsible for many new denominations. It was an important event, that effects even today’s society in many ways.

The Second Great Awakening was an event that took place from the late 1790’s and continued on through the 1840’s and had a major impact on the youth during that time period. Here, I will discuss what exactly happened during the Second Great Awakening and how to affected America during this time, but I will also discuss two figures that were important to this movement, and what exactly they did that made them so important during this time.

The Great Awakening was an intensely religious movement that spread rapidly throughout the colonies in the mid 1700s. This explosive and fiery movement eventually led to the Separation of Church and State in America. By undermining the prestige and honor of the older clergy members and the mouthpiece of royalty, the Great Awakening gave authority for members of society to challenge their authority. The Great Awakening made people question their religions beliefs, leading to the creation of multiple different denominations, creating competition between churches and eventual separation. In addition, the Great Awakening led to the founding of new lights centers, which sparked revolutionary movements. The Great Awakening served as the first

The Great Awakening was a revival of religion in the early American colonies. Some will say that the awakening had negative effects on the colonies, maybe, but overall I believe the Great Awakening had a positive effect and opened the eyes of the colonist, showing them truths of living in the New World and of things that could come for its future. These effects that the Great Awakening had on the early colonies is greatly studied and looked at, because it was what set the ground work for the religious views we have today in our country. Three sources, given to me, telling of the effects that the revival of religion had on early America was quite interesting to me. I found them to be a great insight to the basis of how the revival effected

During the early eighteenth century between 1730 and 1750, a resurgence in religious fervor known as the First Great Awakening developed throughout the thirteen British Colonies. As the European Enlightenment ideas of reason and logic in all things began to grow in Europe and the colonies, the First Great Awakening derived from an attempt to restore the predominance of emotion and spiritual piety in religion. Likewise, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the Second Great Awakening again invigorated religious zeal in the United States in response to the growing secularism in America and complacency of religious believers. The First Great Awakening’s prominent figures, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, discredited the socially stratified religious ideology of established churches such as the Christ Church and popularized the religious ideology of fervent personal connections with God and the principles of spiritual guilt and Calvinist predestination, or the selective and predetermined salvation and damnation of people. From the First Great Awakening also arose the decrease in traditional church parish worship and the appearance of emotionally impassioned itinerant preachers in the thirteen colonies and the mass preaching to emotional crowds outside. The Second Great Awakening eroded Calvinist predestination, and instead religions such as Methodists and Baptists professed the equality of all before God and salvation for all who repent for their sins and

The fighting conflicts between religious and political groups, which resulted from the Glorious Revolution during 1688 to 1689, caused a significant event the “Great Awakening” in 1730s and 1740s. It was a religious movement that swept through settled North America, including British Americans and American colonists, with a spiritual revivalism. It led the ministers explored all people, including all statuses, occupations, levels of education, and region, to reject the emptiness of material goods and allow their emotions and beliefs in God from the heart. Therefore, the Great Awakening had caused some divisions within society and had impacted on religion in the Americas, especially colonists.

These centers helped to educate the people in the colonies and learn about their common history, all to contribute to the growing sense of education the people were trying to develop. Research shows that “...the Great Awakening as the first spontaneous mass movement of the American people. It tended to break down sectional boundaries as well as denominational lines and contributed to the growing sense that Americans had of themselves as a single people, united by a common history and shared experiences” (Kennedy 97). This quote is showing that the Great Awakening had greatly impacted the education of others and how it was able to help develop the growing minds of the Americans. The colonial colleges the “new light” ministers had founded were Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, College of New Jersey (Princeton), The Academy (Pennsylvania), King’s College (Columbia), Rhode Island College (Brown), Queen’s College (Rutgers), and Dartmouth.

The Great Awakening was a time when several religious revivals during the 17th and 18th Centuries in America sprung forth as people wanted a deeper personal relationship with God and the promise of eternal salvation unlike what was being taught by the Catholic Church in New England. George Whitfield was among several notable theologians during The Great Awakening period who came to America with new religious doctrine which changed Christianity then and still presently.

At the beginning of the pre-civil war era, lies a change everlasting effect upon America’s perspective and beliefs. The effects of both the Second Great Awakening and the social reform of the period 1820-1850 held great changes on the way society function and the way it works. The Second Great Awakening led a religious revival movement throughout the United States where social reform movements during the time are related to education, temperance, and women’s suffrage.

George Whitefield (1714-1770) is known as the best evangelist of the eighteenth century and is considered the most influent traveling preacher in the history of Protestantism.12 Whitefield was an ordained minister of the Church of England and during the 1720s along with John and Charles Wesley established a group of men dedicated to seek seriousness in religion and a methodological approach