Revival historian J. Edwin Orr marks the Second Great Awakening in America as beginning with Isaac Backus’ call to the churches for prayer for revival in 1794.[1] Thereafter, a period of almost continuous revival existed in the United States until 1842 except for the decade beginning with the War of 1812. The early years of revival occurred in the colleges and churches in the east and in the churches and camp meetings of the west. The early years of revival produced many young leaders, but there was no dominant personality that led the revivals. Orr dated the later years of the Second Great Awakening as beginning in 1822 and lasting until 1842. Unlike the early years, this era produced one dominant figure in evangelicalism during the middle third of the nineteenth century—Charles Grandison Finney.[2] This second period will be discussed in the next chapter.

Changes in the American Protestant landscape

Before we proceed further in our discussion, it is important to step back and once again summarize the forces that preceded and later shaped the Second Great Awakening in the nineteenth century. Thomas Kidd identified several key factors that defined the flourishing American evangelicalism during the last half of The Great Awakening. These changes in the American Protestant landscape greatly influenced the shape and character of the Second Great Awakening at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The first influence was the disestablishment of the dominant moderate evangelical churches of the 1740s-1750s, primarily the Congregational, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian (Anglican) churches. In 1760, these three denominations accounted for more than forty percent of all American congregations but declined to less than twenty-five percent by 1790. However, the number of populist evangelical churches grew dramatically. The Baptists grew from forty-nine churches in 1760 to 858 by 1790. The Methodists went from having no churches to over 700 congregations during the same thirty year period.[3]

The revivals of the 1760s proved to be a key moment of transition by the former radicals. Much of the leadership of the radicals from the revivals in the 1740s remained in place and had become prominent players in the revivals of the 1760s. These seasoned revival leaders now saw themselves in somewhat of a different, less-radical light. One reason was that by the 1760s the influence of George Whitefield on the radicals had waned. As new churches were birthed from the revivals, the once radical leaders found that they must not only stir revival but pastor the new congregants between revivals. A second reason was that the former radicals sought to carry their populist and egalitarian ideas into mainstream American Christianity. Although liberty of conscience and separation from the established churches continued to be of central importance, the former radicals saw the necessity of presenting new revivals as both “reasonable and enthusiastic.”[4]

A second influence on the America Protestant denominations was a decline in Calvinistic theology. To many in the new populist Protestant denominations during the last half of the eighteenth century, the Calvinist beliefs about predestination seemed doctrinally incompatible with the emerging individualist evangelicalism. The rejection of Calvinism was found among many North American evangelical denominations such as the Baptists and Methodists. The abandonment of Calvinism by the former radical evangelicals was a frequent occurrence during the revivals of the New Light Stir during the Revolutionary War.[5]

A third influence on American Protestantism was that the new birth had become permanently identified as the most significant feature of evangelical Christianity. For the individual, conversion by the grace of Christ became the most important and spiritually significant moment of one’s life. Whether radical or moderate, emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion had forever become the heart of evangelical churches’ reason for being.[6]

Anti-evangelicalism, deism, Unitarianism, Universalism

As a result of disagreement with certain aspects of The Great Awakening in the 1740s and thereafter, many churches become inclined toward formalism and rejected evangelicalism. As the influence of the anti-evangelical churches declined during 1760-1790, these churches eventually became powerful allies of those professing deism. Together, they would counter what they perceived to be the growing threat of evangelicalism. Deism had once again began to grow and expand during the last quarter of the eighteenth century as it had done for a season during the first quarter of the century before being displaced by the birth of evangelicalism. However, the new deism of the late eighteenth century was of a much more poisonous variety for it embraced a large measure of French rationalism which championed human reason over religious teachings. Although deists would not deny God, worship, or Christian ethics as the Enlightenment’s humanists did, the new deism directly attacked revivalism and its emphasis on a personalized heart religion. As a result, the growing influence of deistic rationalism on Protestant thought “had numbed conviction and cooled enthusiasm” in many Protestant churches. The latent deism that had crept into anti-evangelical New England churches which were in decline after 1760 paved the way for the even greater heretical philosophies of Unitarianism and Universalism. Proponents of these philosophies were able to gain control of many strategic and influential Congregational churches which eventually split over these false philosophies. Over time, many churches captured by Unitarian and Universalist philosophies completely abandoned evangelical Christianity as they drifted toward outright humanism.[7]

A call for a “concert of prayer” in the midst of desperate times

The influence of these anti-evangelical forces in the last quarter of the eighteenth century coupled with the spiritual and moral decline as a result of the debilitating effects of eight years of war quickly became a disastrous setback for evangelicals and the Christian cause in general. This general decline was evident in 1796 near the end of George Washington’s second term as president. A friend wrote to Washington of his concerns for the survival of the young nation.

Our affairs seem to lead to some crisis, some revolution; something that I can not foresee or conjecture. I am more uneasy than during the war.

And George Washington replied:

Your sentiment…accords with mine. What will be is beyond my foresight.[8]

Given the dominance of Christianity and revivalism in much of American culture during the middle years of the eighteenth century, many unbelievers may appear baffled by the new nation’s sudden poverty of Christian spiritual and moral fiber. But for Christians who are familiar with the biblical accounts of God’s people through the ages, great victories invariably lead to strong opposition by Satan, man’s great adversary. But Christians also know that when conditions are desperate and defeat is imminent, they must seek God’s face and pray the prayers of desperate men and women for they know that only divine intervention can save the day. On a national scale that means “nothing less than a revival could effectively deal with the situation.”[9] And so it was in 1794 America.

A brief synopsis of Isaac Backus’ life and ministry was presented in the previous chapter. Although he had pastored the Middleborough, Massachusetts, Baptist congregation for forty-six years, by 1794 Backus was a discouraged man because of the widespread personal impiety and blatant corruption of public morals. The churches in America appeared to be powerless in stopping the abandonment of religious principles and consequent declining moral state of the nation. Although many had given up hope, Backus still wavered between hope and despair. In his desperation Backus recruited Stephen Gano, a long-time friend and Baptist pastor, and twenty New England pastors to issue a call for a nation-wide “Concert of Prayer.” The call for prayer for revival went to pastors of every Christian denomination throughout the United States, and the prayer network almost universally adopted and followed the pattern of the British Union of Prayer which set aside the first Monday of each month for prayer.[10]

Whisperings of revival

Soon revival began in the most unlikely of places—the colleges in the longest settled parts of the nation. Although these schools had been founded by godly men for godly purposes, they had become known as brazen centers of infidelity and immorality. Revival began almost imperceptibly among a handful of students who assembled unobtrusively to pray at various colleges. A few students at Virginia’s Hampden-Sydney College, none professing Christians, attempted to conduct a prayer meeting, but ungodly students sought to disrupt the meeting. The president of the college quelled the disturbance and chastised the unruly students. Thereafter he invited the students wanting to pray to meet in his study. Very soon more than half of the students attending professed to have been converted and become Christians. Local churches also began to be roused from their spiritual lethargy by the students’ conversions.[11]

Timothy Dwight, grandson of Jonathan Edwards, became the president of Yale College in 1795. Dwight soon encouraged his students to attack without hesitation the truth of the Bible. He answered their attacks in chapel with a series of powerful sermons such as “The nature and danger of Infidel Philosophy” and “Is the Bible the Word of God?” He then challenged the students with plain expository preaching regarding the problems of materialism and deism. Interest in religion grew to such an extent that by 1802, one-third of the entire student body had made public confessions of faith in Christ. Several new revivals at Yale College would follow in the years to come.[12]

