Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future

Awakenings March 26, 2025

In the middle of the Eighteenth Century a series of great revivals swept through the British colonies.  Collectively they have become known as the First Great Awakening.  This was a manifestation of the great Evangelical movement which was also sweeping the British Isles.  Preachers thundered from hundreds of pulpits assuring people that Christ’s millennial return was imminent and that they needed to get right before He came.  This great wave of revivals also was marked by mass conversions of colonials, Indians and salves.

While it is a common belief that people came to America to find religious freedom in many cases that was neither the intent nor the experience.  It should be remembered that the Europe of that time was preeminently a land of established churches.  This had been a part of the peace formula that eventually ended the Thirty Years War.  Each sovereign could choose his own brand of Christianity and then everyone in their country was expected to believe and practice the same way.  Usually there was a state supported church that everyone paid for with their taxes and which everyone was expected to attend.  The church and state were so tightly united that to be a religious dissenter was considered the same as being a traitor to the realm.

It was from such a world that people came to America.  Those who did come for religious freedom such as the Puritans did not come for religious toleration.  Instead when they set up their colonies they were as intolerant to others as the state church had been to them in England.  Where religious toleration was practiced such as in Maryland or Pennsylvania it was very much the exception as opposed to the rule.  The whole idea of the separation of church and state was not only foreign to most Eighteenth Century Europeans it was thought of as an aberrant idea which was detrimental to society and the general welfare.

Established churches fostered clergy who were dependent on government for their living and were thus usually compliant when it came to not preaching anything that could be considered as revolutionary or dangerous.  Many of the churches even had lectionaries which proscribed not only what scriptures where read at what season but also what the topics of the sermons should be that accompanied those scriptures.  To deviate was to invite retribution and often the loss of position.   It was on the frontier that change was possible as the people themselves would often band together and build a church bringing in their own clergy who were then not dependent on the colonial government but instead governed by the congregational leaders.  

In addition as the century progressed new religious ideas began to circulate.  People began hearing of a God who was different than the dour, judgmental God of the Puritans or the lax accept anything God of the Established churches.  Instead they began hearing of a God who was rational, a God who loved and a God who was interested in the affairs of men.

Revivals

Revivals have always seemed to flow in waves, a brief intense period of activity followed by a trough of relatively quiet acceptance for the status quo.  Revivals are usually sparked by preachers who are good speakers and by ideas which reach out and touch masses of people.  Revivals spread by word of mouth and by the traveling of popular preachers to new locals.  Revivals are usually emotional responses to emotional pleas.  Often they are accompanied by physical manifestations such as the quaking of the Quaker revival.  

In the frontier revivals of the Eighteenth Century in America it was often the preaching of the doctrine of God’s grace alone as being sufficient to bring a person to a personal experience of salvation as opposed to religious obligations or monetary giving.  The frontier people could readily accept this and could then propose to change their way of life to match what they were taught God demanded of them, clean living and righteous behavior.

Preachers

Jonathan Edwards was one of the primary preachers who sparked the First Great Awakening.  He was second generation preacher who had been brought up to be a minister and who took his avocation as a calling from God.  He preached many famous sermons which left people emotionally responsive and ready to claim they had been changed forever, this wave of revival sparked by Edward’s sermons swept throughout the North and moved fitfully along the frontier.

As this first great wave of revival seemed about to sputter to a close another famous preacher arrived from England who was destined to have a lasting impact on American society and religion. In England George Whitfield was greatly influenced by reading a book written by Jonathan Edwards entitled A Faithful Narrative of a Surprising Work of God which was his account of the surge of revival which had so impacted the colonies. In this work Edwards not only spoke of how this revival had moved from one area to another he also described the style of preaching and service which had been the catalyst for the religious happenings.  These styles were then replicated by many other preachers who saw varying degrees of response but whose emulation created a type of similar experience that was pointed to itself as a sure sign that this revival was from God.

The emotional and sensational (for the times) style that Whitfield developed in response to the reports from America put him at odds with the rationalistic and formulaic patterns of the established church.  Whitfield was a dramatic and forceful speaker who was soon drawing immense crowds, crowds too large to fit in any churches so he began preaching in the streets and fields, anywhere he could draw a crowd.  

