More handpicked essays just for you.
How the great awakening connected to revolution
Comparison and contrast the first and second great awakening
Comparison and contrast the first and second great awakening
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The Great Awakening was known because it brought many new ideas that influenced the American Revolution. In the 1730s, religion was the main idea that the Great Awakening introduced. It all started with Jonathan Edwards. He was a very religious man that went to Yale to become a pastor. After graduating from Yale, he had a huge spiritual encounter, which the Puritans called a “conversion”. Throughout the years, he became a minister and then took over his grandfather’s place as a minister of the Puritan Congregational Church, where he led local religious revivals. Jonathan’s grandfather believed that even unconverted individuals were required to take Holy Communion. However, Jonathan did not agree with his grandfather, so he went against
his beliefs and went in agreement with Puritans who believed only converted individuals were to participate in the Holy Communion. Sometime in the winter of 1733 and 1734, Edwards had met a young man a woman whose behavior was troubled because they were unmarried. A couple days later, the young man died. At his funeral, Edwards was able to prove his point. He warned the people at the funeral that anyone could die at any time in life. The only way to survive was for them to accept Jesus in their lives and hearts and be born again. Edwards was very polite about this and did not force them to accept Jesus. He kept calm, however he spoke very intensely and the youth listened to him and asked what must they do to be saved. That is when the Great Awakening began. When ministers would see signs of awakening, they would start preaching to sinners who were not converted yet, in hopes to persuade them to accept Jesus before it was too late. In 1735, the awakening started to spread to other towns. Many people came forward to be saved from hell and accept Jesus. In no time, the awakening soon spread to the Middle Colonies. In the 1730s, two different awakenings were happening. One of them was in New England and the other in the Middle Colonies. They weren’t necessarily connected, but there was no awakening in the South. The aftermath of the Great Awakening formed many new and evangelical churches once they were separated from established churches. The new church members requested that they were allowed to worship and preach however they wanted and when they wanted. They were also strongly against public taxes and any law that supported established churches. People who would reject that the Great Awakening was a rehearsal for the revolution in America don’t believe it was a true mass movement. Most of all the revival activities were kept in New England, in parts of New Jersey, and also in some of the larger cities like Philadelphia. Never in the South though. Finally, those who were against the rehearsal idea emphasize that went away in the 1740s, however it left long term effects. Customs duties on imports were the new issue and taxation without representation came into play after 1760 to enrage colonists. Whether the Great Awakening was a rehearsal to the American Revolution or not, it is still a debate to historians to this day.
“The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation”. This famous quote by Woodrow Wilson accurately shows how the American Revolution impacted the views of society on its country. When referring to this separation from Britain as a beginning rather than a finish it shows unity and the start of something great. When the American Revolution is discussed there are a plethora of affecting aspects that are thought of as important roles. One of these many factors that changed the American Revolution was the Tea Act of 1773. The Tea Act altered the American Revolution by affecting the Boston Tea Party and the unity in the colonies.
The English colonies greatly evolved from 1607 to 1745. England’s first permanent settlement was founded in 1607 and was named Jamestown. The colonists at Jamestown were all males, and the lack of women made it difficult for the settlers to establish any semblance of a society. After the arrival of women in the English colonies, real communities were beginning to form. The men would typically farm while the women tended to the house and children. Society revolved around religion- men and women looked to God for guidance as to how to live their lives and shape society. Many events including Bacon’s Rebellion, the Enlightenment, the Great Awakening, and the Zenger case had a great influence on the development of a democratic society in the English colonies; however, the most influential is the Enlightenment and the Zenger case.
The Great Awakening was before the American Revolution, therefore the forefront in the minds of many colonists was religion. But, it also caused some tensions between religious ideologies. The American Revolutionary era was a period where the nation was finding an identity to unify with. Both George Washington and Jonathon Edwards, believed that religion was necessary for the stability of a nation. However, the way how Washington and Edwards accomplished their plans with religion were different. The differences between the two men show varying degrees of religious acceptance. Both men wanted religion in America, but only by their own definition of religious acceptance.