During the summer of 1806, five students at Williams College in Massachusetts met for prayer in a grove of maples as they were accustomed. Caught in the open by a brief thunderstorm, they sought shelter beneath a haystack. There they prayed about evangelizing the heathen for Christ and determined to devise a plan to do so. The small band of five organized a society, met in secret, and recorded their minutes in code. Soon they recruited at least twenty other students who shared their burden. In 1810, the burden for lost souls still burned in the hearts of the students. Samuel J. Mills, one of the original haystack group at Williams College, and three of his closest friends were attending Andover Seminary. The four seminarians met with six ministers of their denomination in the parlor of an interested professor. The students presented their plan to reach lost souls, but it was met with skepticism by several of the ministers who pointed to various obstacles that would hinder their mission. The ministers eventually gave their blessing to the young men after being warned by one minister against trying to stop God’s purposes. From its humble origins under a New England haystack during a thunderstorm in 1806, the “whole modern missionary movement” was birthed.[13]

Small though they may have been, these initial college prayer meetings at several American campuses in the early years of the Second Great Awakening eventually led to revivals of religion in a multitude of colleges and subsequently to the churches. J. Edwin Orr described these revivals as beginning “…quietly and without fanaticism of any kind. There was undoubtedly an appeal to the hearts of the students, but first their minds and consciences were moved.” By the turn of the century the awakenings on the college campuses had produced many powerful revivals from Maine to the southern states and most areas between. This was providential for at that very time there were enormous numbers of people that sought to establish new lives in the unsettled regions west of the Allegheny Mountains. The college campus revivals eventually produced “a generation of evangelistic ministers to serve the opening western states.” But in 1798, the illiterate frontiers west of the Allegheny Mountains would not wait for revival to be brought by these future ministers.[14]

Fourteen states had been admitted to the Union by 1791. In the space of a single generation, ten more states were added, all west of the Allegheny/Appalachian Mountains by 1821. Such was the vast migration of people surging into these new states that Ohio soon had a greater population than all but four of the original states in the Union.[15]

Rogues’ Harbour and Cane Ridge Revivals

The revivals in the east were soon surpassed by revivals in the wilderness regions. Two legendary revivals occurred in Kentucky and set the tone for what was to come. By 1800, revival had reached the western extremities of civilization in Logan County in southern Kentucky. Perhaps civilized is too strong a word for Rogues’ Harbour was known for its wild and irreligious people including escaped murderers, counterfeiters, highwaymen, and horse thieves. Lawlessness was so rampant that local citizens formed themselves into regiments of vigilantes to fight the outlaws, often unsuccessfully, to establish a measure of law and order for the settlements. It was here that Presbyterian minister James McCready settled and became pastor of three small churches in 1797. All through the winter of 1799, McCready and several of his congregants joined the national monthly Monday meetings to pray for revival as well as holding weekly Saturday evening to Sunday morning prayer meetings.[16]

Following months of prayer, revival came in the summer of 1800. Toward the end of a sacramental service at the Red River congregation, Presbyterian McCready allowed Methodist preacher John McGee to address his congregation. This was an unusual occurrence, but McGee was the brother of one of McCready’s Presbyterian colleagues. McGee’s preaching so stirred the audience that “Suddenly persons began to fall as he passed through the crowd—some as dead.” McCready and his fellow Presbyterians were so stunned by the bodily manifestations they “acquiesced and stood in astonishment, admiring the wonderful work of God.” McCready soon began preaching in the Methodist-style of preaching at his other two congregations.[17] The spiritual hunger was so great that eleven thousand came to a communion service. Overwhelmed, McCready called for help from all denominations.[18]

The religious gathering in August 1801 at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, is considered to be one of the most famous religious events in American history. Cane Ridge was located a few miles northeast of Lexington in central Kentucky which at that time was the largest city in the state with a population of 2,000. The unique feature of the Cane Ridge revival was that people came prepared to camp at the site of the revival meeting which allowed a new intensity and level of religious experience. Although camp meetings were a part of several earlier localized revivals, the Cane Ridge revival was different in that people came from great distances and included rich, poor, black, and white who joined in prayer together.[19] Drawing from many recorded accounts of eyewitnesses, historian Ellen Eslinger pieced together a picture of the historic outpouring of the Spirit of God in the Kentucky wilderness for almost a week.

For more than half a mile, I could see people on their knees before God in humble prayer…Individuals, suddenly struck by their spiritual plight, began falling to the ground “as if dead.” At times the effect was awesome, with several hundred people “swept down like the trees of the forest under the blast of the wild tornado…Religion has got to such a height here, that people attend from great distances; on this occasion I doubt not but there will be 10,000 people, and perhaps 500 wagons.”…The meeting was presided over by the Cane Ridge pastor and 18 other Presbyterian ministers, at least four Methodists, plus several Baptist elders…Cane Ridge offered spectators a chaotic scene. When individuals were spiritually stricken and fell, a circle of curious onlookers gathered around them. The huge, unwieldy scale of the event necessitated parallel activities. Several ministers often preached at the same time in different sections of the grounds, and the only event that had been previously scheduled was the sacrament on Sunday afternoon.[20]

The fame of the Cane Ridge camp meeting revival was a pivotal event in evangelism and served as a pattern for other revivals in the early years of the Second Great Awakening much as Jonathan Edwards’ widely published descriptions of the Northampton revival during the First Great Awakening had done in the First Great Awakening over sixty years earlier.

Revival spreads

Soon the Kentucky revivals had swept south into Tennessee, the Western Carolinas, and Georgia and then north into Ohio Territory. The revival movement increased dramatically, and sometimes crowds of thirty or forty thousand illiterate pioneer settlers gathered and at which preachers from Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterians would preach in different parts of the campground. As always, Satan sowed tares in the revivals through extraordinary emotional excesses beyond the work of the Holy Spirit. However, in spite of the bad, far greater good for the kingdom of God was accomplished and was remarkably evident in the general religious awe that pervaded the country as “drunkards, swearers, liars, and the quarrelsome were remarkably reformed.” The college awakenings eventually provided a flood of well-educated Bible scholars for ministry in the western reaches of America.[21]

The War of 1812 slowed the waves of evangelism and revival, but during the years 1822-1842, thousands were added to the churches which far surpassed the results of the early years of the Second Great Awakening. The primary beneficiaries were those churches who were most evangelistic in word and action, primarily the Baptists and Methodists who evangelized the unchurched masses.[22]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] J. Edwin Orr, “Prayer brought Revival”,oChristian.com. http://articles.ochristian.com/article8330.shtml (accessed December 28, 2017).
[2] J. Edwin Orr, The Light of the Nations – Evangelical Renewal and Advance in the Nineteenth Century, (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1965), p. 54.
[3] Gordon S. Wood, “Religion and the American Revolution,” New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp.185-188.
[4] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening – The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007), pp.286-287.
[5] Ibid., pp. 312-313, 319.
[6] Ibid., p. 323.
[7] Orr, The Light of the Nations, pp. 15, 17, 20.
[8] Ibid., p. 17.
[9] Arthur Skevington Wood quoted by Orr, The Light of the Nations, p. 14.
[10] J. Edwin Orr, “Prayer brought Revival”, oChristian.com.
[11] Orr, The Light of the Nations, pp. 21-22.
[12] Ibid., p. 22.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid., pp. 23-24.
[15] Ibid., p. 24.
[16] Orr, “Prayer brought Revival,”oChristian.com.
[17] Ellen Eslinger, “Cane Ridge Revival,” Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, Volume 1, A-Z, ed. Michael McClymond, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), p. 89.
[18] Orr, “Prayer brought Revival,” oChristian.com.
[19] Eslinger, “Cane Ridge Revival,” Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, p. 88.
[20] Ibid., pp. 88, 90.
[21] Orr, The Light of the Nations, pp. 25-27.
[22] Ibid., p. 18.

