Contextualization: Contextualization: DeismDeism

Influential school of thought during the colonial, revolutionary and early-national periods (17th – 18th c)

Enlightenment belief that reason and observation of the natural world (rather than revelation and authority) were enough to determine the existence of god.

Subversive: questions the necessity of the church and its officials.

Ben Franklin on George Ben Franklin on George WhitefieldWhitefield

Sourcing: What is Franklin’s religious point of view, and why might it lead him to be skeptical of Whitefield?

Close Reading: What is Franklin’s argument about Whitefield?

Close Reading: What evidence does Franklin marshal in support of and opposed to his argument?

Was there really a “Great

Awakening” in mid-eighteenth-

century America?Period 2. Key Concept 2.III.ii.

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What was the Great Awakening?What was the Great Awakening?

• Religious revival movement

• Evangelicism – “new birth” considered the ultimate religious experience

• Followers accepted that they were sinners and asked for salvationGeorge Whitefield preaching

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Before the Great AwakeningBefore the Great Awakening• Before the 1730s, most colonies had two established religions.

• Congregationalism was the largest religion in New England (Puritans and other dissidents who broke away from the Church of England).

• Anglicanism was the largest religion in New York and the Southern colonies (same as the Church of England).

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Old Lights vs. New LightsOld Lights vs. New Lights

• Old Lights— Congregationalists and Anglicans. Great Awakening challenged authority and hierarchy of these established churches.

• Great Awakening said that anybody could be converted and born again. You didn’t need traditional church leadership to decide whether or not you belonged.

• New Lights—Churches that grew as a result of the Great Awakening: Presbyterianism, Methodism, Baptism.

Leaders of the Great Leaders of the Great AwakeningAwakening

George WhitefieldJonathan Edwards

Great Awakening: Great Awakening: America’s first America’s first

revolution?revolution? Severed intellectual and philosophical connections

with Europe (Perry Miller) Orthodox vs. liberal Protestantism

Lower class protest (John C. Miller, Gary Nash) Farmers vs. merchants

First inter-colonial social movement (Richard Hofstadter)

Mass communication; broke down sectional/denominational boundaries

“the Key to the American Revolution” (William G. McLoughlin)

Anti-Old Light Anglican (Church of England, Old Light)

But was there really a But was there really a “Great Awakening”?“Great Awakening”?

Read Jon Butler’s essay, “Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction”

Close reading: Identify:

Thesis Argument: claims/warrants Evidence

Evaluate: Do you believe that the arguments Jon Butler makes in challenging the validity of the “Great Awakening” are plausible? Is the evidence sufficiently compelling? Is the language persuasive?