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The development of a democratic society in the English colonies had many influences during the period 1607-1745. Two of the main influences were Enlightenment and the Great Awakening. The intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment began in Europe and the religious movement known as the Great Awakening started in the Colonies. The Enlightenment emphasized many things such as: reasoning, science, and observation. The Great Awakening, on the other hand, can be described as a recovery for religion and an attempt to turn people back to God. In the late 1600’s and early 1700’s many Europeans began to believe that the light of human reason and science could be applied to society. The Enlightenment caused people to think differently about religion which later resulted in many individuals beginning to take control of their own faith and beliefs. One of the things that the Enlightenment argued was that we (as individuals and groups) are generally good and our influences should mainly come from our environment. The Enlightenment encouraged people to construct an American government by using the individual’s inherited valuable supplies and logic. Some of the positive outcomes of the Enlightenment are the ideas that science and reason should also be able to answer any …show more content…
man’s questions or concerns about himself and government. People are born with natural rights and the government has an obligation to protect those natural rights. Overall, the Enlightenment supported rational thinking and the idea that people were capable of seeking their own answers. To contrast, the Great Awakening originally started as a reaction to the Enlightenment.
As the ideas of the Enlightenment began to advance, it gathered its own reaction from people and many started feeling like the topic of religion was dull. Some of the preachers felt that people needed to be concerned with their inner emotions and morals as opposed to focusing on the outward religious behavior. Just like the Enlightenment, the Great Awakening had its share of positive outcomes. For example, new churches were built to welcome the rising number of new members and encouraged many ideas of equality. Another positive outcome of the Great Awakening was the right to challenge authority, an incredible
result. Some colonies were much more democratic than others and some of the major ideas of democracy were: freedom of religion, speech, free market and human rights, which all came to the New World with the Puritans. At first, they came to the Americas seeking for freedom of religion and they got so much more in return, in both positive and negative ways. The Enlightenment and the First Great Awakening, in the end, constructed our America as it is known it today. Although the more powerful movement of the Enlightenment would become the heaviest influence on the construction of America’s government, both the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment are interdependent. Most laws in the government take some consideration of differing religious faith and doctrine. Additionally, the Enlightenment would provide a solid foundation for our American government and intellectual thought. The Great Awakening also contributed to the foundation, by emphasizing the significance of religious beliefs and illustrating the importance of emotion, and that man’s only means for salvation is through God.
People of all groups, social status, and gender realized that they all had voice and they can speak out through their emotional feels of religion. Johnathan Edwards was the first one to initiate this new level of religion tolerance and he states that, “Our people do not so much need to have their heads filled than, as much as have their hearts touched.” Johnathan Edwards first preach led to more individuals to come together and listen. Than after that individual got a sense that you do not need to be a preacher to preach nor you do not need to preach in a church, you can preach wherever you want to. For the first time, you have different people coming together to preach the gospel. You had African American preaching on the roads, Indian preachers preaching and you had women who began to preach. The Great Awakening challenged individuals to find what church meets their needs spiritually and it also let them know about optional choices instead of one. The Great Awakening helped the American colonies come together in growth of a democratic
The Enlightenment period in Europe was a shift in the way that society thought about power and liberty. The ideals of this period helped to inspire the revolutions of the 18th century. The American colonies desired liberty from foreign rule, the French wanted to increase the power of the people in their class structure, and the Haitians fought for representation for the millions of slaves on their island. While the ideas of the enlightenment were not fully employed in each of these revolutions, they brought the nations closer to a fully representative government, rather than one of absolute power.
In the early 1700's spiritual revivalism spread rapidly through the colonies. This led to colonists changing their beliefs on religion. The great awakening was the level to which the revivalism spread through the colonists. Even with this, there was still religious revivalism in the colonies. One major reason for the Great Awakening was that it was not too long before the revolution. The great awakening is reason to believe that William G Mcloughlin's opinion and this shows that there was a cause to the American Revolution.
...he Great Awakening had to extend consensus in reach of the leading religion which it had failed to go back the popular emotions of the traveling preachers were so exceptional of social diversification. The Great Awakening increased the dialectical that pushed the applicant between the spiritual desire to transcend the earth also the social to have a great appreciation in it. The revivals were demanding so much from start to finish. After 1743, the revivalism appeared which the government of Virginia started to deny special licenses and the Baptist wants more contributions from the crowd because he couldn’t support it. The revivalist had the opportunity to expand a society which they did spread the whole world and it did advance alot during the decades and the colonies wanted to live in a community that tolerates many religions that was there main attraction.
In essence, the Great Awakening was a religious awakening. It started in the South. Tent camps were set up that revolve around high spirited meetings that would last for days. These camp meetings were highly emotional and multitudes of people were filled with the Spirit of God. These meeting, were sponsored mainly by Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterians, and met social needs as well as spiritual needs on the frontier. Since it was hard for the Baptist and Methodist to sustain local churches, they solved the problem by recruiting the non educated to spread the word of God to their neighbors. The camp meetings eventually favored "protracted meetings" in local churches.
Reform movements including religion, temperance, abolition, and women's rights sought to expand democratic ideals in the years 1825 to 1850. However, certain movements, such as nativism and utopias, failed to show the American emphasis on a democratic society. The reform movements were spurred by the Second Great Awakening, which began in New England in the late 1790's, and would eventually spread throughout the country. The Second Great Awakening differed from the First in that people were now believed to be able to choose whether or not to believe in God, as opposed to previous ideals based on Calvinism and predestination.