Religious Revivals amid political turmoil and war

To properly understand revivals that occurred during the later years of The Great Awakening, it is important to have knowledge of the contemporary events that impacted those revivals and religious life in general from the 1760s through the end of the Revolutionary War. During the 1750s the British had awakened to the importance to the British Empire of the few American colonies that clung to the eastern edge of a vast wilderness thousands of miles across the Atlantic. This new found interest was kindled by the French and Indian War being fought on the American continent (1754-1763). Britain’s interest and involvement in the affairs of the American colonists significantly increased following the war and ended decades of salutary neglect the colonists had come to expect and enjoy. The war left the British with massive debt, high taxes at home, and a permanent army of paid soldiers in the colonies that was costly to maintain. Accordingly, the British Parliament passed a series of revenue-generating measures which unilaterally imposed on the colonies many very burdensome taxes, duties, and tariffs, the most troublesome of which was the Stamp Act of 1765.[1]

Colonial unrest aggravated by British intransigence continued over the course of the next ten years and culminated with hostilities at Lexington and Concord in April 1775 which marked the beginning of the colonists’ eight-year struggle for independence. The war officially ended in January 1783 with the signing of the Articles of Peace.[2]

Even in war life goes on and so did the colonial revivals. Of particular note was a series of revivals from 1778 to 1782 which are called the “New Light Stir.” Although several evangelical denominations were successful during the Stir, the Baptists led the way with thirty six new churches planted in New England between 1778 and 1782. Isaac Backus had been involved in revivalism since the 1740s and knew well its history. He estimated that two thousand New Englanders received believer’s baptism in 1780 alone. Regarding the New Light Stir, Backus believed that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit “spread the most extensively and the most powerfully through New England than any revival had done for near forty years,” and it “was undoubtedly a great means of saving this land from foreign invasion, and from ruin by internal corruption.”[3]

In spite of the widespread success of the revivals, tensions between the rival moderate and radical camps of evangelicalism continued as it had for forty years. One of the most pronounced developments of revivalism’s New Light Stir was the growing abandonment of Calvinism among the radicals and would become even more common in the early years of the nineteenth century. Although Congregationalism began to decline during the late eighteenth century, it would remain a significant force in northern religious life and reform movements through the end of the Civil War. Moderate Baptist and radical evangelical growth continued during the war, but the bulk of the Methodists’ amazing growth would occur after the war.[4]

Revolutionary Revival

Irrespective of the abundance of primary historical evidence to the contrary, many if not most all early historians gave little to no credit to religion’s role in fostering the American Revolution. Most present-day historians of the American Revolution generally believe that religion was substantially displaced by politics as lawyers replaced the clergy as leaders which effectively “…transformed and secularized the intellectual character of the culture.”[5] They often point to declines in church attendance, number of publications devoted to religious matters, and other such statistics regarding the health of the church. However, a thoughtful response easily brings one to the natural conclusion that these declines resulted from dislocations caused by the war. Based on the appearance of a decline of religion in the public arena during the revolution, historians have leaped to the erroneous conclusion that the American people were significantly less religious. This is a blatant misreading of the mood and character of Americans during the Revolutionary period. Protestantism in whatever form it took remained the principle means by which Americans perceived and explained the world and ordered their lives.[6]

A brief look at the growth in the number of revivals and growth in the number of churches during 1760-1790 refute the historians’ assertions that concern for religious matters and religious fervor declined during the Revolutionary period. The number of church congregations doubled between 1770 and 1790. It is true that the older churches that dominated colonial society—Anglican, Congregational, and Presbyterian—declined or failed to grow relative to other groups. The Church of England which dominated the South and the powerful Puritan churches of New England accounted for more than forty percent of all American congregations in 1760 but declined to less than twenty-five percent by 1790. However, new denominations spawned by the Great Awakening were alive, well, and growing. The Baptists grew from ninety-four congregations in 1760 to 858 by 1790. During the same time period the Methodists grew from no adherents to over seven hundred congregations which nationally rivaled the numbers of the older Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches. American historian Gordon Wood wrote that, “The revolution released more religious energy and fragmented Christendom to a greater degree than had been seen since the upheavals of seventeenth century England or perhaps since the Reformation.” Stephen A. Marini (quoted by Wood) wrote that the extent of the profound changes in religious life and substantial religious growth in America between 1760 and 1790 can be described as nothing less than a “…Revolutionary Revival.”[7]

Spiritual and moral decline in America

History has proven that significant spiritual and moral decline occur during the years of war and for protracted periods thereafter. Even as revivals flourished during the Revolutionary War years, there was a simultaneous beginning of spiritual and moral decline among the general population. This decline continued following the end of the war in 1783 and especially during the last decade of the eighteenth century. Following eight years of war, all denominations and the new nation as a whole began to feel the effects of spiritual and moral decay. Revival historian J. Edwin Orr described the conditions in America.

The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. The Baptists said that they had their most wintry season. The Presbyterians in general assembly deplored the nation’s ungodliness. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samuel Shepherd of Lennos (Lenox), Massachusetts, in sixteen years had not taken one young person in fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York…quit functioning; he had confirmed no one for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment. The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church “was too far gone ever to be redeemed.”…Tom Paine echoed, “Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.”[8]

The churches had become almost totally irrelevant in curbing the nation’s downward spiral into immorality. During the last decade of the century, out of a population of five million Americans, six percent were confirmed drunkards. Crime had grown to such an extent that bank robberies were a daily occurrence and women did not go out at night for fear of assault.[9]

Christianity at the universities was just as destitute. Students at Harvard were polled, and not one Christian was found. Two admitted to being Christians at Princeton while only five members of the student body were not members of the filthy speech movement of the times. Few if any campuses escaped the denigration of Christianity and general mayhem. Anti-Christian plays were presented at Dartmouth, a Bible taken from a local church was burned in a public bonfire, students burned Nassau Hall at Princeton, and students forced the resignation of Harvard’s president. Christians on college campuses in the 1790s were so few “…that they met in secret, like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know.”[10]

But America was not alone in her misery. Although the founding Americans had relied on an order that rested upon a respect for prescriptive rights and customs, the egalitarian notions of French philosophers fueled the bonfires of the French Revolution (1789-1799). The aberrant humanistic philosophies emerging from the late Renaissance and Enlightenment during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries nurtured the egalitarian notions of the French philosophers. These Enlightenment philosophies supplied the framework for the French revolutionists as they fostered societal changes based on the ethereal, imaginary, or invented “rights of man” as well as imposition of an ever increasing number of laws to address the failings of human nature. In spite of the French Revolution’s high-minded chorus of “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!”, the French reality was “monarchy, anarchy, dictatorship” all occurring in a little more than a decade.

However, across the English Channel the course of Western civilization was taking a different turn throughout the British Isles. As noted in Chapter 4, the British Great Awakening over the course of five decades beginning in 1739 had so completely transformed that the character of the nation by 1791 that some historians credit the British Awakening for preventing a revolution in Britain similar to the bloody French Revolution of 1789.[11]

In the last two decades of the eighteenth century, immense social upheavals and change throughout the Western world began to occur during the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution. However, the seeds destined to flower as the Second Worldwide Awakening were being sown by Christians in Great Britain. Recall that it was the providential publication in England during 1737 of Jonathan Edwards’ account of the revivals in American that greatly influenced two key figures of the approaching British Great Awakening—John Wesley in England and Howell Harris in Wales.[12] Forty-five years later the powerful influence of Edwards’ writings would again impact the people of the British Isles.

Jonathan Edwards believed that concerted prayers of Christians would release the power of the Holy Spirit and result in converts which would be followed by worldwide revival. In 1745 Edwards had had heard of a prayer movement for revival that had begun among several Scottish evangelical ministers. This information may have come from John Erskine, a Scottish Presbyterian minister who began corresponding with Edwards in the mid-1740s. Edwards was inspired by the information he had received and felt led to write his own thoughts on the matter and in 1746 published “An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth, pursuant to Scripture Promises and Prophecies concerning the last Time.”[13]

John Sutcliffe (1752-1814) attended Bristol Baptist College from 1772 to May 1774. He became pastor of the Baptist church in Olney, Buckinghamshire, England, in 1775 where he began to earnestly study the writings of Jonathan Edwards. In the spring of 1784 John Ryland, Jr., a pastor friend, had received a copy of Edwards’ “An Humble Attempt…” from John Erskine, a Scottish Presbyterian minister. Ryland shared Edwards’ book with Sutcliffe. The book had a profound impact on Sutcliffe, Ryland, and another pastor friend Andrew Fuller. They soon enlisted sixteen other Baptist pastors to “establish monthly prayer meetings for the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit and the consequent revival of the churches of Great Britain.” By 1789 the prayer meetings among the Calvinist Baptist churches had grown considerably. Sutcliffe decided to reprint Edwards’ “An Humble Attempt…” By 1790 the prayer movement for revival had spread beyond the Calvinistic Baptist denomination and led to “copious showers of blessing” which later historians would mark as the Second Evangelical Awakening (1790-1830).[14]

But the story does not end there. The providential sequence of events beginning with Edwards’1746 treatise on praying for revival, the calls beginning in 1784 by Scottish pastors for concerted prayers, and the unfolding of the Second Great Awakening in Britain in 1790 also influenced an American pastor and allowed the new British Awakening to traverse the Atlantic to America in the late 1790s.

