Would you escape the burdens of everyday life, if only for an hour? The Great Awakening made this possible in the 18th century for many men, women, and children. Trends by definition are “to have a general tendency, as events, conditions, etc.” (Dictionary, p.1) “The Great Awakening set many social and economic trends for the 18th century as well as the world today.
The Great Awakening was a wave of revivals which historians have termed the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening was a movement that set out to revive the piety of the faithful and to convert nonbelievers. (American Promise, p.131). Influential people like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield preached powerful sermons to win the hearts of the nonbelievers and refresh the believers that were losing their faith. “Whitefield’s preaching transported many in his audience to emotion-choked states of religious ecstasy.”(American Promise, p.131).
“The revivals awakened and refreshed the spiritual energies of thousands of colonists struggling with the uncertainties and anxieties of eighteenth-century America.”(American Promise, p.131) People living in the 18th century needed a safe house. These people wanted a place to go where they would be accepted, forget their hardships, fellowship with people that were suffering like they were, and for once feel like they weren’t alone. Although no one denomination would dominate, “it was the first major event that all the colonies could share, helping to break down differences between them.”(US history, p.1).
The Great Awakening brought diversity among people. “The spread of religious indifference, of deism, of denominational rivalry and of comfortable backsliding profoundly concerned many Christians.”(American Promise, p.130). Although there was difference in beliefs there was surprisingly closeness amongst all people. Economically everyone was everyone was faced with the same sort of problems. Men were worried of how to provide for their families, women were concerned with taking care of their children, and children were just that they were children. Many people during this time were burdened with poverty, hunger, insufficient amount of clothing, and no one to rely on. When the Great Awakening swept through, this changed how people viewed their situations. They were able to lose themselves in the messages that were being delivered and fellowship with people that were just like them, once again bringing the people closer together.
I truly believe that America needs a Great Awakening. The people of this country have become so distanced from one another. I remember my grandfather telling me how he used to know everyone that lives in the city we’re he is from and now I don’t even know my neighbors first name.
The Great Awakening, occurring in 1730s American Colonies, was a religious movement that started a change in the way people in the colonies viewed religion. The movement started with fears of clergymen that western expansion, commercial development, and lack of
Even though the First and Second Great Awakenings focused its attention on other matters of life later on, religion was the theme upon which they were built. The First Great Awakening started among the American colonial Protestants during the early 1700s, mainly due to the weakening of the strict Puritan tradition of religious doctrine, and in part, the religious decline caused by negative publicity from the Salem witch trials and the Enlightenment (www.wikipedia.org). The movement to correct these problems began with Jonathan Edwards, a strictly Puritan, orthodox theologian from Massachusetts who dedicated his time to bringing the people back to the strict Calvinist roots, and to reawaken the fear of God' (www.wikipedia.org). He was a powerful speaker, and preached to his large followings that it was to simply come to church was not enough to be saved, but they must also acknowledge their grievances in the heart, and feel God's love for them (Danzer, 38). He set off the wave of religious revival, as preachers traveled all across the colonies, attracted thousands of people to revival meetings of spiritual rebirth, gave impassioned sermons, and encouraged people to rededicate themselves to God (Danzer, 38). Although after the First Great Awakening America's religious zeal faded, its influence in religion was the beginning step (www.wikipedia.org). The Second Great Awakening's religious cycle took a bigger step in trying to turn the religious tide. Starting in New York during the early 1800s, the movement spread north, south, and west before ending during the 1840s (Klepp, 2). The Second Great Awakening's religious portion came about through the replacement of the predestination doctrine with the belief that anyone, whether they be sinners or not, can achieve salvation through the internal and external struggle against sin.
Jonathan Edwards said, “True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.” Edwards played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening and administered some of the first enthusiasms of revivals in 1730. The First Great Awakening occurred around 1730 to 1760 and its significance has had a great impact on the course of the United States. It was a major influence on what caused and led up to the American Revolution. The First Great Awakening was a movement that was engrained in spiritual growth and also ended up bringing a national identity to Colonial America and preparing colonists for what was to come about forty years later. The awakening had a dramatic
Fifteen of the revivals emerge in Yale it became the New Haven Technology which was really bad. The Second Great Awakening is a movement that the farmers and factory workers went to have a conversation with Christ Jesus which angels arrived in the villages also the Awakening saw rival religion especially the Methodists and Baptists that attack other convictions. The Awakening proclaim a post-Calvinist theology which all the biggest persuasion implanted the personal sin also God’s grace. Meanwhile, the camp meetings helped so much that it standardize the revival.
