Religious Revitalization Movement : The First Great Awakening

In the 1800s a Market Revolution began, changing the way in which America operated and in the midst of all that was a Second Great Awakening, causing people to once again, question their religious beliefs and practices. Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz tell the story of Robert Matthews, or the Prophet Matthias and his followers. Matthias had an unconventional childhood, he became an orphan at a young age and was raised by church elders. He worked under one of the elders to learn the carpenter’s craft. He easily found work but had trouble keeping it because he was always preaching at his fellow workers about their sinful ways. Matthias was eager to make good but continually fell into misfortunes, “which led him on a prolonged and erratic religious journey” (49). The Kingdom of Matthias gained and lost members, had changes in beliefs, and was full of ever changing marriages. Although looking back on it now, Matthias’s messages and beliefs seem almost laughable, but at they time his followers found his message, ministry, and lifestyle very compelling.

The Second Great Awakening laid the foundations of the development of present-day religious beliefs and establishments, moral views, and democratic ideals in the United States. Beginning back in late eighteenth century and lasting until the middle of the nineteenth century,1 this Protestant awakening sought to reach out the un-churched and bring people to a much more personal and vivid experience of Christianity. Starting on the Southern frontier and soon spreading to the Northeast, the Second Great Awakening has also been associated as a response against the growing liberalism in religion - skepticism, deism, and rational Christianity.2 Although the movement is well-known to be

The Great Awakening and the Enlightenment were two historical events that shaped the thoughts of people and religion in America. The most important factor in both of these events is the common theme of reason behind the movements. The Great Awakening began about the 1930's and reached its climax ten years later in 1740. What exactly was the Great Awakening? It was a wave of religion revivals sweeping through New England that increased conversions and church membership. The beginnings of the Great Awakening were in Pennsylvania and New Jersey among Presbyterians and then spread to the Puritans and Baptists of New England. They were encouraged to confess sins done freely to the church in order to receive forgiveness. This whole movement was

To Stoddard, the idea of “fostering conversions was more important than discovering a perfect church order, and in that attitude he blazed the way for the most influential practice in American religious history: he was the first American to make periodic revivals a centerpiece of his ministry” . Every decade his congregation would experience an “awakening” in which many people were moved spiritually and often lead to conversion. Some of these revivals even made it past Northampton and into the neighboring communities, directly impacting young Edwards and his family, for Edwards’s father rejected the half-way covenant but endorsed revival. These disagreements divided his family and remained unresolved for decades .

The Great Awakening also played a role in government and society. The Great Awakening was based on a wave of rivals that were an attempt to keep churches and religion from dying in an era that believed that nature held more answers that the Bible. The Great Awakening allowed for ministers like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards to share their ideas about God’s vengeful supremacy and for the first time sermons were being aimed at colonist’s hearts, instead of their heads. These revivals awakened and refreshed the colonists, allowing them to forget the anxiety and uncertainty that they had about America at the time, as well as Great Britain affect on their new home. The sermons communicated the message that every soul in fact was important to God, as well as that both men and women had to choose to be saved, making religion a very personal experience that once was very generalized.

To begin, the Great Awakening took place during the early 1730’s. It was a period where religious revivals were spreading along the Atlantic coast. Preachers such as Jonathan Edwards would go around and try to get people back into Christianity. One reason why colonist turned away from Christianity was because of the Enlightenment. He would describe hell and heaven trying to convince colonist to rejoin christianity.

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,

As the Age of Enlightenment gradually came to an end, the British American colonists were ready to progress beyond the ideology of human reason and depend solely on biblical revelation. During the eighteenth century, a great movement known as the First Great Awakening swept through Protestant Europe and America, leaving a permanent impact on

The second great awakening was the emergence of new religious branches. There were three main branches that influences the Unites States as it grew and was still trying to rid of the English ways. these three branches were named Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian. All three of these branches grew quickly in popularity. The most popular however was the Presbyterian church. All of these shares the same core belief but held different values and reasons for existence. The presbyterian church is part of what I feel helped push the western expiation to continue further. This is due to the one message they wanted to convey to others, " Salvation is available not just to a select few, as the Calvinist Puritans have claimed, but to anyone who repents and embraces Christ". Other religious view were adopted in this time that caused the population to see the world in a new light and gain more spiritual growth.

The Great Awakenings were periods of religious revival, increasing religious enthusiasm during the early 18th century and the late 20th century. Some may say that the Great Awakenings also caused enlightenment. However, there was a tremendous increase in religious participation, and influence in other reforms as well. Therefore, the Great Awakenings tremendously influenced the development of american society prior to the American Civil War.

of religon. More people came to church for the worship of god from their heart.

This surge of spiritual awakening brought some to question religion, specifically Christianity. In the years before the “Kingdom”, Robert Matthews “began putting it about that he was no Christian at all…He was in actuality, a prophesying Hebrew.”(Johnson, 64). This marked the beginning of his decent into the cult he called ‘The Kingdom of Matthias’. The Second Great Awakening marked a constitutional conversion of American religion. Many early groups put emphasis on the corruption of human beings, believing they could be saved only through the grace of God. These groups formed as instruments of reform, in reaction to urban growth and industrialization. However, it also put emphasis on the human ability to better their positions, thus creating amore optimistic view of humans and the human condition. Robert Matthews, now called Matthias, delivered a number of sermons regarding the path to forgiveness and just how he, being Matthias, would cast judgment upon all. “In short, Matthias would damn the enemies of the Jews – above all, the meek Christian devils and their disobedient women.” (Johnson,

During the 1730s and 1740s, something remembered as the Great Awakening happened. The Great Awakening was the first big movement in the colonies.The Great Awakening was the Awakening of religion which suddenly became popular. During the Great Awakening, a man named George Whitefield was one of the people that drew people's attention to religion. Whitefield preached and reached out to people. He also made Church fun and intriguing. According to Document A (Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography), George Whitefield was popular because everyone could hear, understand, and enjoy his sermons. Also, people came from far away to hear Whitefield preach. Nathan Cole says that Whitefield looks almost angelic when he gave a sermon. George Whitefield made church

This period of time was very divisive because many people were influenced by the revivals, while the others were still committed to the traditional form of religion. This divided the people into two different religious groups; The New Lights, who were “saved” by the grace of God, and the Old Lights, those who kept faithful to the traditional religions. The New Lights preached that it was dangerous to live life and not become “saved.” The Old Lights were very opposed to this way of worship and condemned the teachings of the New Lights. The Old Lights in the New England colonies fought back by giving the taxes from the New Lights to their former churches, not allowing New Lights ministers to perform marriage ceremonies, and not allowing New Lights to partake in the legislature. A New Light preacher by the name of Elisha Paine, who was put in prison for preaching illegally continued to preach from his prison cell. Many people would gather to listen to him. Many people in Connecticut sympathized with Paine and his followers, which led to the New Lights winning control over Connecticut’s assembly.

His teaching received considerable attention around the world. In 1906, William J. Seymour caused worldwide attention with his Pentecostal teaching, since he amalgamated the gospel of baptism by fire, and campaign against racial discrimination, and gender inequality (Heaton 50). He organized historic meetings known as Aziza Street revivals, which had more than 50,000 supporters by 1606 (Alexander 78). Seymour’s mission concentrated preaching about speaking in tongues, baptism by fire, soul winning, and unity in Christ (Espinosa 82). This formed ‘Azusa pilgrim’ as Christians from all over the world travel to the revivals, got anointed, and went back to impact their churches.