Isaac Backus – God’s agent for revival

Isaac Backus (1724-1806) was born into a “pure” Congregational church by which was meant that it was not part of an association of Congregational churches adhering to the Saybrook Platform. This association linked individual Connecticut congregations and provided for church discipline. Backus’ mother raised him to understand the necessity of conviction and conversion which was later reinforced by the preaching of Eleazar Wheelock and James Davenport. While “mowing alone in the field,” the young seventeen-year-old Backus experienced both conviction and conversion. He joined the Norwich, Connecticut, Congregational Church but later left in the summer of 1745 with about thirty men and a large number of women to become part of the “New Light” revivalist movement.[15] It appears that the principal dividing issues causing their departure were the relaxed standards for full membership as allowed by the Saybrook Platform and a de-emphasis on personal conversion testimonies for full membership. In other words, the Norwich church received people “to Communion who could not testify to a work of gracious conversion.”[16]

On September 27, 1746, Backus sensed a call to preach and did so the next day by “exercising the right of exhortation.” In 1748, after fourteen months of itinerant preaching in a style similar to George Whitefield, Backus was called to pastor a congregation in Middleborough, Massachusetts.[17] Backus was twenty-four when the original sixteen members signed the new church’s covenant in February. By year’s end, membership had grown to sixty-one. However, Backus continued to struggle with the issue of baptism, and by July 1751 he began preaching that he could find no scriptural basis for infant baptism. In August, he and six other members of his congregation were baptized by immersion to demonstrate their commitment to the requirement of believer’s baptism for full communion. Backus’ action threw the church into turmoil because the majority of members were opposed to believer’s baptism. Backus agreed to continue as pastor of the church under a mixed-communion plan that accepted either infant or believer’s baptism.[18]

The church struggled along for another five years, but Backus finally became convinced that infant baptism was not compatible with the requirement that a congregant must be saved by grace. In 1756, Backus and several other congregation members re-constituted the Middleborough church under a Baptist covenant of freedom of conscience and that the Lord’s Supper was only to be taken by those after profession of their faith and having been baptized by immersion. Backus eventually became the principle agent for Massachusetts Baptists’ quest for religious liberty in their struggle against power of the Congregationalists’ legalized religious monopoly. For decades after fully embracing the Baptist covenant, Backus was a tireless writer, spokesman, and defender of religious liberty through separation of church and state.[19] Here the reader must understand that the separation of church and state sought by Backus was that which would eventually be expressed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and not the aberrant modern interpretation of separation of church and state as expressed by humanistic and liberal political orthodoxy.

Isaac Backus was an enormously important figure in The Great American Awakening. His career spanned six decades beginning in the great revivals of the early 1740s. He joined the Congregationalists, became a Separatist, and then founded a Baptist church, all during the moderate and radical conflicts of the 1740s and 1750s. He was a strong advocate of revivalism and participated in numerous revivals from the 1750s through the end of the American Revolution and then into the Second Great Awakening. He was an itinerant evangelist; pastor of one church for fifty-eight years; revival historian; political activist; denominational speaker, debater, and essayist; Revolutionary War Patriot; and perhaps the most important Baptist figure of the entire Awakening. However, Backus’ most important work for the kingdom of God may have occurred after these events and during the last twelve years of his life. During this last chapter of his life which began in 1794, Backus called Christian churches throughout the spiritually struggling new nation to join the Union of Prayer and pray for revival. These prayers eventually ignited the Second Great Awakening in America and changed the course of history.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Richard B. Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1953), pp. 67-73.
[2] Ibid., pp. 85, 109.
[3] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening – The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 313.
[4] Ibid., pp. 319-320.
[5] Gordon S. Wood, “Religion and the American Revolution,” New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 174-175.
[6] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods: Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 131.
[7] Wood, “Religion and the American Revolution,” New Directions in American Religious History, pp. 185-188.
[8] J. Edwin Orr, “Prayer brought Revival,” ochristian.com, http://articles.ochristian.com/article8330.shtml (accessed December 16, 2017).
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Mathew Backholer, Revival Fires and Awakenings-Thirty Six Visitations of the Holy Spirit, (ByFaith Media, 2009, 2012), pp. 29, 32.
[12] Kidd, The Great Awakening, pp. 22, 44.
[13] Jonathan Edwards, “An Humble Attempt to Promote Prayer for Revival,” Revival Library. http://www.revival-library.org/index.php/catalogues-menu/revival-miscellanies/revival-prayer/an-humble-attempt-to-promote-prayer-for-revival (accessed December 22, 2017).
[14] Michael A. G. Haykin, “John Sutcliffe and the Concert of Prayer,” Reformation & Revival, Volume 1, Number 3, Summer, 1992, pp. 66, 68, 73-74, 82-83. https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ref-rev/01-3/1-3_haykin.pdf (accessed December 22, 2017).
[15] Thomas J. Nettles, “Backus, Isaac (1724-1806),” Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America Volume 1, A-Z, ed. Michael McClymond, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), p. 43.
[16] Kidd, The Great Awakening, p. 182.
[17] Nettles, Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America Volume 1, A-Z, p. 43.
[18] Kidd, The Great Awakening, pp. 184-186.
[19] Nettles, Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America Volume 1, A-Z, pp. 43-44.

The beginnings of revivalism in New England occurred during the late 1600s to about 1720. The early years of The Great Awakening are generally considered to encompass the years from about 1720 to 1740. During both of these periods the characteristics and practices of religious revivals and revivalism grew in importance and frequency and gave birth to evangelicalism with its dramatic and powerful style of preaching, emphasis on personal conversion called the “new birth” often accompanied by outward physical manifestations, personal devotion and holiness, and justification by faith alone (individual access to God) which de-emphasized the importance and authority of church government and its leaders. In many ways the characteristics of the newly-born evangelicalism can be said to mirror many elements found in the early Reformation.

The Great Awakening matures amidst opportunities and challenges

By the end of the 1730s, revivalism in The Great Awakening was beginning to emerge from its youth, strengthen, and expand throughout the colonies. Revivalism’s developing maturity introduced many new and unforeseen opportunities and challenges to churches in the colonies. The essence of this flowering revivalism was best exemplified by the Northampton revival guided by Jonathan Edwards and the other New England revivals that arose from it. In this chapter we shall examine various facets of The Great Awakening that ultimately defined revivalism and established evangelicalism as a dominant force in America to the present day.

As discussed in Chapter 5, the call for revival in the colonies began in 1674 when Samuel Torrey, pastor of the church at Weymouth, Massachusetts, began preaching the need for revival among pastors and congregations because of the perceived general spiritual decline and loss of religious vigor among the Puritans. Torrey emphasized the “Work of Reformation.” He believed that churches would not be revived through moral efforts alone but only through an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.[1]

Torrey’s “work of reformation” easily resonated in the minds of the Puritans of New England for their very presence in their new colonial homeland was the result of their efforts to revive the church and continue the work of purifying the Reformation in America which they believed could not be accomplished among the corrupted brethren in England. So revival and revivalism was a natural fit with a mindset that already existed among most colonists who sought religious freedom from the strictures of authoritarian churches and kings.