Although the Great Awakening did have a great influence on the development of a democratic society, that influence does not outweigh the even greater influence the Enlightenment had. The Great Awakening increased religious diversity and led to the Enlightenment. However, it also preached a stricter form of spirituality, which is not what the colonies needed. The logic and reason the Enlightenment emphasized and encouraged throughout the colonies helped them prosper and
The theology of the Second Great Awakening can be split up into six subdivisions: personal commitment, revivals, conversion of the world, millennialism, perfectionism, and a utopia. Personal commitment consis...
The Second Great Awakening started the was a religious revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States, it sparked the building and reform of the education system, women's rights and the mental health system. It was also the start of many different denominations of churches such as the, Churches of Christ, Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the Evangelical Christian.
The Second Great Awakening swept through the United States during the end of the 18th Century. Charles Grandson Finney was one of the major reasons the Second Great Awakening was such a success. Finney and his contemporaries rejected the Calvinistic belief that one was predetermined by go God to go to heaven or hell, and rather preached to people that they need to seek salvation from God themselves, which will eventually improve society has a whole. Finney would preach at Revivals, which were emotional religious meetings constructed to awaken the religious faith of people. These meetings were very emotional and lasted upwards of five days. Revivalism had swept through most of the United States by the beginning of the 19th Century. One of the most profound revivals took place in New York. After the great revival in New York Charles Finney was known ...
In the early 1700's spiritual revivalism spread rapidly through the colonies. This led to colonists changing their beliefs on religion. The great awakening was the level to which the revivalism spread through the colonists. Even with this, there was still religious revivalism in the colonies. One major reason for the Great Awakening was that it was not too long before the revolution. The great awakening is reason to believe that William G Mcloughlin's opinion and this shows that there was a cause to the American Revolution.
The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival. It influenced the entire country to do good things in society and do what was morally correct. The Second Great Awakening influenced the North more than it did the South and on a whole encouraged democratic ideas and a better standard for the common man and woman. The Second Great Awakening made people want to repent the sins they had made and find who they were. It influenced the end of slavery, abolitionism, and the ban of alcohol, temperance.
The Great Awakening was a superior event in American history. The Great Awakening was a time of revivalism that expanded throughout the colonies of New England in the 1730’s through the 1740’s. It reduced the importance of church doctrine and put a larger significance on the individuals and their spiritual encounters. The core outcome of the Great Awakening was a revolt against controlling religious rule which transferred over into other areas of American life. The Great Awakening changed American life on how they thought about and praised the divine, it changed the way people viewed authority, the society, decision making, and it also the way they expressed themselves. Before the Great Awakening life was very strict and people’s minds were
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, they solved the problem by recruiting the non educated to spread the word of God to their neighbors. The camp meetings eventually favored "protracted meetings" in local churches.
People of all groups, social status, and gender realized that they all had voice and they can speak out through their emotional feels of religion. Johnathan Edwards was the first one to initiate this new level of religion tolerance and he states that, “Our people do not so much need to have their heads filled than, as much as have their hearts touched.” Johnathan Edwards first preach led to more individuals to come together and listen. Than after that individual got a sense that you do not need to be a preacher to preach nor you do not need to preach in a church, you can preach wherever you want to. For the first time, you have different people coming together to preach the gospel. You had African American preaching on the roads, Indian preachers preaching and you had women who began to preach. The Great Awakening challenged individuals to find what church meets their needs spiritually and it also let them know about optional choices instead of one. The Great Awakening helped the American colonies come together in growth of a democratic
The third Great Awakening began approximately in 1850 and lasted until the turn of the twentieth century. This time was a time of reform, and the third Great Awakening paralleled this ideal with a strong sense of social activism. It also placed emphasis on evangelizing and spreading the gospel, which also paralleled the United States growing imperialism. This was a time of growth for both the church and the state. This was also a time for waning Christian faiths. The second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening began in 1790, as numerous Americans experienced uncertainty as they confronted a rapidly changing society with increases in urbanization and technology. The movement focused on the ability of individuals to change their lives as a means of personal salvation and as a way to reform society as a whole, which opened the door for many reform movements. The Second Great Awakening shaped reform movements such as temperance, abolition, and women’s rights in the nineteenth century because of the increase in concern for the morality of the American people.