The 1st Great Awakening

Objective: Interpret contributions of various religious groups to civic

principles

Puritan Life

• A fundamental Puritan doctrine• God knows who is saved and who is damned,

• God is omniscient and omnipotent (all-knowing and all-powerful)

• Those who live virtuous lives• more successful on earth• more pious • more likely to be the Elect- those who will be saved

• On the flip side, heathens, heretics, and criminals are considered more likely to be doomed

What is the point of living a virtuous life?How would it change your outlook on life?

Puritan Life

• Own what you need to make it

• Puritans started to collect things they didn’t need

• Became consumers and started to leave the Puritan way of life

• Sound American?

Which enlightened thinker proposed the event that the puritans were experiencing?

Great Awakening

• In the early 1700s.• “Revival: public church

gatherings with hundreds of people.”

• Lots of Christian sermons and church meetings in the colonies

• It changed life in the colonies

• First “truly” American event during the colonial period

How would a shared experience help or hurt the colonies?

Great Awakening

• “Old Lights” were people who were following the traditions of the church

• “New Lights” were people who were following the ideas of the Great Awakening (many were Baptists or Methodists)

• Used emotional methods of sermon

What would modern religion fall under?

Great Awakening

• Belief that your good deeds will not get you into heaven

• One farmer wrote that the sermon “…put me into a trembling fear.”

• People were afraid of going to hell

Great Awakening

• The Great Awakening divided the colonists

• Men and women who converted during the First Great Awakening had to go against traditions (Some churches split)

Great Awakening

• Many women and African-Americans were “saved” during the Great Awakening (spiritual equality)

• However, most revivals were separated by race

Jonathan Edwards

• Jonathan Edwards • Puritan priest from New

England • instrumental in the movement

• Series of revivals aimed at • restoring devotion • piety • colonies in the mid-1700s

• Fire & Brimstone style of worship; • large, emotionally charged

crowds• Like the Enlightenment

movement stressed importance of the individual

Jonathan Edwards

• Jonathan Edwards: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”• (“The God that holds you over the pit

of hell, much as one holds a spider…over the fire, abhors (hates) you…”)

Jonathan Edwards

You are not religiousenough!

Jonathan Edwards

• preached that God was outraged by human sin and that salvation could only be reached by penitence- all others would be damned

George Whitefield• Preached to thousands in barns,

fields, and tents.

• God was all – powerful

• Only save those who professed their belief in the Savior

• Common people could understand religion without religious official leadership

In Closing

• In gods eyes all people are equal

• Real person lies in personal behavior not class or money

• Enlightenment – society based on hierarchy • Privileged class

• People can follow religion on their own

• God = “benign creator” in the 18th century• Dramatic changes in American religion from the 1730-40• Impact

• Religion became emotionally based • Official clergy lost power • Created division within churches - those who supported it and those who did not• Increased diversity - led for increased calling for separation of church and state

• Influence on politics • Increased unity because the colonists had now been through a common experience• Changed the popular view on authority (questioning of the clergy led to questioning of other authorities)

In Closing