In spite of their quest for religious freedom, the colonists still considered themselves English men and women and retained much of the English social order including many of the same ecclesiastical doctrines and practices brought from their former homeland. What the religious colonists sought was spiritual reformation, not extra-biblical innovation. But as every generation of the church must realize, the outworking of reformation and revival produce to varying degrees both the good and the bad. In every revival, the church body and individual Christians must distinguish between the Holy Spirit’s wheat and the tares of sinful human nature and demonic influence.

Historian Thomas Kidd wrote that, “The Puritan colonies had once been godly showcases for the Reformation but had forgotten their first love.”[2] And it was Torrey and other early Puritan church leaders who saw revival as the necessary path for a return to that first love. Prior to 1720, revivals generally occurred in the more formal confines of established local church. Revival spread as pastors heeded the example of other churches experiencing revival and began preaching and encouraging revival in their own churches. This was generally the accepted pattern for most revivals prior to 1740. But that pattern was beginning to change even before the arrival of the “Great Itinerant” George Whitefield.

Over the course of his life Whitefield made seven trips across the dangerous and often storm-tossed North Atlantic until his death in 1770. The first voyage in 1738 was for a stay in Georgia of less than four months which was consumed mostly with efforts to establish an orphanage in Savannah. Whitefield was a larger than life figure whose cultural and religious impact on England and America and the course of their histories is incalculable. Even before he landed in America for the second time, Whitefield’s reputation as an “evangelical superstar” preceded him. Whitefield’s powerful preaching style, outreach to various denominations, focus on the new birth, and effective use of the media would energize the growing revivalist movement throughout the colonies.[3] Whitefield did not invent revivalism or evangelicalism or cause The Great Awakening in America. However, his ministry would eventually personify their essential elements as he energized and hasten their ascendance on the American scene.

“New Light” Revivalists and “Old Light” Anti-revivalists in America

There were elements of the established American churches that opposed revivalism from its very beginning. Opposition centered on several issues including the operations of the Holy Spirit particularly as concerning physical manifestations that occurred during revivals. Jonathan Edwards was the foremost apologist for the “New Lights” who favored increased numbers of converts through revivals. “Old Lights” such as Rev. Charles Chauncy of Boston’s First Church thought revivalists to be misguided sensationalists who promoted powerful, passionate preaching and demonstrative conversion experiences to the detriment of true religious growth.[4]

The essence of the divide between evangelicals and traditional clergy was a disagreement as to the path to conversion or how does one receive divine grace. For evangelicals conversion was an immediate personal experience that occurred through repentance and acceptance of God’s grace which brought one into personal relationship with Him. For the traditional clergy, the path to conversion was gradual, progressive, and subtle which occurred within the “stabilizing” influence of the local church through “rational guidance of learned ministers.” Revival preaching was acceptable to the traditionalists and established clergy, but revivalism as practiced by Whitefield and the New Lights was in their view “the great abandoning” of the true path to divine grace.[5]

Although the conflict between the Old and New Lights revolved around the theology of conversion, three subsidiary issues would draw the battle lines: the growth of unrestrained itinerancy, the subject of unconverted ministry, and disagreement over bodily manifestations resulting from revival fervor. Within the New Light wing, disagreement on these issues eventually led to Separatism between the moderate and more radical elements of revivalism.[6]

Calvinist and Arminian differences among the Revivalists

Even though Solomon Stoddard and his grandson Jonathan Edwards were staunch Calvinists, there were many aspects in their Reformed theology that were compatible with the beliefs of many emerging evangelicals who held or at least were in sympathy with an Arminian understanding of salvation. However, there were certain fundamental doctrines developed by the leaders of the Reformed churches after Calvin’s death that continued to provoke conflict with those who held Arminian beliefs.

Briefly, the two camps’ points of agreement were: humankind is in need of salvation, God alone can provide that salvation, and Christ is God’s provision for man’s need. The principle differences between Reformed and Arminian believers dealt with the role of God and humans in salvation. Those of the Arminian view disagreed with the Reformed churches’ beliefs of unconditional election by God of those he will save, limited atonement in which Christ paid the price only for the sins of the elect, irresistible grace which meant that those whom God has determined to save will inevitably come to saving faith, and perseverance of the saints, that is, all who have been chosen by God (the “elect”) will continue in the faith (once saved, always saved).[7] To summarize, Arminians agree with the Calvinist on the need for repentance and the new birth but could not accept Calvinist predestination and its other accoutrements.

It was those differences that would ultimately cause a break in the relationship of the Wesley brothers and George Whitefield. Although the Wesleys’ Methodist theology generally mirrored that of orthodox Protestantism as practiced by the Anglican Church, John Wesley rejected and openly opposed the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and election which he believed would hinder the call to repentance and conversion. In its place Wesley embraced the Arminian doctrine of freewill or freedom of choice as the means whereby people accepted Christ.[8]

The break came in 1740 when Whitefield was in America and Wesley was preaching in England. While at Bristol, Wesley was offended by certain teachings of pointedly Calvinist doctrines which Wesley assumed represented Whitefield’s view that “God arbitrarily predestined (or ‘elected’) some to salvation and some to damnation (or “reprobation’) by an irreversible decree.” Wesley struck back against this teaching by preaching on “Free Grace.” All through 1740 Wesley and Whitefield exchanged letters across the Atlantic regarding their differences. The conflict remained unresolved, and Wesley eventually published his sermon on “Free Grace.” Whitefield received a copy and sent his reply which he saw as an attack by Wesley on the New Testament doctrines of God’s sovereign grace, foreknowledge, and electing love. In late 1740 Whitefield’s reply was sent to in London to be published on Christmas Eve.[9]

By March 1741, Whitefield was back in London and went to hear Wesley preach having heard of many unkind remarks made by Whitefield since his return from Georgia. Wesley wrote of the disagreement in his Journal, “He told me, he and I preach two different gospels; and therefore, he not only would not join with, or give me the right hand of fellowship, but was resolved to publicly preach against me and my brother, wheresoever he preached at all.” There were efforts to bring the two together, a meeting was held, and other exchanges made. Over time there was a softening of the hostilities between the men, but it would be a decade before Whitefield and the Wesleys were restored to their former unity. In January 1750, Wesley wrote, “I read prayers and Mr. Whitefield preached. How wise is God in giving different talents to different preachers.” Upon the death of Whitefield in 1770 and at the request of his executors, Wesley preached a memorial sermon in London.[10]

The public break damaged the ministries of both men and diminished the cause of Christ. Wesley was a brilliant organizer and better theologian, but Whitefield was a much better preacher. Whitefield’s biographer John Pollock wrote of the consequence of the separation of once close friends and laborers in the Christ. “Two streams would therefore flow from the evangelical revival, often crossing and coalescing, instead of one mighty river watering the land.”[11]

Moderate and Radical Revivalists

Division was also occurring between the revivalists’ moderate and more radical wings. As early as 1741, some members of the clergy in Connecticut called on civil government to prevent disorders and punish offenders without trial. This was an attempt by anti-revivalists and some moderate evangelicals to stop ministers and itinerant preachers from preaching and administering the seals of the covenant “without the consent of, or in opposition to, the settled minister of the parish.” To do so would cause disorder and require punishment. In May 1742, the legislature passed “An act for regulating abuses and correcting disorders in ecclesiastical affairs.” Soon arrests were made and fines imposed on those deemed to have violated the ordinance.[12]

Almost immediately a serious riff developed between the radical itinerants and most of the established powers in Connecticut and Massachusetts including moderate evangelicals. Radical itinerant James Davenport conducted a revival at Groton, Connecticut, in the winter of 1741-1742 and then went to Long Island where he led significant revivals at two churches. With concerns about the growing complaints of excess in the revivalist movement, the moderates latched onto accounts of Davenport’s “wild enthusiasm” as being “beyond legitimate evangelical limits.” They saw Davenport a sacrificial lamb that could separate the moderates from the perceived excesses of radical itinerants. In May, Davenport returned to Connecticut where he was promptly arrested and brought to court which banished him from Connecticut for violating the newly passed provincial law that prohibited itinerants from preaching in churches without the resident pastor’s permission and outlawed all non-Connecticut itinerants.[13]

Revivals continue to increase in number in spite of the growing conflict between the Anti-revivalists, moderate evangelicals, and radicals over the legitimacy and manifestations of revivals. Between 1740 and 1742 there were enormous numbers of revivals and conversions throughout New England. By the time the great numbers and intensity of revivals began to decline following 1743, evangelicalism had become a powerful movement in its own right.[14] No longer would the evangelical spirit rise and fall with revivals. The revivalist style of preaching, emphasis on immediate and recognizable personal conversion, personal devotion and holiness, and individual access to God that characterized evangelicalism during revivals would now sustain the church in those times between periodic revivals. Originally birthed by revivalism, evangelicalism had become the incubator from which revivalism would be encouraged over the years to come.

