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Experience History: The Great Awakening By James West

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The Enlightenment began in Europe in the 18th century; American colonists believed that God’s greatest gift to mankind was reason which allowed people to follow the moral teachings of Jesus. The Enlightenment challenged the role of religion and divine right and this helped Colonial America to see that it was possible to challenge God and divine right. The movement challenged the role of God and allowed people to see that they were important and had the ability to shape their own lives. The Great Awakening ended up weakening the importance of clergy as believers started relying on their own conclusions.
Davidson, James West in his book the Experience History: Interpreting America’s past: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, copyright in 2013. Print. …show more content…

The Enlightenment stated that people are born with a clean state. That people are born good they are just influenced by the environment. Some beliefs of Americans were that God intervened directly in human affairs. In the European Enlightenment philosophers stressed the power of human reason to promote progress by revealing the laws that governed both nature and society. John Locke preached during the late 17th century, he believed that all men are born with natural rights; those rights are life, liberty, and property. John Locke proposed that human lives could be changed through education and purposefully action. Benjamin Franklin turned into deism and believed that God created the world to run according to the laws and nature of reason without His intervention. Great Awakening gave the colonists a shared national religious experience. The Great Awakening services were so popular that some had to be held outside in the open nature. Reasons for the Great Awakening were that people felt that religion was dry dull and distant preachers felt that people needed to be concerned with inner emotions as opposed to outward religious …show more content…

With so many new denominations, it was clear that no religion would dominate any region. Although the Great Awakening was a reaction against the Enlightenment, it was also a long term cause of the revolution.
"The Impact of Enlightenment in Europe." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association. Web. 6 Apr. 2015. The enlightenment caused people to think differently about religion. In Europe people began to take control over their own faith and religion. Many argued that they could find God even without the pastors and churches. This source will describe the involvement of some scientists in the Enlightenment in America.
People were beginning to doubt the existence of a God. The age of reason was spreading rapidly across Europe. In the late 17th century, scientist Isaac Newton was challenging the old order. Newton's laws of gravity and motion described the world in terms of natural laws beyond any spiritual force. John Locke defended the displacement of a monarch who would not protect the lives, liberties, and property of the English people. Jean-Jacques Rousseau stated that society should be ruled by the "general will" of the people. Baron de Montesquieu declared that power should not be concentrated in the hands of any one individual. He recommended separating power among executive, legislative, judicial branches of

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The Great Awakening strived to erase the lines between religions by promoting religious pluralism and the concept that all faiths were equal. Primarily, the separation of Church and State was finally in place, which showed the opposition to allowing religion facilitate the decisions of their nation. The Awakening weakened the cultural authority of the upper class and produced a vision of a society drawn in more equal lines. Overall, the thought of finally being equal unified the colonies and created universities that were not controlled by the Church. The new universities promoted different types of curriculum which was not based on religion.

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The main differences between the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment is that the Enlightenment was a movement started by the philosophers and scientists centered on scientific spirit and reasoning. However, the Great Awakening was a religious and spiritual movement. For example, Document A states, ”You have sown the harmful seeds of separation and disorder among us”. This shows that George Whitefield was a dangerous man and was spreading harmful ideas. Also, in Document A, the test explains “You have stopped the spread of the Gospel, and hurt the Peace and good Order”.

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Colonial America experienced significant changes during the late seventeenth and early eighteen centuries. The most important changes included the development of cities to became the main ports, and Southern part of America was transformed to be a major contributor to colonial America’s economy. These changes resulted in the rise in population with thousands of immigrants coming in large numbers due to the growth and improvement of the agricultural estate. Following this period of economic boom, colonial America experienced two major revivals that had long-term effects on the nation with regards to religion, government, and human nature.

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The Great Awakening and Enlightenment were two very different cultural phenomena that happened during the 1700s but they both had a similar effect on colonial society. The Enlightenment was based on reason, science, rationality and progress. Benjamin Franklin, an Enlightenment thinker from Pennsylvania, believed that science could benefit society. Other Enlightenment thinkers had rational views of God and viewed him as a clockmaker that controlled the universe.

