Religous Movements
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“That our Hearts may be unfeignedly thankful and that we may shew forth his Praise, not only with our Lips, but in our Lives, by giving up ourselves to his Service, and by walking before him in Holiness and Righteousness all our Days” states George Whitefield in a 1774 sermon. During the 17th century, Americans were not as passionate in their faith as the first settlers had been. Fortunately, scholars began to identify a high level of religious energy in colonies after 1700 . Between 1700 and 1740, an estimated 75 to 80 percent of the population attended churches, which were being built at a headlong pace. The purpose of this paper is to identify the two major religious movements during the 18th century, the affect that the movements had on the colonies, and the political ramifications of them both.
One of the two major religious movements was the Great Awakening, which swept the colonies of the Eastern seaboard, transforming the social and religious life of land before it was over. Although the name is slightly misleading, the Great Awakening was not one continuous revival. It was a series of religious revivals based on fiery preaching and emotionalism that swept across the colonies during the second quarter of the eighteenth century. The name is used as an appropriate designation of the whole evangelical quickening in the colonies. Among these beginnings the most important were the revival of Pietism among the Germans of Pennsylvania, the rise of radical evangelism among the Dutch of New Jersey, a similar revival among the English speaking Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies.
The Great Awakening was part of the contemporaneous Methodist Revival and part of a world movement which had begun in Germany and was known on the Continent as Pietism, so the revival of the Pietism among the Germans of the Middle Colonies was one of the several beginnings of the Great Awakening According to one scholar, the Germans of Pennsylvania were peculiarly subject to religious excitement throughout the eighteenth century Another source of the Great Awakening began in New Jersey when a preacher by the name of Theodorus Frelinghuysen began address the lack of commitment to God amongst the local churches, which came to be known as the Dutch revival. According to Maxson, the Dutch revival was the second of the distinct sources of the Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies and more important for the general movement than the revival among the Germans.
The success of these revivals was major because neither the Anglicans who came to dominate religious life in Virginia after royal control was established over Jamestown, nor the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay, were able to successfully put religious roots down. The reality was that on the frontier, the settled parish system of England, proved difficult to transplant . Unlike the compact communities of the old world, the small farms and plantations of the new spread out into the wilderness, making both communication and ecclesiastical discipline difficult. Because people often lived great distances from a parish church, membership and participation suffered . In addition, on the frontier concern for theological issues faded before the concern for survival and wrestling a living from a hard and difficult land. Because the individual was largely on his own and depended on himself for survival any type of authority whether governmental or ecclesiastical was met with great resistance . As a result, by the second and third generations, the vast majority of the population was outside the membership of the church. This is one of the primary reasons why the revivals were such as success; one was able to experience Christ without having to be entirely inconvenienced because the preachers were itinerant.
One major itinerant preacher was George Whitefield. Although the Great Awakening had already begun, its success was ensured when George Whitefield journeyed to America. He was truly the Great Awakener. Whitefield was born in Gloucester, England, and grew up in poverty . Two years after graduation from Oxford in 1736, he was ordained an Anglican priest. He made seven trips to America and preached in virtually every important town on the Atlantic seaboard from 1738 to 1755 , He had begun his work with Charles and John Wesley in the Holy Club at Oxford , where Charles was a tutor at Christ Church, and he participated in their mission in Georgia, which remained his base over the decades . He shared the Wesleys conviction that a “new birth” and a converted ministry were needed, but by 1740 he had become more strictly Calvinist, while John Wesley had turned to Arminianism .
Undoubtedly, Whitefield was the greatest evangelist of the century, preaching an average of forty hours each week, four times in a day that began at four in the morning and ended punctually at ten in the evening . It is estimated that he preached about 18,000 sermons in his lifetime. His histrionic gifts were the envy of David Garrick. Doubters, like Benjamin Franklin, who joined an audience of perhaps 30,000 Philadelphians in 1740, emptied their pockets, mesmerized, for Whitefields Savannah orphanage, Bethesda . After the French and Indian War ended in 1763, Whitefield arrived in America for his sixth tour. On April 2, 1764, he held a private conversation in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with Samuel Langdon and other established ministers that alarmed Americans already worried about their liberty. Whitefield was quoted as saying:
“I cant in conscience leave the town without acquainting you with a secret. My heart bleeds for America. O poor New England! There is a deep laid plot against your civil and religious liberties, and they will be lost. Your golden days are at an end. You have nothing but trouble before you. . . . Your liberties will be lost.”
Whitefield was determined to have his way; during this meeting he wrote out the undisclosed plans of the British Ministry to end colonial self-government and to establish the Anglican Church. This episode galvanized the clergy in their opposition to British policy, especially when the intelligence proved true and the 1765 Stamp Act was adopted .
Whitefield made one more trip to America, arriving in the fall of 1769. On September 30, 1770, the evangelist suddenly died of an apparent asthma attack in Newburyport, Massachusetts , at the home of the Reverend Jonathan Parsons, in whose church, the First (South) Presbyterian Church, he was scheduled to preach that morning.
The success of his itinerant ministry in the colonies indirectly hastened the break with England by increasing the number of dissenters and, by forming them into loosely affiliated, intercolonial, interdenominational congregations, perceptibly encouraged American independence”
The second out of the two movements was the Enlightenment,