Evangelicalism’s divergent paths

Largely due to the aggravating effects of Davenport’s abrasive tactics in confronting non-radical revivalists, the evangelical movement in New England and the Middle colonies had publicly split by March 1743. But the radicals would continue to be a serious presence through the remainder of The Great Awakening as many New Englanders eventually believed that fulfillment of radical awakenings could only be achieved by starting separate illegal congregations.[15]

New England was the epicenter of church separations during the middle and late eighteenth century. Hundreds of Separate or Separate Baptist congregations were formed, and the rallying cry for radical evangelicals was liberty of conscience. In spite of numerous laws to curtail the activities of radical itinerants and the congregations formed by them, the momentum of the continuing radical evangelical revivals was difficult to contain.[16]

The split between the Separates and the established churches aggravated the split between the moderate and radical evangelicals. However, not all radicals left their churches and became Separates, and not all Separates became Baptists. Issues that united the Separates were commitments to immediate and discernable conversions and the right of uneducated laypeople to become involved in ministry (exhortation, itineration, and ordination). Baptists rejected both infant baptism and the halfway covenant. Both Baptists and Separates would challenge the legalized monopoly of religious life held by the established Congregational churches of New England.[17]

In time only a few of the hundreds of Separatist churches that began in New England survived, and many that did survive would become Baptist. Although the New England Baptist churches had great influence on the northern colonies, their most enduring achievement was exportation of the Separate Baptist movement to the middle and southern colonies. Eventually, the Baptists along with the Methodists and Presbyterians would utterly dominate the South.[18]

Following the public break between the moderate and radical evangelicals in 1743, revivals continued to occur throughout the colonies in the 1750s, 1760s, and during the revolutionary war years. The radical evangelicals were the most vigorous and productive arm of revivalism. Its maturation in the 1760s was reflected by their efforts to articulate a radical definition of revivalism in the public square. The key tenets of this narrative were freedom of private judgement and power to establish independent churches free from the dictates of competing ecclesiastical and legislative authorities. The revivals of 1762-1765 were particularly important in continuing the radical tendencies of the evangelical movement, furthering evangelical populism, and aligning the movement with the Patriot cause in separating from Great Britain.[19]

The conflict between moderate and radical evangelicals that emerged in the 1740s continued into the 1780s. The greatest area of disagreement was with regard to manifestations of the Spirit during revivals. Thus, evangelicalism remained deeply divided between moderates and radicals at the conclusion of the Great Awakening and foreshadowed the eventual abyss separating the liberal churches and conservative evangelicals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Evangelicalism grew in spite of the conflicts between moderates and radicals which, according to Thomas Kidd, “hinted toward the contemporary global evangelical expansion that remains split between Pentecostal and non-charismatic believers.”[20]

Perhaps one of the best and most succinct descriptions of the broad panoply of The Great Awakening was written by American historian Paul Johnson.

It crossed all religious and sectarian boundaries, made light of them indeed, and turned what had been a series of European-style churches into American ones. It began the process which created an ecumenical and American type of religious devotion which affected all groups, and gave a distinctive American flavor to a wide range of denominations. This might be summed up under the following five heads: evangelical vigor, a tendency to downgrade the clergy, little stress on liturgical correctness, even less on parish boundaries, and above all an emphasis on individual experience. Its key was Revelations 21:5: “Behold, I make all things new”—which was also the text for the American experience as a whole.[21]

The influence of The Great Awakening on America’s war for independence

How do we determine the extent to which The Great Awakening influenced the character and worldview of the colonists leading up to America’s war for independence? Here we turn to the words of two distinguished American historians. Sherwood Eddy in his 1941 The Kingdom of God and the American Dream, wrote, “No country on earth was ever founded on deeper religious foundations. This was America’s priceless heritage.”[22] Eddy captured the importance of the eighteenth century American religious awakening on the Revolution and later writing of the Constitution.

Throughout the Revolution and the framing of the Constitution, the religious and the secular life of America could not be separated. The very ideals of political freedom had grown out of the principle of religious liberty of the Reformation and out of the experience of the Pilgrims, Puritans, and protesting colonists. It was in the churches of Boston and Virginia that revolutionary meetings were held. The clergy of the free, dissenting, and popular churches were preaching liberty as a religious principle. The pulpit inspired the Revolution and summoned the faithful to patriotic service and to the realization of the American Dream.[23]

In A History of the American People, Paul Johnson again distills the essence of The Great Awakening and its importance in the founding of America.

…There was a spiritual event in the first half of the 18th century in America, and it proved to be of vast significance, both in religion and politics…The Great Awakening was the proto-revolutionary event, the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible…The Revolution could not have taken place without this religious background. The essential difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event.”[24]

Following the American Revolution (1775-1783) and efforts to form a new nation, there was a second ebb-tide of religious fervor and an increase in secularism and irreligion, especially in the decade of 1790s. America’s spiritual and moral decline threatened the survival of the new republic. The conditions that preceded this decline will be examined in the next chapter as we move toward the Second Great Awakening at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening – The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 1-2.
[2] Ibid., p. 3.
[3] Ibid., p. 54.
[4] “‘Old Lights’ vs. ‘New Lights’ Debating the Great Awakening 1742-1743,” National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/ideas/text2/clergymendebate.pdf (accessed December 13, 2017).
[5] Ibid.
[6] Kidd, The Great Awakening, p. 116.
[7] “An Assemblies of God Response to Reformed Theology,” (Position Paper – Adopted by the General Presbytery in Session August 1 & 3, 2015), General Council of the Assemblies of God. https://ag.org/Beliefs/Topics-Index/Reformed-Theology-Response-of-the-AG-Position-Paper (accessed December 2, 2017).
[8] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 294.
[9] John Pollock, George Whitefield – The Evangelist, (Geanies House, Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus, 1973), pp. 173-175.
[10] Mathew Backholer, Revival Fires and Awakenings-Thirty Six Visitations of the Holy Spirit, (ByFaith Media, 2009, 2012), pp. 33-34.
[11] Pollock, George Whitefield – The Evangelist, pp. 192-193.
[12] Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening – A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield, Public Domain. Facsimile edition reproduced from original documents, pp. 302-304, 307-309. Originally published in Boston, Massachusetts by Tappan and Dennet, 1842.
[13] Kidd, The Great Awakening, pp. 138-141.
[14] Ibid., p. 162.
[15] Ibid., p. 155.
[16] Ibid., p. 174.
[17] Ibid., p. 188.
[18] Ibid., p. 187.
[19] Ibid., p. 268.
[20] Ibid., pp. 319, 323.
[21] Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), p. 116.
[22] Sherwood Eddy, The Kingdom of God and the American Dream, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), p. 77.
[23] Ibid., p. 115.
[24] Johnson, A History of the American People, pp. 110, 116-117.

