The Great Awakening

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The Great Awakening

• Elements of the Great Awakening
• Enthusiasmweeping, fainting, physical
  movements
• Itinerancy--preachers roamed rural and urban
  areas and held meetings
• Democratic religious movement
• Insisted that all should have the religious
  experience
• Stirred impulse towards independence among
  colonists (challenge religious authority
  eventually challenge political authority
• Broke down strong denominational ties

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• Old Lights emphasized and stressed education (the
  bible as the basis of preaching)
• New Lights emphasized and stressed emotion and
  personal experiences. (Dont have to be educated)

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• Content of Message
• Salvation came through faith and prayer, not
  rituals or good works
• The individual, not any religious authority,
  judged his or her own behavior based on one's
  understanding of God and the Bible
• Personal piety--break away from the constraints
  of the past and start fresh. Revivals resulted in
  changed behaviors (decrease in card-playing,
  drunkenness, increase in church attendance, Bible
  study)
• Individual revival--rejection of cold
  rationalism of Puritanism and Anglicanism and
  more reliance on the "heart" rather than the
  "head."

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John Collet British Artist late 18th century
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• Revival Leaders
• Jonathon Edwards- New England preacher of great
  intellect and power
• George Whitefield- English preacher who visited
  most of the colonies, stirring residents with
  emotional religious appeals.
• Gilbert Tennent- NJ preacher , traveled the
  middle colonies

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• Impact of the Great Awakening
• Creation of new colleges to train "new light"
  ministers--Princeton, Brown, Rutgers(Queens
  College)
• Divisions in denominations and a sharpening of
  the differences between those who defined
  religion as a rational process (old lights)  and
  those who focused on experience (new lights)
• Religious challenges to authority strengthened
  political challenges to authority. Many
  Revolutionary War soldiers were "new light"
  believers, particularly Methodists,
  Presbyterians, and Baptists

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• Quaker revival
• Questioned their principals, were they living up
  to them
• A few concluded slavery was wrong
• John Woolman of NJ spent time urging fellow
  Quakers to free their slaves

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Growth of Colonial Assemblies

• Following the lead of the Whigs who had
  established limits on the power of the crown with
  the Glorious Revolution, American colonial
  assemblies sought to limit royal authority and
  assert local control over
• Taxes
• appointment of local officials
• setting the governor's salary

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• British policy of salutary neglect allowed local
  control to grow as the crown focused on trade and
  military issues. Later, when the British tried to
  re-assert the powers in mercantilist policies,
  they found strong colonial resistance.

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• More Literate than any other in the world.
• The Written word
• Most widely printed books were sermons
• 2nd most popular were Almanacs
• The Most Popular?
• Poor Richards Almanac, it was published in
  Britain and France
• Benjamin Franklin publisher
• Newspapers tied colonies together
• Widely read and passed hand to hand and read to
  crowds

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Ben Franklins guide to Self Help and a better
Life

• An investment in knowledge always pays the best
  interest.
• Early to bed and early to rise makes a man
  healthy, wealthy, and wise.
• He that is good for making excuses is seldom good
  for anything else.
• If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are
  dead and rotten, either write something worth
  reading or do things worth the writing.
• Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do
  today.
• Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
  
• Those who would give up essential liberty to
  purchase a little temporary safety deserve
  neither liberty nor safety. Historical Review of
  Pennsylvania, 1759
• Fish and visitors smell in three days. Poor
  Richard's Almanack, 1736

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Pioneer Presses

• Watch What You Print
• Article printed in Newspaper attacked royal
  governor William Cosby (New York)
• Rigging elections, accepting bribes, taking land
  unlawfully, making money on treaties with Mohawk
  Indians, being overly friendly with a known
  pirate
• British law
• Criticize the government, you are guilty of
  criminal libel
• What is libel
• Any written statement or illustration that harms
  a persons reputation
• Case to prove or disprove libel
• People had the right to air grievances against
  their government

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• What was the outcome of the Case?
• It took 10 minutes for a jury to determine that
  the articles were true. The result of the case
  opened up more free press to speak out more
  boldly and express differing political views