Awakenings & Enlightenments

pp. 91-98

Pattern of Religions

Variety in colonial America

Difficult to impose any one religion on any large area

Church of England in VA, MD, NY, NC, SC, GA

Increased variety in Christian denominations

Catholics & Jews remained religious minorities & suffered persecution

The Great Awakening

Concerns about declining piety (reverence for God) & increased secularism

Began with increased religious fervor, 1730s-1740s

Esp. appealed to women & younger sons

Reflected desire to break away from families and start a new life

Great Awakening

Evangelists

John & Charles Wesley-Methodism

George Whitefield-see link

Jonathan Edwards-Puritan

Led to divisions between “New Light” revivalists & “Old Light” traditionalists

Some revivalists said book learning was a “hindrance to salvation”

G.A. caused a great upheaval in the culture of colonies

Enlightenment

Result of scientific & intellectual discoveries

In competition with the Great Awakening

Natural laws regulated workings of nature Francis Bacon, John Locke older ideas

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison were newer thinkers

Human reason Created progress & advanced knowledge

Enlightenment

Increased emphasis on the importance of education, politics, & government

Encouraged one to look at oneself, rather than look to God for guidance

Education

Emphasis on education in colonies, but work often interfered

MA law in 1647 required every town to have a school

Quakers set up church schools

Apprentices learned from craftsmen in cities: evening schools

Few children went beyond primary school years

Literacy rates in colonies were higher than in Europe Over ½ of white men could read and write

Education

Males had more educational opportunities, but females had primary home schooling and higher literacy rates

African slaves had few chances at schooling

Literacy discouraged, so there was no questioning of status

Most Natives preferred to educate their children in their own way

Due to increased literacy, almanacs were published and circulated (p. 94-95)

First Colleges Tied to religion & training of preachers but had wide-ranging curricula—

Logic, ethics, physics, geometry, astronomy, Latin, Greek, etc.

Harvard, 1636, MA

William & Mary, 1693, VA

Yale, 1701, CT

College of New Jersey (Princeton), 1746

King’s College (Columbia), 1754, NY

Academy of College of Philadelphia (Penn, Ben Fr.)

Offered mechanics, chem., agri., gov’t., commerce, languages, 1st medical school

The Spread of Science

Increased interest in scientific knowledge

At colleges

By amateurs & scientific societies Ben Franklin—Kite experiment proved that

lightning & electricity were the same; invented the lightning rod

Cotton Mather—Inoculation against small pox

Concepts of Law & Politics

In comparison to England court procedures were simpler & punishments were different

Stocks, branding irons, whipping posts, ducking stools

Royal government was far away, so colonies had a large measure of self-rule

Voted for colonial assemblies

Royal governors had limited powers

Colonies largely were independent of Parliament