A REACTION

 

As this blog continues the story of the political culture in America and how it either promoted or discouraged a federated view among its people, the next chapter concerns a great reaction.  The First Great Awakening, beginning roughly in the late 1720s – with a definite presence in the 1730s – can mostly be seen as a reaction.  That reaction was to the Enlightenment.  But as was the case with most other movements in America of that time, its origins can be traced to Europe.

          As this posting will describe below, religious Protestants and some Catholics found the secular arguments of Enlightened thinkers as being either blasphemous to God or out and out mistaken.  In the United Kingdom, the reaction took on the name Evangelical Revival.  In America, the term American evangelicalism was used to denote a trans-denominational reaction constituting this Great Awakening.  And this thrust was aimed not at a group level of focus, but at the personal – individual – level.

          Commentary here is limited to the Awakening’s effects on the political culture of the colonists.  The messaging by such leaders of the movement as George Whitefield, John Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards centered on having believers look introspectively at their morality.  What they called for was a personal conviction and how each is dependent on salvation secured by Jesus’ sacrifice.  They rebelled directly to Enlightened thinking and its view of objectifying reality or what was believed to be reality. 

Instead, these Revivalists emphasized a conversion not based so much on intellectual acceptance, but on a “new birth” which one experiences in the heart.  This appealed to those who looked at the importance of having an emotional commitment.  This placed a heightened emphasis on the practice of revivals – open demonstrations of emotional commitments.  And by doing so, it appealed to common folks not privileged to have higher educational experiences.  So, for example, in England, evangelical Anglicans took on prominence within the Church of England.  There were contingencies within Methodism (influenced by the work of Whitefield and Wesley).  Denominations not so affect were Lutherans and initially Quakers.[1]

Another point of note in terms of the developments in England was certain retention of what this blog has described as basic Puritanical beliefs.  The evangelistic move, in effect, meant increased pastoral or spiritual guidance by church ministers.  This led to appointing or naming non ministers to take on these responsibilities.  It also meant an increased effort to seek out those shunted by the established Church of England, democratizing these religious concerns.  Part of the message was that Christianity was also meant for the “neglected.”

More specifically, Methodist congregations or societies arranged themselves around “classes.”  Those were meetings in which individual attendees were urged to confess their transgressions to others and, by doing so, the aim was to bolster each other.  In addition, meetings would conduct “love feasts” in which practitioners shared testimonies.  This had the effect among many to develop an associated identity – a federal aim.  Here, the Methodists proclaimed three beliefs:

1.    People are, by their nature, “dead in sin.”

2.    Only faith can “justify” them.

3.    The faithful exhibit, both inwardly and outwardly, holiness.[2]

This might remind the reader of Puritanical beliefs (TULIP) in that it is not good works that merit a heavenly reward, but in this case faith – in the case of Puritans it was being chosen by God.

          So, what did this movement find when it first hit the colonies?  The Great Awakening found a willing public but a diverse audience.  As this blog has already established, the New England colonies had adopted a Puritanical, congregational view.  The middle colonies, being more tolerant, had established a more diverse religious landscape populated by Quakers, Dutch Reformers, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, and Baptists.  They were all treated equally by law and conducted their services openly.  And in the Southern colonies, one found an official Anglican church, but also a good number of Baptists, Quakers, and Presbyterians.[3] 

But it has also been recorded that at that time a general low level of church membership was prevalent due to population growth – high immigration – and the effects of the Enlightenment.  Many, especially among the higher educated, turned to atheism, Deism, or Unitarianism, this last belief rejected the trinity (belief in the three-person God) and predestination.  This state of affairs, of course, stirred a reaction by those attending established churches.

That reaction took on the revivalist ideas described above.  Led by New England Puritans, Scots Irish Presbyterians, along with a belief in European Pietism, the faithful took on the messaging of revival and piety which was making their way across the Atlantic.  The result was an American version of evangelical Protestantism.  This placed an emphasis “on seasons of revival, or outpourings of the Holy Spirit, and on converted sinners experiencing God’s love personally.”[4] 

Some of these activities can be traced in New England to the 1710s.  But given the limited means of spreading the “good news,” such activities were limited in New England to local occurrences.  Interestingly, an earthquake and the ensuing “press” coverage led to the dissemination of these practices beyond local churches.  And with the “importation” of European developments, the Great Awakening took off in America.

For readers who might be interested in these developments, they might look up the work of a couple of early ministers.  They are Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen and William Tennent.  The first, ascribed by some as the “father” of America’s version of the Great Awakening, influenced the second who argued that one needed a definite personal conversion to a faith experience followed up by an “assurance of salvation” which was necessary to claim one’s Christianity. 

Through Tennent’s efforts, one finds the ideas of the Great Awakening making their way to the New Jersey/New York area[5] and one cannot deny how this would affect political ideals of Americans in general.  The next posting will continue in this vein.  To this point, though, one can but identify that these developments had no to little effect on how Americans felt about their federated values – if anything, they were strengthened but in a parochial way.

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[1] Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People – 2^nd ed. (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1972).

[2] Alan Taylor, American Colonies:  The Settling of North America (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 2001).

[3] Howard John Smith, The First Great Awakening:  Redefining Religion in British America, 1725-1775 (Madison, NJ:  Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015).

[4] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening:  The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2007), xiv.

[5] Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People.