The Second Great Awakening began in 1790, as numerous Americans experienced uncertainty as they confronted a rapidly changing society with increases in urbanization and technology. The movement focused on the ability of individuals to change their lives as a means of personal salvation and as a way to reform society as a whole, which opened the door for many reform movements. The Second Great Awakening shaped reform movements such as temperance, abolition, and women’s rights in the nineteenth century because of the increase in concern for the morality of the American people.
The Great Awakening was a spiritual movement that began in the 1730’s in the middle colonies. It was mostly led by these people; Jonathan Edwards, a congregational pastor in Massachusetts, Theodore J. Frelinghuysen, a Dutch Byterian Pastor in New Jersey; Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian Pastor in New Jersey; and George Whitefield, a traveling Methodist Preacher from New England. The most widely known leader was George Whitefield. At the beginning of the very first Great Awakening appeared mostly among Presbyterians in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey. The Presbyterians initiated religious revivals during these times. During this time, they also started a seminary to train clergyman. The seminary’s original name was Log College, now it is known as Princeton University. In the 1740s the clergymen of these churches were conducting revivals throughout that area. The Great Awakening spread from the Presbyterians of the middle colonies to the Congregationalist (puritans) and Baptist of New England.
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 is the era were the intellectual, scientific and individual freedom, centered upon the 18th Century; there were many important people of this time that brought forth many new concepts. For example, Benjamin Franklin, he brought many new inventions to this era, such as the Poor Richards’ Almanac, lightening rod, harmonica, and his own thought on the Christian outlook. Secondly, Sir Isaac Newton discovered the laws of nature such as, gravitation. Third, the most well known religious revival was brought forth, The Great Awakening, which put a fire in many people during the 18th Century. During the 18th Century, Benjamin Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton, and The Great Awakening goes to show the intellectual, scientific and individual
The Second Great Awakening started the was a religious revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States, it sparked the building and reform of the education system, women's rights and the mental health system. It was also the start of many different denominations of churches such as the, Churches of Christ, Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the Evangelical Christian.
The Awakening shaped the way we view religion today, it helped people to view society as a whole instead of the separate religious groups divided by different faiths and beliefs. But the Enlightenment shaped society as a whole by introducing the core values that today still serve as the foundation of the United States government. The belief that all people are created equal and have a right to be treated as such. Those rights not only serve to protect us, but the rights of our neighbors as well, by assuring that we are all in this together. It is our duty to serve ourselves, and our country.
The Second Great Awakening was extremely influential in sparking the idea of reform in the minds of people across America. Most people in America just accepted things the way they were until this time. Reforms took place due to the increase of industrial growth, increasing immigration, and new ways of communication throughout the United States. Charles Grandison Finney was one of the main reasons the Second Great Awakening was such a great success. “Much of the impulse towards reform was rooted in the revivals of the broad religious movement that swept the Untied State after 1790” (Danzer, Klor de Alva, Krieger, Wilson, and Woloch 240). Revivals during the Second Great Awakening awakened the faith of people during the 1790s with emotional preaching from Charles Finney and many other influential preachers, which later helped influence the reforms of the mid-1800s throughout America.
During the Second Great Awakening, a mass revival of American society took place. Reformers of every kind emerged to ameliorate women’s rights, education and religious righteousness. At the forefront of the movement were the temperance reformers who fought for a change in alcoholism, and abolitionist who strived for the downfall of slavery.
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.
The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival. It influenced the entire country to do good things in society and do what was morally correct. The Second Great Awakening influenced the North more than it did the South and on a whole encouraged democratic ideas and a better standard for the common man and woman. The Second Great Awakening made people want to repent the sins they had made and find who they were. It influenced the end of slavery, abolitionism, and the ban of alcohol, temperance.
The Great Awakening was a superior event in American history. The Great Awakening was a time of revivalism that expanded throughout the colonies of New England in the 1730’s through the 1740’s. It reduced the importance of church doctrine and put a larger significance on the individuals and their spiritual encounters. The core outcome of the Great Awakening was a revolt against controlling religious rule which transferred over into other areas of American life. The Great Awakening changed American life on how they thought about and praised the divine, it changed the way people viewed authority, the society, decision making, and it also the way they expressed themselves. Before the Great Awakening life was very strict and people’s minds were
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.