The dates of the beginning of the Great Awakening in America and its conclusion are a matter of supposition. If the long view is taken and includes the revivals in the early 1720s and concludes with the waning of the Awakening’s long-term effects on society, then The Great Awakening can be said to span from about 1720 to the conclusion of the American Revolution in 1783.[1] Other historians date the Awakening as beginning with the 1735 revival in Northampton, Massachusetts, under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards and ending with the conclusion of the powerful and unprecedented season of revivals that occurred during 1740-1743.[2] A third view dates the Awakening as occurring between 1735 and 1760 which is considered by many to be the period of greatest frequency and intensity of revivals in eighteenth century America.[3]

The Great Awakening is a massive subject that covers decades and involves a host of revivals, participants, and consequences which are far beyond the scope of this book. Our purpose is to obtain a general understanding of these revivals, how they came about, what occurred during those revivals, and the long-term consequences after the revival fires had subsided. To do so we shall briefly look at some of the major revivalists of The Great Awakening, the conflicts and issues that arose between revivalists and anti-revivalists and between moderate and radical evangelicals, and the long-term consequences for the Protestant churches and the colonies both before and during the fight for independence from British rule.

Renowned revival historian J. Edwin Orr believed that The Great Awakening actually began with a revival among the Pietists in New Jersey. This revival occurred eight years earlier than the general consensus that the Awakening began in Jonathan Edward’s Puritan church at Northampton, Massachusetts, in the latter part of December 1734. The 1727 Pietist revival in New Jersey sprang from the preaching of a Dutch Reformed minister named Theodorus Frelinghuysen who arrived in New York City in the early 1720s. Through Frelinghuysen’s influence, revival spread to Scots-Irish Presbyterians under the leadership of Gilbert Tennent and then to the Baptists in Virginia.[4]

However, Thomas Kidd points to the beginning as an extraordinary series of revivals in towns along the Connecticut and Thames Rivers from 1720 to 1722. The Connecticut revival was “the first major event of the evangelical era in New England” which “…touched congregations in Windham, Preston, Franklin, Norwich, and Windsor.” One of the largest of the Connecticut revivals occurred in the Windham church during 1721 with eighty people joining the church in six months. Over the three-year course of the revivals, several hundred new members and possibly more conversions were reported. The significance of this revival has been generally forgotten because of its lack of publicity through the print media which may also account for the revival not spreading beyond its regional borders.[5]

The Tennent Brothers – Gilbert, William, Jr., John, and Charles

William Tennent, Sr. and his family left Ireland in 1718 and arrived in Philadelphia where he joined the Presbyterian Synod of that city and soon established the “Log College” in which he trained candidates for the ministry. The Log College became the well-known forerunner of the College of New Jersey which later became Princeton University. His four sons followed their father into the ministry. Gilbert and William, Jr. along with the graduates of the Log College became a powerful revivalist force in the Scots-Irish Philadelphia Presbyterian Synod of Northeast Pennsylvania and east New Jersey.[6]

While at New Brunswick, Gilbert’s work was described as one of steady success that resulted in a considerable number of conversions. At one revival on Staten Island in 1728, the Holy Spirit was “suddenly poured down upon the Assembly.” The congregation was initially passive or complacent, but after a while several fell to their knees and prayed for mercy. Others “cried out ‘both under the Impressions of Terror and Love,’ depending on their stage of conversion.” John Tennent, the third son, showed great promise as a powerful revivalist but died at young age in 1732. William, Jr. recalled that as a result of his brother John’s preaching at Freehold, several congregants began “sobbing as if their Hearts would break, but without any public Out-cry; and some have been carry’d out of the Assembly (being overcome) as if they had been dead.”[7]

During the 1730s there began a debate among the Presbyterian ministers of the Philadelphia Synod with regard to itinerancy and licensing. Disagreements arose between the pro-revivalists (“New Side”) and the anti-revivalists (“Old Side) Presbyterians. The conflict escalated in 1738-1739 over the appointment of John Rowland, a graduate of the Tennents’ Log College, by the New Brunswick Presbytery which was controlled by the Tennent camp. The Philadelphia Synod revoked Rowland’s license because of “disorderly” and “divisive” conduct. Some believed that Rowland’s preaching encouraged emotional outbreaks which “led not to solid piety but to dangerous enthusiasm.”[8]

In March 1740, the division between the two sides intensified with the publication of Gilbert Tennent’s controversial sermon, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, in which “he called supposedly unconverted ‘hireling’ ministers just about every bad name he could use in religious company.” Tennent believed that as a result of their un-renewed Nature they preached “easy, human-centered doctrines.”[9] The conflict between the New Side and Old Side Presbyterians was a preview of the deep divisions to come between evangelicals and the leaders of the more formal, institutional wings within other Protestant denominations. Those festering divisions eventually resulted in several denominational separations at various times during the Awakening and which continued to periodically occur over the next two hundred and fifty years.

Irrespective of the conflicts between the New Side and Old Side Presbyterians, the Tennents became the “single most influential family of the revivalist movement in the Middle Colonies”[10] generally considered to be the mid-Atlantic colonies (Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York) that lay between the New England and Southern colonies.

Jonathan Edwards

Although not the first, largest, or most widespread revival of the Great Awakening, the revival led by Jonathan Edwards at Northampton in 1734-1735 is perhaps the best known and most influential revival of the Awakening. Edwards had an impressive background. He was the grandson of the venerable Solomon Stoddard who led the Northampton congregation for sixty years until his death in 1729. Born in 1703, Edwards had a brilliant mind. At Yale University he earned his B.A. in 1720 and M.A. in 1723. Already an assistant in his grandfather’s church, the twenty-six year old became the pastor of Northampton Church in 1729 upon the death of his grandfather.[11]

The young Edwards was no stranger to revivals and was taught to expect seasons of revival characterized by special outpourings of the Holy Spirit. Timothy Edwards, Jonathan’s father, pastored the East Windsor Church and had led four or five revivals before 1734-1735. Two of these revivals occurred in the 1710s and had a great influence on the young Edwards. The Northampton Church had experienced six significant “harvests” as the revivals were called under Stoddard’s tenure (1679, 1683, 1687, 1690, 1712, 1718, and 1727). The 1727 revival occurred on the occasion of a major New England earthquake. This was the first revival to be highly publicized.[12]

When Edwards took the pulpit of Northampton in 1729, the spiritual state of the young people of the congregation was a cause for concern since they would not abandon their “carousing for the holy ways of the Lord.”[13] Thomas Kidd described Edwards’ efforts to curtain the continued waywardness of the young at the Northampton Church.

In 1733 Edwards began to notice the congregation’s young people had adopted a new “flexibleness” in their attitudes toward his preaching. He insisted that they give up their “mirth and company-keeping” on Sunday evenings, and he began to see in them a willingness to comply. At the time Edwards also organized neighborhood meetings (the settlements encompassed by the Northampton congregation were far-flung) of fathers concerning the governance of their children. Surprisingly, the fathers reported that their children needed no extra chastening to get them to remain faithful to the Sabbath. The youths themselves were convinced by Edwards’ preaching.[14]

It was the occurrence of two untimely deaths of young people that broke the complacency with regard to the young Northampton congregants’ dismal spiritual state. In Pascommuck, three miles from Northampton but in Edward’s parish, a young man had fallen ill with pleurisy and died in two days. Soon thereafter a young married woman fell ill and died but only after assuring those around her of her salvation. Edwards used the shock of those deaths to encourage the distraught young people to gather into small groups for “social religion.”[15]

But preaching and gatherings for “social religion” were not the primary impetus by which the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Northampton congregation. For several years Edwards and his wife had prayed day and night for revival of their church. In the latter part of December 1734, there were five or six people who were wonderfully converted which created considerable excitement in the congregation. On the evening preceding the day the revival broke out several “Christians met and spent the whole night in prayer.”[16] Prayer was the kindling that set ablaze the Northampton revival of 1734-1735. Edwards reported the events that caused the revival to break forth.

…the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in and wonderfully to work among us; and there were very suddenly, one after another, five or six persons, who were, to all appearance, savingly converted, and some of them wrought upon in a very remarkable manner.