The Great Awakening brought diversity among people. “The spread of religious indifference, of deism, of denominational rivalry and of comfortable backsliding profoundly concerned many Christians.”(American Promise, p.130). Although there was difference in beliefs there was surprisingly closeness amongst all people. Economically everyone was everyone was faced with the same sort of problems. Men were worried of how to provide for their families, women were concerned with taking care of their children, and children were just that they were children. Many people during this time were burdened with poverty, hunger, insufficient amount of clothing, and no one to rely on. When the Great Awakening swept through, this changed how people viewed their situations. They were able to lose themselves in the messages that were being delivered and fellowship with people that were just like them, once again bringing the people closer together.
The Enlightenment was a spread of ideas that occurred in Europe in which people began to think about humane things and individualism. These ideas caused a reaction in the colonies that is now known as The Great Awakening. During this Great Awakening, preachers called ‘New Lights’ spread their ideas to the people, causing mass effect. This leads to the Great Awakening causing a democratic spirit to emerge among the people.
Many ideals coming out of the Great Awakening had a significant amount of influence on the political literature and rhetoric of the American Revolution. The Great Awakening was started as a resistance to the growing formality of churches in America (The Great Awakening.”). The Great Awakening is commonly known for the “emotional enthusiasm of its participants” when referring to the mass crowds and people fainting frequently from overwhelming emotions (“Lesson 1”). More importantly, the Great Awakening gave American people an identity and a unity the country never before had (“The Great Awakening.”). The Great Awakening encouraged a negative attitude against the British Crown while also creating a moral and religious framework justifying resistance.
The First Great Awakening was an extremely important religious revival that moved through the American colonies. This spiritual revival took place in the American colonies around 1730 to 1760. The First Great Awakening was able to gain a lot of momentum because of the influential preaching that taught the citizens of these colonies that the only way to salvation was by accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior. Many of the colonists believed that they lived proper and just lives by attending church and doing good deeds. It was by the strong influential preaching that took place during the Great Awakening that preachers informed these believers that their works and good deeds would not save them; only salvation through
The First Great Awakening was a religious revival from the 1730s-70s, where we see an increase in the importance of Christianity, in addition to a challenge to traditional authority. One of the most important causes was known as The Enlightenment. This was a movement away from religion where individuals were becoming more encouraged to make decisions based on reason and logic rather than faith. People were starting to make decisions dependent on experiences and facts, rather than the individual beliefs of their religion. This can be credited to philosophers of that time advocating that, should people want change in their society, they should rely on education and reason to do so. John Locke, an English philosopher was one of the most well known contributors to the beginning of the Enlightenment. Before the Great Awakening, there was an increase in church absenteeism and religions piety was waning, meaning that the people were becoming less pure and less religion. In order to reverse the cause of the Enlightenment, we have people like, Jonathan Edwards, a Christian preacher, who is recognized as starting the Great Awakening, along with the simultaneous migration of German settlers who ignited a spark of Pietism in some New England states.
The Enlightenment period, also known as The Age of Reason, was a period of social, religious, and political revolution throughout the 18th century which changed the thoughts of man during this “awakening” time. It was a liberation of ignorant thoughts, ideas, and actions that had broken away from the ignorant perception of how society was to be kept and obeyed thus giving little room for new ideas about the world. Puritan society found these new ideas of thought to be extremely radical in comparison to what they believed which was a belief of strong rational religion and morality. Enlightened society believed that the use of reason would be a catalyst of social change and had a demand of political representation thus resulting in a time in history where individualism was widely accepted amongst the new world. Puritan society believed strongly in myth, magic, and religious superstitions that was immensely used by the Puritans before democracy, capitalism, and the scientific revolution gave rise from the Enlightenment period.
The first Great Awakening is one of the most significant religious movements in the American history that started in 1730s. To understand this, there needs to be a thorough explanation of the two main figures involved in this movement. Jonathan Edwards is the first one. He was an American preacher that worried about people who found wealth more valuable than religious beliefs. There was a new preaching style created by Edwards and other preachers, which provokes fear in hell. Edwards described hell with details and the listeners began to fear the God and his anger. Soon after Edwards spread new preaching style, George Whitefield who was an English minister came to hear Edwards preach. George Whitefield was a gifted public speaker, so he evolves
The Great Awakening swept the British American colonies in 1730-1740s. A tall and delicate pastor, Jonathan Edwards, proclaimed with a burning righteous that New Englanders were far more invested with profit matters, other than the believing in salvation of God. The colonialist started to be convinced that John Calvin’s religious principles were wrong and good work ethics were the way to “save your soul,” Edwards preaching style was soon being learned “sinners in the hands of an Angry God,” thus sparked peoples convictions and they began to hear Edwards out, which became the Great Awakening in the British American colonies. Four years later George Whitefield, a minister, would shout the name of God with such passion and eagerness that grasped
The eighteenth century was a significant time period of many changes and new ideas. These ideas were based around the discoveries of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Europeans began thinking of new ways to advance society and politics. Even though this was in opposition to traditional thought and values, Europeans strived for greater glory, power, and wealth. The Enlightenment used the main ideas of rational thought, social equality, secularism, individual freedom, right to property, and human rights to open up the world to new change. Although the Enlightenment went against traditional values, the new values that came from this era impacted the world on a global scale. With the global spread of scientific ideas, new technologies, and new interests in trade, this helped the Enlightenment themes thrived.