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The Influence of Puritanism in American Culture
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The Influence of Puritanism in American Culture
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The author also explains how the Great Awakening affected the colony; lower classes started participating in church events and gained religious power. Old religious groups were put in the same area as newer, less traditional religions. The Great Awakening also affected the church services-they were not all held in churches, and if there were too many people, they would have the service outside. While there were disagreements between the denominations, there were disagreements inside of religious groups as well. Herman Husband, a leader in the rebellion, aired grievances about “unjust oppressions” after being cut out of church functions.
Religion before the Great Awakening was strictly based on class and social status. Most people in the colonies sat in different seats, and they were divided into sections. It was not until the Great Awakening that these different social groups of people started to mix. Women, for example were treated harsh in the Puritan churches. They were considered as subordinates of men, and they did not have any roles in churches.
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).
The Market Revolution and the Second Great Awakening both dramatically shaped the individual stories of Elijah Pierson and Robert Matthews. When the Market Revolution brought Elijah from New Jersey to New York, his life was a lot different than what he was used to. Elijah had come from a town where everyone attended church and where social hierarchy was unproblematic. At a young age he learned that “God had placed men and women into families and social ranks, then governed their destinies according to his inscrutable Providence” (15). However, when he moved to New York, few people attended church and homelessness was seen all over the streets.
The decline of Calvinism during the First Great Awakening yielded a more individualistic view of salvation and religion as a whole, inevitably resulting in new interpretations of Puritanism. Before the First Great Awakening began, the Massachusetts Bay Colony experienced a decline in religion between 1700 and 1725. The colonists viewed the ministers as too formal and lacking religion of the heart. However, beginning around the 1730s, the revival brought a new style of emotional, oratory preaching, which argued that everyone was damned unless he/she repented. This introduced the question “what can I do to be saved?”
The Great Awakening had a profound impact on Henry because his mother and father chose to worship in different churches. This is an important key to both his character and the kind of political leader that he became. His mother was involved in the Presbyterian revival. His father stayed with the Anglican Church. In 1745, when Henry was just nine years old, the Great Awakening brought a barnstorming English evangelist.
The Great Awakening was a spiritual renewal that cleared the American colonies (particularly New England) and took place in 1730 through 1760. In the 1730’s, a religious revival swept through the British American Colonies and a man named Jonathan Edwards refused to convert to the Church of England. Eventually, people were even beginning to suggest predestination was wrong and good works might save a soul. Not only Jonathan Edwards started this but people like George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers started to preach to God and began to disassociate themselves which led to a general sense of complacency.
America’s Bible culture began with the colonists’ prevalent usage of the KJV Bible. With an increasing Protestant identity in the colonies and the conviction that God’s favor was upon the land, two Great Awakenings surfaced in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The first Awakening, led by a KJV Bible inspired Methodist, George Whitefield, emphasized the personal conversion experience. The movement along with the KJV Bible spread throughout the south paving the way for the second Great Awakening, which was in part formed out of resistance to American deism. Stressing a morally reformed Christian nation, the second Great Awakening brought about a form of evangelical Christianity.
In addition, because the Great Awakening was a series of smaller regional revivals that “swept” only a few New England colonies and left the middle and southern colonies generally untouched, Butler brings up the point that it is both not widespread and difficult to date (“Enthusiasm Described and Decried” 310). In fact, regional events only occurred in about half of the colonies (“Enthusiasm Described and Decried” 322). While Stout
Although all the colonists all came from England, the community development, purpose, and societal make-up caused a distinct difference between two distinct societies in New England and the Chesapeake region. The distinctions were obvious, whether it be the volume of religious drive, the need or lack of community, families versus single settlers, the decision on minimal wage, whether or not articles of agreements were drawn for and titles as well as other social matters were drawn, as well as where loyalties lay in leaders. New England was, overall, more religious than the Chesapeake region. Settlers in New England were searching relief for religious persecution in Europe. Puritans, Quakers, and Catholics were coming in droves to America searching for an opportunity to have religious freedom.
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.
The First Great Awakening was brought over to America from Europe in the early 1700’s, which brought Pietism, Enlightenment and Protestant faith. The Protestant faith was established in the United States during the colonial era with the first Great Awakening and grew after the War of 1812. Men were mostly of the hierarchy till the roles of the women transitioned through the war. A while later, the Second Great Awakening increased the churches to a lucrative Christian society in which preached spiritual equality and could democratically govern themselves within a hierarchy (Henretta). During the Second Great Awakening there was a substantial amount of importance for religious women in the church as they searched for a social, political and cultural
Richard Kaplan also said, “the theological belief in the potential mutability, indeed perfectibility, of people also encouraged a reforming attitude toward social institutions. Humanity and earthly society were not inherently sinful and, thus, could and should be reformed.” With the new quantity of religious people, the belief that there should no longer be sinful or unjust things grew tremendously. With this belief, people began to believe that things that needed to be reformed, should be reformed. The Second Great Awakening sparked a nationwide wave of reform movements that had a huge impact on American society throughout the 19th century.
Despite the intricate positions on abolition, the Second Great Awakening influenced many leaders and developed new principles that radiated throughout the country. Christianity was the one unifying factor that most Americans could identify with at the time. The Enlightenment Era challenged old ideas of divine authority and stimulated a more progressive church aiming for equality. With leaders in the church declaring that slavery was a sin, and promoting the idea of a forgiving God, many northerners began to reach out and spread the word of God and secure their eternal salvation. These values were preached to most Americans from a very young age through song and childrens books.
The Second Great Awakening, beginning in about 1790, influenced a reform movement that encouraged mandatory, free, public education. In 1805, the New York Public School Society was created by wealthy businessmen and was intended to provide education for poor children. In 1817, a town meeting in Boston, Massachusetts called for establishment of free public primary schools. Many wage earners opposed this proposal. Josiah Quincy, mayor of Boston, supported the idea that education should be a priority by saying, “(By) 1820, an English classical school is established, having for its object to enable the mercantile and mechanical classes to obtain an education adapted for those children whom their parents wished to qualify for active life, and thus