In 1739 Whitfield crossed the Atlantic becoming the first popular celebrity who was able to WOW the crowds on both sides of the Atlantic.  He toured from Maine to Georgia speaking in churches and in fields and everywhere he went he created a sensation.  He became fast friends with Ben Franklin who in turn used his publishing prowess to promote the English preacher.  Franklin was a committed rationalist and didn’t believe in Whitfield’s type of emotional responsive religion but he considered Whitfield to be an exceptional entrepreneur and he appreciated his ability to promote himself.  This was a mutually beneficial relationship.  Whitfield allowed Franklin to republish his sermons which proved a successful means to increase the circulation of Franklin’s newspaper.   As a matter of fact the demand for Whitfield’s sermons in printed form led to a massive increase in the number of pages printed in the next few years.

By the time Whitfield had returned to England in 1741 he had set in motion the religious revival collectively known as the Great Awakening.  This was sustained after his departure by a multitude of preachers, many of them on the frontier.  This religious revival had a positive effect on the customs and manners of the people.  It also inspired many to learn to read so that they could study the Bible.    This affected mainly the evangelicals such as the Baptists and the Methodists as opposed to the stricter Calvinists and the nominal Anglicans sweeping masses of new believers into the evangelical churches.  The emotional preaching elicited emotional responses and many people were said to dance and sing, to wail and fall under the influence of the stridently emotional and evangelical preaching.

As the revival swept through the colonies it became divisive.  The evangelical preachers found themselves denied the pulpit in many established churches.  Undeterred these itinerant preachers followed the example of Whitfield and instead began preaching in fields and street corners.  In some cases these itinerant preachers began preaching against the established preachers who had locked them out.  One is especially well remembered, Reverend Gilbert Tennent preached sermon, “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.”  In this sermon Tennent indicted the established clergy as being unregenerate.  He also said that in many cases they lacked a personal experience with Christ which he and other itinerant preachers said constituted the only credential which gave someone the qualification to preach.

These divisions solidified into what were called the New Lights and the Old Lights.  The New Lights were the supporters of the revival movements and believers in the emotional personal experiential type of religion the revivalist preached.  The Old Lights rejected the religion preached by the revivalist because it was not rational and too much based upon experience instead of tradition and received knowledge.

A further division was generated within the ranks of the New Lights themselves.  This was between the Moderates and the Radicals.  The Moderates accepted any minister or church that would accept the Revivalists and their message.  The radicals went further than any of the primary preachers themselves stating that organized religion itself was corrupt.  They extolled the emotional and physical responses found in the most intense revivals as the only true signs of the working of God.  They went so far as to condemn not only the churches and the rationalistic preachers but the government and any other man-made institution claiming that only those who had experienced the divine move of God as evidenced by the emotional and physical signs had any authority.  

The radicals soon had the churches bubbling and boiling with controversy.  Those who stayed with churches strove to convert these institutions into radical havens for the truly born-again.  To do this they sought to expel any they perceived as being unconverted including ministers.  Where they constituted a minority they agitated constantly for change.  Where they constituted a majority they pushed through their agenda.  In many cases this led to church splits as one side cast the other side out.  In many Congregational churches when the minority radicals were tossed out they would join the Baptists who had been totally taken over by the Radicals.

In the South

The Great Awakening burned primarily in the New England and the Middle Colonies and along the frontier.  It came belatedly to the South.  It wasn’t until after 1743 that the revival began to burn bright in Virginia and the Carolinas.  In these areas it was the Baptists who carried the torch and set it to the dry chaff of the frontier.  They moved swiftly and cheaply.  A Baptist minister was typically not an educated or genteel person.  They were instead often as common as the people they preached to having been just like them before they had themselves been revived.  The Preachers not only moved and lived cheaply, something that couldn’t be said about the established and the denominational preachers who required massive support, they also replicated themselves constantly.  Many a town drunk heard the gospel according to the evangelical itinerant Baptist preachers, accepted Christ as their personal Savior and almost immediately began to preach themselves.  These fast moving easily replicated preachers spread the Baptist style and brand of Christianity far and wide across the South and it is still evident today, when a full 16% of all Christians in the South consider themselves some kind of Baptist.

The Great Awakening also brought a renewed interest in the conversion of slaves and Indians.  Many were preached to and many came forward to accept Chris as their personal Saviort.  However, many were also shocked when the discrimination and prejudice that existed between them and the dominant society continued unchanged after their conversion.  

As is always the case, soon the fire of revival began to dim.  Beginning in the 1740s the moderates among the New Lights preachers made peace with the Old Lights and they once again united with one denomination after another, they basically agreed to disagree about some matters but to refrain from denouncing each other or condemning each other as unbelievers.  The Radicals primarily retreated into the Baptist fold while those among the Old Lights who could not abide any accommodation even with the moderates tended to retreat into the Anglican Church with its prayer book and strict liturgy.

From the Book America by Dr. Robert Owens available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle.