First Great Awakening

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Template:Great awakenings The First Great Awakening was a religious movement among American colonial Protestants in the 1730s and 1740s. It began with Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts preacher who sought to return to the Puritans' strict Calvinist roots but recognized the importance and power of immediate, personal religious experience. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is perhaps his most famous sermon, but does not reflect the complexity of his thought as seen in his many sermons and essays. Edwards was a powerful speaker and attracted a large following. The English preacher George Whitefield continued the movement, traveling across the colonies and preaching in a dramatic and emotional style, accepting Christians as his audience.

The new style of sermons and the way people practiced their faith breathed new life into religion in America. People became passionately and emotionally involved in their religion, rather than passively listening to intellectual discourse in a detached manner. People began to study the Bible at home, which effectively decentralized the means of informing the public on religious manners and was akin to the individualistic trends present in Europe during the Protestant Reformation.

Those attracted to his message and that of the itinerant preachers who sprang up across the colonies called themselves the "New Lights," and those who were not were called the "Old Lights." The Great Awakening was perhaps the first truly "American" event, and as such represented at least a small step towards the unification of the colonies. Thus, many historians point to the Great Awakening as one of a number of events which provided a basis for a truly "American" society, and increased the independent, self-determined spirit of colonists.

Yale Historian Jon Butler (1982) strongly challenged the notion that there was in fact a "Second Great Awakening." Many different religious events happened, he argued, but they did not cohere and form a genuine movement.

Further reading

Primary Sources

• Jonathan Edwards, (C. Goen, editor):"The Great-Awakening: A Faithful Narrative..."; Collected contemporary comments and letters; 1972, Yale University Press, ISBN 0300014376.
• Alan Heimert and Perry Miller ed.; The Great Awakening: Documents Illustrating the Crisis and Its Consequences 1967

Secondary Sources

• Ahlstrom, Sidney. A Religious History of the American People (1972) (ISBN: 0385111649)
• J. M. Bumsted;"What Must I Do to Be Saved?": The Great Awakening in Colonial America 1976, Thomson Publishing, ISBN 0030866510.
• Brekus; Catherine A. Strangers & Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845 University of North Carolina Press, 1998
• Bonomi; Patricia U. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America Oxford University Press, 1988
• Butler Jon. "Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction." Journal of American History 69 (1982): 305-25.
• Butler Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. 1990.
• Joseph A. Conforti; Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition and American Culture University of North Carolina Press. 1995.
• Gaustad, Edwin Scott. The Great Awakening in New England (1957)
• C. C. Goen;Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740-1800: Strict Congregationalists and Separate Baptists in the Great Awakening 1987, Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 0819561339.
• Hatch Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity 1989.
• Heimert; Alan. Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution Harvard University Press, 1966
• Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 1982, emphasis on Baptists
• Frank Lambert; Pedlar in Divinity: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals; Princeton University Press, 1994
• McLoughlin; William G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977 1978.
• Schmidt, Leigh Eric. Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revivalism (2001)
• James W. Schmotter, "The Irony of Clerical Professionalism: New England's Congregational Ministers and the Great Awakening," American Quarterly, 31 (1979), a statistical study
• Harry Stout; The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism William B. Eerdmans, 1991
• Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield, 1842; reprinted 1997