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1. Boston Massacre a. The Boston Massacre took place on March 5, 1770 in Boston. The Boston Massacre became a historical event because it was the start of a revolution. It all began when the British soldiers came into Boston and fired shots at the colonists for making a crowd and going against the soldiers.

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The Enlightenment was a transition of thought that challenged the social norms of the 18th century. The Enlightenment allowed for the church to not take

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A religious movement, that made religion more popular, between 1730 - 1740. Jonathon Edwards and George Whitefield were the two who set off the great awakening. Jonathon Edwards helped set off the Great Awakening because of in his “powerful” sermons, he would call on colonists, also young people, to examine their lives. He would preach of god’s sweetness and beauty, but at the same time he would warn the listeners to pay attention to the bibles teachings. Otherwise, they would be sinners.

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An intense religious movement called, The Great Awakening, occurred in the 1730’s and 1740’s. This movement started in Colonial America, which originally came from a town named Northampton located in Massachusetts. Two preachers whose name’s are, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield both called Northampton home. Between these two men and their belief that the only thing that could save us humans, from the eternal fires of hell, was The Lord’s mercy. This had a massive affect on the colonists of America, due to there spiritual beliefs coming to end for the past century.

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we need to go back to earlier revivals and the current social environment of the 1800 's. During the first half of the 1800 's, the population of the United States grew from five to thirty million, and the boundary of the nation moved ever westward. Revivals became the primary means of Christianizing the growing and expanding population. These revivals at the beginning of the nineteenth century became known as the Second Great Awakening. The Second Great Awakening was very democratic anyone could be saved, personal study of the Bible was as good as or better than being taught by someone with formal training, regular people could be called by God to become preachers, and God expected everyone not just a special few to do His work on

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The shift that the Awakening achieved had reflected the contributions of Enlightenment philosophy. The results that the Enlightenment received was not surprising at all. In America, the Calvinist doctrine of “inability” was said to be unrelated with a culture that is sunken in the ideology of the beliefs of universal equality, as well as political and economic mobility. This notion was an easy agreement to become, and Americans’ had felt that way too. The Americans believed that if the individual soul could be redeemed through free will, then national redemption would be able to follow from common efforts leading to social

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The contributions of Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley and George Whitefield were crucial to this revival. Many changes in the religious life of the Americans made because of the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening was the result of several combined events taking place across England and Europe.

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"Have the courage to use your own understanding" is probably the best-known quotation by Immanuel Kant (Kant 58). He refers to the Age of Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, which was a major historical movement of the eighteenth century. The era was characterized by significant social and intellectual developments which led to several shifts in people’s way of thinking. Moreover, the era was accompanied by major scientific research and discovery. In her novel “Frankenstein’’ ,which was first published in 1818, Mary Shelley addresses numerous ideas of the movement which are embodied by the main characters, Victor Frankenstein and his monster.

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Secondly, the enlightenment promoted religious toleration and freedom of conscience Which allowed Catholics to practice their faith more openly and freely. This led to a more

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“God, who has given the world to men in common, has also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience” (Locke, 35). The Scientific Revolution concentrated on understanding the physical world through astronomical and mathematical calculations, or testable knowledge. The Enlightenment focused more on “Spreading of faith in reason and in universal rights and laws” (Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, 535). While the Scientific Revolution preceded the Enlightenment, both time periods sought to limit and challenge the power of the Church, through the spread of science, reason and intellect, and political philosophies. The Scientific Revolution began with Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1542) and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) wanting to understand the movement of the planets beyond what they authorities had told them.

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The Enlightenment was a period during the 1600 and 1700s where authority, power, government and law was questioned by philosophers. The causes of the Enlightenment was the Thirty Years’ War, centuries of mistreatment at the hands of monarchies and the church, greater exploration of the world, and European thinkers’ interest in the world (scientific study). A large part of the Enlightenment was natural law, which was the belief that people should live their lives and organize their society on the basis of rules and precepts laid down by nature or God; the principles of the Enlightenment in the 1600s through the 1700s influenced the development of the USA by advocating religious and social freedom, freeing the people from oppression, and providing

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