In the last posting, this
blog left the reader with the claim that the First Great Awakening was not
antagonistic toward federalist values, but if anything, was supportive of them in
a parochial way. One might question that
claim in that the spiritual experience promoted by the Awakening was described
as a personal, individual one; a person on a his/herself basis accepts God’s
grace.
This
smacks of being individualistic and not communal as federal values emphasize. But the outward manifestation of this process
– acceptance of God’s grace – was very social and celebrated out in the
open. Here is how Allen Guelzo describes
this,
The promotion of piety
became [Jonathan] Edward’s particular burden in the 1730s, especially when, in
1734, “a very remarkable blessing of heaven” fell on Northampton. In the Puritan past, the experience of
religious conversion had been largely a matter of individual spiritual renewal,
under the careful direction of pastors and family elders. The novelty introduced by the awakeners of
the 18th century was to turn the experience of grace into a communal
experience, a group revival of religion that could involve whole towns,
sometimes entire regions … Not only the numbers [of participants], but the
character of the revived was, Edwards said, “unprecedented.” It involved, not only males and females
alike, but children as young as four years, and outbursts of enthusiasm in
worship.[1]
And this distinction between
individualism in terms of one’s relationship to God and the communal essence of
revivals should be unraveled a bit.
Regarding this
aspect of the individual – his or her religious commitment – it reflects more
an aspect of federal theory that this blog tends to ignore.[2] That is, federal theory, along with its
emphasis on communality is equally concerned with what constitutes the
individual’s integral self. This blogger’s
interpretation is that that individualism associated with Puritanical worship was
not a promotion of self-interest, per se, but an attempt or
actualization, in terms of the belief, to define one’s integrity.
Federal theory holds as of equal
importance with one’s federation with others that that associating be the
product of one’s individual commitment.
In turn, that counts on a person establishing to him/herself, and to
others, that person’s individual integrity and that includes his/her beliefs
and priorities. Those beliefs are that
integral to who the person is. Puritanical
commitment to a bonding with God is so self-defining, it contributes self-awareness. And along these lines, Edwards provided,
through his written work, clarification as to what this self-identity means.
In his best received philosophic work,
Freedom of the Will, he takes on an Enlightenment argument that has profound
implications on all Christian theology.
The subject of that argument is rooted all the way back to the ancient
Greeks, more specifically the Stoics.
That is the argument that claims that all of reality is material, as
opposed to spiritual, and that includes human behavior and the processes by
which behavior is determined. In a few
words, it denies the existence of free will.
That argument was taken up by Thomas Hobbes and to a more moderate
degree by John Locke. During the mid-1700s,
the concern over free will was an active topic of discussion.
So threatening was this denial of free
will, that even predestination Calvinists felt they had to come out against
this anti free will position. Edwards,
through the use of logical claims, bridged the gap between the belief that God determines
everything and the claim that people are free to behave as they choose, i.e., they
have freedom or free will. And by doing so,
he provided the rationale that one could hold on to spiritualism and avoid
devolving into materialism.
In
this, one should see Edwards not as an enemy of the Enlightenment, but one who
respected the philosophic tradition that movement was establishing. He, Edwards, did not rely on the scholastic
model – based on biblical text – of rational thought, but built his claims on
psychological arguments. And in that, he
relegated the sole attractiveness of reason and nature – that Enlightened
thinkers held – as being superficial.
What was needed to enrich pure reason
was the incorporation of emotions. What
Puritanical thought – especially among awakeners – argued for was to upgrade
what one believed to what one might describe as a conversion of the heart. In that effort, Edwards is a rare thinker who
was able to generate a creative fusion between the Enlightenment and piety (or
stated another way, coalescing reason and un-reflected beliefs).[3]
Despite
the work of such leaders as Edwards, and on another front, the Great Awakening
did cause conflicts among religious communities. These became serious. The outbreak of schisms became somewhat common. Usually, these pitted supporters of
revivalist groups, “New Lights,” and those offended by these newer upstarts,
“Old Lights” against each other. The
more established leaning believers saw New Lights as disruptive, over emotional,
and non-anchored, i.e., being ministered by traveling preachers. This all seemed to Old Lights as upsetting the
established order in their churches, that they wished to preserve.
In response, it became
common for the established church goers to categorize revivalists as ignorant, unruly
(needlessly attacking the orthodoxy of their beliefs), and/or, more cynically, out
and out con artists. In return, New
Lights attacked the establishment church goers as overconcern with their statuses
and with not having enough concern for the welfare of the souls of their church
members.
In terms of their
reliance on traveling preachers, New Lights seemed to hold with little regard the
territorial allocation that ministers honored among themselves – one minister
had an area to minister to and avoided transgressing into their neighboring
ministers’ areas.[4]
Overall, the area that experienced the
highest incidences of these schisms was New England and given those colonies’
association with Puritanism, this was not surprising. A denomination that
experienced increased membership from these events was the Baptists especially
in New England. [5]
To reiterate, this is not meant to be an
exhaustive review of the First Great Awakening and its theological
positions. This blogger is attempting to
sypher out those elements of the movement he feels had a political effect on
colonial Americans and to give an overall description of those elements. The next posting will review the social
impact it had on woman and African Americans of that time. These two groups and their social statuses
changed as a result of the First Great Awakening.
While the separate effects of this religious
movement varied in their influences, the main goal here is to outline which
effects strengthened or weakened how people held onto federalist values of that
time. In doing so, this blog will highlight
how religion affected political thinking and its related values. It will point out, as matter of course, that federalism
focuses on two levels of the human experience:
on the humanness of the individual as he/she chooses to federate under
communal bonds.
[1]
Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I
– transcript books – (Chantilly, VA: The
Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 55.
[2] The reason for this bias has to do with this blogger
seeing the main challenge to federalist thinking is self-centered behavior by
Americans. This is usually addressed as
being a product of the prevalence of the natural rights construct.
[3] Guelzo, The American Mind..
[4]
Howard John Smith, The First Great Awakening:
Redefining Religion in British America, 1725-1775 (Vancouver, British
Columbia: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 2015), this source addresses the First Great Awakening as a legitimate movement
AND Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening:
The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
[5]
Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of
the American People – 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972).
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