One of these converts was a young woman who had been notorious as a leader in scenes of gayety and rustic dissipation. Edwards was surprised at the account which she gave of her religious exercises, of which he had heard no report till she came to converse with him, apparently humble and penitent.[17]

Edwards was at first concerned that the conversion experience of a person with such questionable character would hinder the progress of the conversion of others. However, he was happily surprised when the news of her conversion became a great encouragement to other young people who went to talk with her and observed her remarkable transformation.[18]

Many miraculous and ecstatic manifestations of the Holy Spirit were present during the Northampton revival. These manifestations included emotional ecstasies and mysterious signs and wonders such as visions and healings. This was not unusual for these manifestations accompanied most of the major revivals that occurred during the eighteenth century. Edwards approved of emotional expressions in revivals, but he also knew the importance of balance because too much spiritual passion could lead to excess. Even though he did not understand some of the mystical experiences that occurred, Edwards did not condemn them when they were accompanied by “a great sense of the spiritual excellency of divine things.” Edwards believed that such ecstatic expressions in worship could be tested: “…did they lead the worshipper to a greater appreciation of God’s glory? Or did they encourage self-glorification?” If it was a greater appreciation of God’s glory, then “the expressions were likely to be incidental operations of the Holy Spirit in persons receptive to them because of their particular mental constitution.” He cautioned that worshippers must not “mistake the vain and imaginary for the truly spiritual.”[19] Within five years these manifestations would become the source of great conflict between the revivalists and anti-revivalists and between the moderate and more radical evangelicals.

Three hundred people were saved during the first six months of the Northampton revival including children, adults, and the elderly. Eventually, 220 families totaling 620 people were entitled to take communion at Edwards’ church which included almost all adults in the town. At the revival’s peak in March and April of 1735, an average of thirty souls were saved each week. During 1735 Edwards wrote, “The town seemed to be full of the presence of God…There were remarkable tokens of God’s presence in almost every house.”[20] The revival that began at Northampton in late December 1734 spread to the north and south along the Connecticut River to thirty-two communities about evenly divided between Massachusetts and Connecticut.[21]

By mid-1735, the revival at Northampton was coming to an end, but the effects of the awakening would reverberate for centuries afterward through the medium of print. Edwards’ account of the Northampton revival was published under the title Faithful Narrative. The publisher printed an abridged version in 1736 and a full edition appeared in London in 1737. Although the Northampton revival was just one in a series of earlier revivals that began in the 1720s, Edwards account of the revival “became the model revival of evangelicalism. It dramatically heightened expectations in Britain and America for new awakenings, and it provided a framework for local pastors to use to promote revival in their own congregations.”[22]

As the revival in Northampton and the other communities to which it spread began to subside, the effects would continue on as churches remained strong in numbers and piety. In 1739, the instances of revival once again began to increase in other parts of the country and also at Northampton. The church at Newark was originally established by New Englanders. Religious life in Newark was in a low state and exhibited little evidence of godliness among its people during the 1730s. This began to change in August 1739 when a revival began among the young people and spread to the whole church body by March 1740. The church at Harvard, Massachusetts, followed the same pattern. In September 1739 there began a spiritual stirring among the people who exhibited a noticeable increase of seriousness about spiritual matters, church attendance, and attentiveness to the preaching of the Word and sanctity of the Sabbath. From that beginning until June 1741 over a hundred came into communion through a steady procession of conversions.[23]

The effects of the Northampton revival had a lasting beneficial effect on the religious and community life of its citizens. However, compared to the conditions at the close of the revival in 1735, Edwards later wrote that there had been “…a very lamentable decay of religious affections, and eagerness for prayer and social religion.” But this began to change in the spring of 1740 as the church moved toward a renewed seriousness with regard to matters concerning religion and spiritual life, especially among the young people. This move of the Holy Spirit continued until October 1741 when George Whitefield arrived at Northampton.[24]

Theology of salvation: Debating who and how one may be “born again”

Much of the theology of conversion held by Solomon Stoddard was held by his grandson Jonathan Edwards. Stoddard believed that it was through the Holy Spirit that God drew sinners to salvation. Without the Holy Spirit conversions would not take place. He also considered powerful preaching as a tool used by God to draw sinners to God. The power in this preaching was a result of the Spirit who allowed ministers to effectively preach God’s judgment. Like other revivalists, Edwards believed there would be seasons of revival in which there would be special outpourings of the Holy Spirit.[25]

Although Solomon Stoddard and his grandson held similar views on revival and the theology of conversion, Edwards would significantly differ on two points embraced by his grandfather. Recall that in the last chapter the half-way covenant emerged from the Synod of 1662 which allowed the children of parents who were avowedly unregenerate and excluded from the Lord’s table to be baptized if the parents were otherwise qualified. Stoddard agreed with the halfway covenant. In 1707, Stoddard also began preaching that sanctification (to set apart, make holy) was not a necessary qualification for participation in the Lord’s supper and that “the Lord’s supper is a converting ordinance.” However, during his tenure at the Northampton Church, Edwards opposed these all-inclusive policies of his grandfather and preached that only the children of parents who were full communicant members of the church should be allowed to be baptized. This doctrinal stance was very unpopular compared to the beliefs preached by his grandfather. Edwards’ stance eventually led to his dismissal as pastor of the Northampton Church in 1750 and “signaled his own church’s bitter repudiation of his evangelical ideal of a pure church of converted saints.”[26]

The “heart religion” of evangelicalism

In Chapter 5 it was noted that first generation New England Puritans believed that a man must be “born again,” and this transformation was observable by both the person and others. They also believed there was a difference between the unregenerate and regenerate in which the latter would exhibit good qualities through their thought, feeling, and conduct. But these desired qualities are not a matter of works but flowed from a heart change which must invariably testify to the transformative power of true salvation. This was the central issue of the Reformation: justification by faith alone. And it was this same justification by faith alone that was at the core of evangelicalism’s “heart religion” which propelled the Great Awakening in America. However, there would continue to be differences with regard to the meaning of salvation and its related doctrines among the revivalists of The Great Awakening and thereafter as will be seen in the next chapter.

Before we leave the early history of The Great Awakening, we must once again clarify and better understand the core elements that precipitated the revivals. As previously discussed, revivals are necessary when the spiritual and moral conditions of the church and society at large are in various stages of decline or decay. However, it must be remembered that revival of the culture can never precede revival of the church. Revival of the culture is made possible only through the influence of a revived church (individual Christians who comprise the body of Christ). Therefore, revival is ultimately a matter of renewal of the hearts of individuals—both renewal of the hearts of the spiritually languishing Christians and the dead hearts of lost sinners.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening – The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. xix, 9-10.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Mathew Backholer, Revival Fires and Awakenings-Thirty Six Visitations of the Holy Spirit, (ByFaith Media, 2009, 2012), p. 27.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Kidd, The Great Awakening, pp. 9-10.
[6] Ibid., pp. 31, 35.
[7] Ibid., pp. 32-33.
[8] Ibid., p. 37
[9] Ibid., pp. 59-60.
[10] Ibid., p. 31.
[11] Ibid., pp. 13-15.
[12] Ibid., pp. 6-7, 9, 10, 15.
[13] Ibid., p. 15.
[14] Ibid. p. 16.
[15] Ibid., pp. 16-17.
[16] Backholer, Revival Fires and Awakenings, p. 26.
[17] Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening – A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield, Public Domain. Facsimile edition reproduced from original documents,
p. 12. Originally published in Boston, Massachusetts by Tappan and Dennet, 1842.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Kidd, The Great Awakening, pp. 19-20.
[20] Backholer, Revival Fires and Awakenings, p. 26.
[21] Kidd, The Great Awakening, p. 18.
[22] Ibid., pp. 21-23.
[23] Tracy, The Great Awakening, pp. 18-21.
[24] Ibid., pp. 21-22.
[25] Kidd, The Great Awakening, pp. 6-7.
[26] Ibid, p. 194.