The New England Reconsidered: The Great Awakening

Mira Wroblewski
Ms. Kochman
English 11
March 13, 2017
The Great Awakening—or “Great” Awakening?
The Great Awakening was an Evangelical religious revival in the early American colonies that reformed religion by renewing passion in Christianity through emphasis of the power of people to determine their own destiny (“The Great Awakening in New England Reconsidered: The New England Clergy” 22). Great Awakening beliefs also brought rise to the idea that all people could control the outcome of their lives (“The Great Awakening in New England Reconsidered: The New England Clergy” 23). Because of the emphasis on taking one’s destiny into one’s own hands, many historians have accredited the inspiration and motivation behind the American Revolution to

Butler, on the other hand, describes the Great Awakening as multiple sporadic events that appeared too erratically and in too few colonies for such generalizations to be accurate (“Enthusiasm Described and Decried” 319). Butler states that the revivals were regional events and only occurred in half the colonies. Literally every Great Awakening study and general history focuses on the New England region, but then apply the impacts in this region alone to the entire colonial region (“Enthusiasm Described and Decried” 319). Butler brings forward the further evidence that the term Great Awakening was never even used by people in prerevolutionary society, and was developed by historians in the late 19th century who probably exaggerated the event’s impact. The only exhibit of the term “Great Awakening” being used at the time was in an essay by the preacher Jonathan Edwards, however, he used it interchangeably with terms like “religious flourishing”, except by Jonathan Edwards in one writing, but he used it interchangeably with words like “religious flourishing”, which Butler says was a more accurate description of the time period(“Enthusiasm Described and Decried” 319). 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