the First and Second great awakening
What is The Great Awakening? The Awakening was a period of great revivalism that spread throughout the colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. It deemphasized the importance of church doctrine and instead put a greater importance on the individual and their spiritual experience.
What most people refer to as “the first Great Awakening” can be described as a renewal of religion that swept through the colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s. The beginnings of the first Great Awakening appeared among the Presbyterians in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Led by the Tennent family, Reverend William Tennent and his four sons, the Presbyterians not only began religious revivals in those colonies during the 1730s but also established a seminary to train clergymen whose “fervid, heartfelt preaching” would bring sinners to experience an evangelical conversion. This religious movement quickly spread from the Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies to the Baptists and Puritans of New England. Around the 1740s, the clergymen of these new churches were conducting revivals throughout that region, using the same strategy that had given the Tennent’s similar success. They would deliver emotional sermons, all the more powerful because they were delivered without prior preparation, preachers such as Jonathon Edwards would portray terrifying images of the corruption of human nature and the atrocities that await those who are unrepentant in hell. Early revivals in the northern colonies inspired some converts to become missionaries to the South. By the eve of the American Revolution, the evangelical converts accounted for about ten percent of all southern churchgoers. The First Great Awakening also gained strength from the travels of an English preacher, George Whitefield. Whitefield and his crew of Anglican clergyman led a movement to reform the Church of England which resulted in the founding of the Methodist Church late in the eighteenth century. During his several trips across the Atlantic
What most people refer to as “the first Great Awakening” can be described as a renewal of religion that swept through the colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s. The beginnings of the first Great Awakening appeared among the Presbyterians in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Led by the Tennent family, Reverend William Tennent and his four sons, the Presbyterians not only began religious revivals in those colonies during the 1730s but also established a seminary to train clergymen whose “fervid, heartfelt preaching” would bring sinners to experience an evangelical conversion. This religious movement quickly spread from the Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies to the Baptists and Puritans of New England. Around the 1740s, the clergymen of these new churches were conducting revivals throughout that region, using the same strategy that had given the Tennent’s similar success. They would deliver emotional sermons, all the more powerful because they were delivered without prior preparation, preachers such as Jonathon Edwards would portray terrifying images of the corruption of human nature and the atrocities that await those who are unrepentant in hell. Early revivals in the northern colonies inspired some converts to become missionaries to the South. By the eve of the American Revolution, the evangelical converts accounted for about ten percent of all southern churchgoers. The First Great Awakening also gained strength from the travels of an English preacher, George Whitefield. Whitefield and his crew of Anglican clergyman led a movement to reform the Church of England which resulted in the founding of the Methodist Church late in the eighteenth century. During his several trips across the Atlantic