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Similarities Between The Enlightenment And The Great Awakening

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Impowering the Nation

The Great Awakening and the Enlightenment (Deism) were both important in shaping the religious, political, and social lives of Americans. However, the revivals of the Great Awakening were able to reach more of the population and therefore gave voices to those previously uncounted. The Great Awakening was a time of excitement that included all facets of society within the colonies. The message crossed barriers and spoke directly to the individuals, it awakened emotions and gave life to those that participated. The Awakening deemphasized the orthodox doctrines and the importance of the clergy. The evangelical ministers preached the importance of the individual’s spiritual, emotional and personal relationship with God. This new form of religion ushered independent ideas within the masses and fostered relationships between the colonies. Because the movement of the Great Awakening was so wide spread and “swept across all colonial boundaries, …” it produced “… common interest … loyalty … and a common …show more content…

Because the American version was “confined to a small number of educated and generally wealthy elites, …” it “was a largely private affair that sought to fly below the radar” (Darren Staloff, Deism and the Founding of the United State) might have helped to quench the harsh ideas of the movement by its founder Lord Edward Herbert. Therefore, this could have been the reason they did not attacking the theory of “revealed” religion (Corrigan, p.95) and were able to align with the Christians on shared political

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Transcendentalism is a highly competitive world of the market revolution which strongly encouraged the identification of American freedom without any restraints on people who were seeking financial improvement and personal development. It was a world in which regional developments along with the market revolution crushed traditional and social borders. For example moving from one place to another was a common characteristic of the American life. Transcendentalism believed in individual judgment over existing social traditions and institutions.

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205 Words | 1 Pages

The Great Awakening unified the diverse colonies with the belief that colonists must shift their lives’ focus from worldly matters, such as accumulating land and wealth, back to faith and the church i n order to avoid condemnation by God. Ministers, such as the passionate George Whitefield, became very influential and powerful at the time by spreading this concept along with methods for earning salvation. For example, “at Philadelphia…, many thousands flock[ed] to hear him preach the Gospel, and great numbers were converted to Christ” (VOF 78). With a large following, Whitefield’s ideas “... encouraged many colonists to trust their own views rather than those of established elites” (GME 160).

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159 Words | 1 Pages

What was the Great Awakening? The Great Awakening was a religious revival that began in the 1730s. Many church leaders were worried that as the increase in politics had grown and that participation in religion had begun to fall. These fears lead to the movement of revivals throughout the colonies. There were many preachers involved but the leaders were Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield.

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128 Words | 1 Pages

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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858 Words | 4 Pages

People had both the right and the duty to make whatever changes were necessary to come up with a new government or new reforms to that government to better serve their needs. This is basically was the mindset of the people who believed that reform was need in society. The Second Great Awakening refers to a period of religious revivals at occurred in the United States in the 1830s. After this period, many reform movements took place to better serve society and the people in it.

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Jonathan Edwards was an American Theologian. Edwards finished from Yale at 17 years old. Jonathan Edwards studied theology. He began preaching in 1722 in New York city, and became the colleague of his grandfather Solomon Stoddard in the ministry at North Hampton, Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards decided to gain control of the congregation in 1729 a decision he did not regret.

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The American Enlightenment and the Great Awakening were two very important motivators that changed the colonial society in America through religious beliefs, educational values, and the right to live one’s life according to each individual’s preference. The Great Awakening and the American Enlightenment movements were two events in history that signaled a grand distinction to the teachings among religious believers. New beliefs of how a person should worship in order to be considered in “God’s good graces” soon became an enormous discussion among colonists across the land. “Men of the cloth,” such as George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards were well respected and closely followed when preaching about the love of God and damnation.

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Of course, there were other viewpoints in America such as Roman Catholics, dogmatism, “doubting Thomas’”, and of course flat out non Christians, however, the assurance of the Protestant seem to be the standardizing American doctrine. I was flabbergasted to find out that one of the greatest oppositions of the American evangelical civilization was the Civil War. The Civil War, widely interpreted as “a true Apocalyptic contest,” for many Northerners the victory confirmed, as one Presbyterian observer put it, that “we as individuals, and as a nation, are identified with that kingdom of God among men, which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” *Footnote* This section is entitled Evangelical America at the Brink of Crisis, and there was a crisis due to different aspects of philosophy such as “The Common Sense Philosophy” as well as relying heavily on approaches such as the scientific method.

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The Second Great Awakening also consisted of the growth of many churches in the United States and increased the percentage of religious people by a lot. The second great awakening influenced several social reforms that took place later and helped change our country into what it is today. The Second Great Awakening definitely expanded the number of active church members and affected the United States in many ways later in its

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This period was marked by a marked decline in religious activity, since people were more interested the burning political issues of the time. The greatest significance of the Awakening was the way it prepared America for the War of Independence. In the decades before the war, the revival taught people that they could be bold in confronting religious authority, and that when churches did not live up to the expectations of believers, people could break up and form new ones. Through Awakening, settlers realized that religious power lay in their own hands, not in the hands of the Church of England, or any other religious authority.

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At the core of the Great Awakening, many colonists were likely drawn to the experience in general, based in part to the fact that Colonial America was a land of extreme flux during the early 18th century. As it has been noted by some historians, the people of this time were likely feeling lost and the rigmarole of traditional worship was affording them very little “spiritual reward”, so to speak. As it would appear to this writer, it would seem that though religious worship had remained an important part of colonial society, it had become stagnant for many and they were simply going through the motions. As to how this relates to religion and the messages being passed down to congregations, the message itself challenged people to look into themselves as a means of salvation and men like George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and Reverend John Fish centered their revivals around this fact. What was more profound was the fact that their messages went far beyond reaching just white, Europeans colonists; their powerful words and new form of religious preaching touched Africans and Indians as well.

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423 Words | 2 Pages

The Influence of Puritanism In the eighteenth century, a passionate interest in religion and salvation developed in the American colonies. This period became known as the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening was an evangelical and revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, especially the American colonies leaving a permanent impact on American Protestantism. Many emotions were let out during this awakening and many ethos, logos, and pathos were used to persuade the audience of the American Colonists.

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992 Words | 4 Pages

Taking Heaven by Storm is John Wiggers attempt at explaining the rise of early Methodism the changes the early Methodist brought unto early America. In Wiggers acknowledgement he states that “This study is about the dynamics of early Methodist growth in America (1).” And continued later on in in the acknowledgement saying “It had a profound impact of the development of American culture and society, such that its impact can still be felt today” I believe those are bold words to state that early Methodism created such an impact that we can still feel them today. Wiggers opens with sharing statistics on Methodist growth, showing us that between 1770 and 1820 Methodism grew from 1,000 to 250,000 (2).

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In the wake of the second Great Awakening in the early 1800’s, societal morals regarding slavery, lack of rights for women, the prison system, education, and other institutions were questioned. Unitarianism stressed salvation through good works, and both religious converts and transcendentalists initiated social reform movements in an attempt to improve the moral state of America. Two of these movements that included perhaps the most controversy and struggle included abolitionism and women’s rights. Although both the abolitionist and women’s rights movements were able to eventually create lasting societal and political change, the fact that only a small portion of the population had any democratic rights showed the initial weaknesses of American democracy.

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745 Words | 3 Pages

The Enlightenment gave people power to make the changes they wanted for independence and politics using intellect and reason, their natural right. The norm of a society that is modelled today became reason over

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