The Great Awakening

The Great Awakening, which occurred in the American colonies before the Revolutionary War, is desperately needed today! It would be wonderful if history could repeat itself and turn our fractured, sinful country around, before it’s too late. Here are a few quotes from chapter 6: 

“The Great Awakening was a spiritual movement, not a political one, but it had political consequences as communications were established between the various colonies up and down the eastern seaboard. British historian Paul Johnson says it was the ‘original dynamic of the continental movement for independence.’ The sixth thing every Christian should know about the founding of America is that the Great Awakening, a religious revival, was a key factor in uniting the separate pre-Revolutionary War colonies and in increasing communication among them.”

“As we have seen, America had been founded primarily for religious purposes… The Americans were overwhelmingly church-going, much more so than the English, whose rule they rejected.”

The Great Awakening had its early roots among German immigrants who were most thankful for this “promised land” and for their delivery from poverty in Germany. In 1719, the German pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church, Theodore Felinghuysen, led a series of revival meetings in the Rarity Valley in New Jersey.  Another early preacher was a Scottish-Irish Presbyterian named William Tennent in Pennsylvania. He established what would become known as Princeton university. He and his son Gilbert were fiery preachers who practiced… emotional hymn singing along with their sermons. They emphasized Godly living and the need for personal Bible study. This made reading, and therefore, education, a must. This linkage caused the literacy rate to climb to nearly 100% in the late 1700’s. Jonathan Edwards, a prominent preacher during the Great Awakening, would one day become president of Princeton.

Jonathan Edwards’ influence reached far beyond this time. Not only were thousands converted through his sermons, but even the unconverted benefited from the social and political consequences of his preaching. He and his wife Sara had eleven children, who were all raised to be Godly people.

Their success as parents was revealed in a study done in 1990, showing that their descendants included 13 college presidents, 65 professors, 30 judges, 100 lawyers, a dean of a law school, 80 public office holders, nearly 100 missionaries, 3 mayors, 3 governors, 3 United States senators, 1 comptroller of the US Treasury, and 1 vice president of the United States. 

However, the last person mentioned, had a different story. Vice President Aaron Burr lived in rebellion to the Christianity of his childhood. Aaron Burr was a man of low character who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Later Burr would be accused of treason.

The Great Awakening had thousands of amazing testimonies where the spirit of the Biblical God moved through entire families, towns, and regions. Edwards wrote about this in his book, A Faithful Narrative on the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton. 

At the height of The Great Awakening, the New England churches grew daily. Robert Flood reports that between 1740 and 1742, out of a total population of 300,000 in New England, 25,000 to 50,000 people joined the churches. The movement changed the entire moral tone of New England for the better and justly earned the name of the Great Awakening.

The other famous preacher of the Great Awakening was George Whitefield. Whitefield came from Old England, where he had attended Oxford University with John and Charles Wesley, brothers who were also great evangelists and hymn-writers who would later impact the east coast of America.

George Whitefield preached from New England to Georgia, uniting all the colonies spiritually before American independence was even a dream. At the same time, Whitefield had a concern not only for the spiritual health, but also for the physical health of the colonies. He founded an orphanage for the children who were unprovided for.  He preached over and over again about the need for being born again. His wife said, ‘It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience by proclaiming the simplest truths of the Bible. Our mechanics shut up their shops, and the day laborers throw down their tools to go and hear him preach, and few return unaffected.”

Whitefield returned to America for seven continental tours over thirty years. 

Even Benjamin Franklin, who was definitely not a man of faith, recognized the beneficial  social effects of these revivals and of Whitefield’s preaching:

“It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk through town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.”

Paul Johnson points out that this Great Awakening sounded the death-knell of British Colonialism. The Great Awakening helped to forge the sections of the country together. The chapter goes into considerable detail on the interaction of the British and the Colonialists, but for my purposes, I’ll close with this:

The unified response of the colonies confirms what Paul Johnson has pointed out - that the message of the Great Awakening, which created new men and women in Christ in all thirteen colonies, had undoubted political overtones. Johnson concludes: “The Great Awakening was thus the proto-revolutionary event, the formative movement in American history, preceding the political drive for independence, and making it possible.”

The key text for the Great Awakening was Revelation 21:5: “Behold, I make all things new.”

Founder John Adams, who later served as America’s second president said, “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.

Paul Johnson wrote: 

“The Revolution could not have taken place without this religious background. The essential difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event. That fact was to shape the American Revolution from start to finish and determine the nature of the independent state it brought into being.”