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The great awakening and the enlightenment are similar in many ways but different in others. One way they are both similar is that they both defy traditional authority. Another way is that it taught them to seek truths for themselves. This shaped their beliefs. However they still had many differences.
The First Great Awakening was in the 1730s and 1740s. It was a period of revivalism that spread throughout Protestant Europe and British America, and specifically the American colonies. The American Enlightenment was during 1700s through the 1800s. This was a period of intellectual ferment in the thirteen American colonies. The Great Awakening and Enlightenment in Colonial America were related because they both challenged authority, both influenced the economy, and both had to do with religion.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that we were ‘dissolving the bands’ between Britain and the United States, he was putting into practice the political philosophies born from centuries of people being mistreated and ignored by tyrants, and stating unalienable rights given by God. The free-thinking sparked by The Enlightenment and The Great Awakening helped change society’s thinking about the power of government and people’s own power over political, religious and personal freedoms.[1] This all culminated in a bloody family feud, and two separate but equal nations. The Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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.
Sephora Kodjo Professor Gina Flowers English 2131 February 11. 2015 The “Enlightenment” and the “Great Awakening” During the late seventeenth and early eighteen centuries, colonial America saw their most important changes. American cities became the major provider to colonial America’s economy. In instance, population increased outrageously with colonizers coming in quantity and due to the development of farms.
Although different, both the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening had a powerful impact on colonial society in America (Schultz, 2010). First, the American Enlightenment was a shift in thinking from the old style of medieval thought to prioritizing the human capacity for reason as the highest form of attainment. Simply put, the Enlightenment promoted scientific inquiry and reasoning to all areas including politics and even religion (Caron & Wulf, 2013). Exploring the scientific reasoning behind religion brought both rejection and support for the Enlightenment from various religious leaders (Schultz, 2010). However, the American Enlightenment did not dissuade the colonists from seeking religion, in fact, while the Enlightenment did promote thinkers to explore a balance between science and religion, not many atheists or agnostics were born from it.
The eighteenth century America saw may changes in terms of reformation. People like Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke were the pioneers of this intellectual era who established scientific and rational understanding. The era showed the revolution in literature and people's understanding of mankind. The Enlightenment and the Great Awakening helped in religious revival and help in establish sense of morality. The era argued against the medieval scholasticism and brought people from rural culture into communal identity.
The Enlightenment Period was the reformation of society, politics, and the economy. The Enlightenment Period was occurring throughout Europe during the 18th century. Traditional views were challenged by science and reasoning. Philosophers who had a great impact during the Enlightenment period included: John Locke, Voltaire and Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith. John Locke proposed that everyone was born free and had certain unalienable rights.
America is a diverse country, filled with people of different race, religion, and class. People from all around Europe and Africa were transported to America, whether it be for religious freedom, escaping poverty, or being forced across the Atlantic through the Middle Passage. As time continued different people began to come to America, each group bringing their own unique quality to the ever growing country. These differences among the nation have caused relationships to form between north and south, wealthy and poor, slave and white man and man and woman. From These Beginnings, Black People in a White People’s Country, and The Transformation of European Society have shown the changes of America from the fifteenth century, ultimately holding
In conclusion, the Enlightenment was vital to the American Revolution and the creation of American Government. The Enlightenment beliefs that influenced the American Revolution were natural rights, the social contract, and the right to overthrow the government if the social contract was violated. The Enlightenment beliefs that aided to the creation of the American government were separation of powers, checks and balances, and limited government. As stated before, without the Enlightenment there would not have been a revolution, resulting in no American Government. The Enlightenment’s influence on the creation of America is irrefutable.
Religion was questioned as the main power, while economy flourished with new trade and new principals. Ideas of rights and liberties developed and the true “New World” was discovered. This was our world. The enlightenment period marks a significant change in the basic foundations of human society at religious, philosophical, and economical levels.
The Enlightenment was a cultural movement, which occurred during the 18th century, characterised by loss of faith in traditional religion and a turn towards human rights, politics and science. The ideas of the Enlightenment were highly influenced by many French philosophers, such as Voltaire, who highly contributed in displaying his philosophies to the world. François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, considered to be one of the greatest Enlightenment writer, was a French Philosopher and writer born in November 21, 1694 in Paris, son of a minor treasury official. Voltaire received great education being born in a middle class family, and was sent to a Jesuit Collège called Louis-le-Grand from 1704 to 1711.
The process of Enlightenment was really to just get the world to think freely for ourselves and to understand that not everything is by the book or that we must believe and follow everything we see and hear. Tutelage from
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
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a new movement took place in the culture that would take place of the Age of Enlightenment. This new movement would reestablish the intellectual, artist, literacy values in the culture of the time. The previous movement of the Age of Reason was more intellectually based, as were the new one was emotionally based. That is why this new movement style was known as Romanticism. The shift from a more intellectual based culture to a more emotional based culture was due to the rapid change in the culture of the time.
