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Introduction to Colonial American History - the Great Awakening

Did the first Great Awakening have any lasting consequences ?

Before discussing the consequences of the Great Awakening it is necessary to define what is meant by the term. Despite the long and hard historical debate there is a lack of consensus even on this point. Indeed it is questionable if the Great Awakening was even a purely American phenomenon. Between 1730 and 1760 practically all of Western Europe was swept by some kind of religious emotionalism. Quietism arose in France but significantly Wesley, Whitefield and Methodism became prominent in England. Miller thinks that this was partially the result of the seventeenth century with the upper crust of society turning to Newtonian ideas while the lower orders experienced a revival in Pietism or Evangelism. If this is the case then the Great Awakening was only incidentally an American phenomenon..

However, I do not find Miller particularly persuasive on this point. It needs to be stressed that the revival in America, unlike that promoted by the Wesleys in England, built and throve on the preaching of Calvinist doctrine. Edwards taught 'justification by faith alone' but pointed not to Pauline epistle but to the numerous conversions experienced in Northampton in 1735. Indeed it seems that many historians have pet ideas as to the causes and consequences of the Great Awakening. It is the purpose of this essay to examine some of the chief concepts before advancing any alternative hypothesis. Perry Miller concentrates on the Great Awakening in its New England context. In 1740 flagrant scenes of emotional religion were enacted in Boston. In New England the Great Awakening was an uprising of the common people who declared that what Harvard and Yale graduates were teaching was too academic. Miller sets the Great Awakening against a background of church polity - including the 1662 half-way covenant, political factors (such as the imposition of a royal governor in 1691) and increasing economic policy. Since religion seemed to be on the decline it was felt necessary for the halfway members to be incorporated by communal baptism which was something of a move away from individual Puritanism. John Edward's grandfather was the first man who openly extended the practice of renewal of the covenant to those who had never been in it at all by means of 'harvests'.

Many felt such ideas threatened the fabric of society but in reality Jonathan Edwards had no interest in social revolution - he was first and foremost a Puritan and a Calvinist. Miller and to a greater extent Heimert see the Great Awakening as having profound theological ramifications but go on state that the lasting consequences can not be confined to any single strand of history.

However, I think that the concrete results of the Great Awakening are very far from clear but we shall return to this point later. Perhaps Perry Miller is more concerned with men's thoughts rather than actions. He is persuasive when he writes that the Great Awakening caused a profound alteration in ideas and aspirations of which any one activity was merely a particular expression. Calvinism released men from the vice of traditional obligations - this is very true but Miller then goes on to write that a vision of social good flowed into political protest. The Great Awakening according to Miller and Heimert marked the end of European ideas of authority - this was to have implications on American society which they claim now rejected European philosophies of society. They urge that the spirit of American democracy had awakened. At a superficial glance this argument seems persuasive. It is a refreshing change to the idea that the Revolution was the child of the Age of Reason. Rather American independence was born of the "New light " imparted to the American mind by the Awakening and the evangelical clergy of colonial America.

However, surely the evidence for all this is scarce. We are in the dangerous realms of psycho-history. The only evidence we have is the recorded thoughts and expressions of the men who spoke to and for the people of colonial America. The language with which an idea is presented often tells us more of an author's meaning and intention than his declarative propositions. Lodge's ideas that the Great Awakening was largely caused by ministerial incompetence or lack of numbers also looks promising at first sight. he cites the destitution of the church and the ley man's power over the clergy as key factors leading to the Great Awakening.

According to Lodge lack of religious stability prior to the Awakening lay at the heart of theological tensions resulting in the manifestations of the Awakening south of New England. He thinks that the Awakening convulsed the Middle Colonies because it served as an outlet for people who were frustrated by so many competing church groups. During the 1730s the impotence of the clergy brought organized religion to the brink of disintegration. The spiritual crisis was intolerable to people who still wanted to reach heaven. Consequently when church institutions failed their fundamental religiosity was deflected into other fields.

Lodge points out religious indifference legalism and anticlericism as stemming from the crisis. Although he cites valuable evidence from Micklenberg and Jedediah Andrews amongst others these concepts still seem vague and it is not really clear whether Lodge ascribes these factors as causes or consequences of the Great Awakening. All these concepts predate the early eighteenth century.

It is now that we come to the second purpose of this essay - namely to advance a slightly modified theory of the consequences of the Great Awakening. Perhaps the term itself has been given too much emphasis. If the entire history of colonial Protestantism is viewed retrospectively the term Great Awakening to describe the wide spread effort to solve the problem of evangelism, education and evangelical order in the eighteenth century serves to confuse rather than clarify.

Many historians view events in the early eighteenth century as an inevitable run up to the American Revolution. They would clearly see the stirrings of democracy and independence in the Great Awakening. The events of the 1730s and 40s are also often referred to as a revival. A revival seems almost by definition a return to the past, and a revival of religion, or even vital piety perhaps reduces the significance of the consequences of the Great Awakening. Instead of heralding some new future as Heimert and others believe the Great Awakening could have been the last shudder of a Puritanism that refused to see itself as an anachronism.

In addition there are alternative methods of explaining the alteration of the denominational structure of the colonies rather than referring to some ubiquitous but vague ideas such as the Awakening. J.C. Miller thinks that such divisions showed a class struggle. However, although there were economic hostilities the immediate effect of the religious revival seems to have been a tempering of the fierce sociopolitical and political antagonisms. At no time was the division between Calvinist and Liberal one merely of economic or social class.

Surely the most fundamental post-Awakening division was an intellectual one - a division which was more aesthetic than socio-economic. The historians following the example of Ernst Troeltsch do not fully explain the consequences of the Awakening. Schaff thought the differences among denominations were the outcome of varying doctrinal traditions while Hudson and Meads explain colonial American religious structure by the concept of denominationalism rather than sectarianism. Denominationalism, unlike the sects, admits no claim to an exclusive possession of saving truth.

Perhaps most persuasive of all T.L. Smith puts American religious structure in its seventeenth and eighteenth century setting. He stresses the influence of migration in the churches. To men reared in an age of faith the crisis of community posed by early settlement seemed a religious problem. For example in colonial Virginia it was not just the heritage of piety which turned men's minds to God. The tensions caused by their leaving England may have played a part. John Winthrop's records testify to the troubled of the early church.

Even when churches became established other factors besides diversity of origin restricted their ability to bring solidarity. Members continually moved to new lands nearby and the religious congregation like the family suffered profound shock from fragmentation. Initially the church turned to the state for help - hence the proliferation of religious acts in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century. B. Bailyn agrees with this and sees it as an attempt to stave off potential disorder. However, since legislation proved inadequate the alternative was denominationalism.

Thomas Bray was the first to appreciate the idea that of inter-colonial organization of the church as he set up the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge in 1699. The Classis of Amsterdam sent out Frelinghuyssen and Baptists and Moravians took initiatives. However, the Lutheran and German Reformed Churches continued to be in a state of disarray as Boehm testifies. Church members were always imploring for ministers. I think the Great Awakening is a confusing idea. The emotions with which isolated Lutheran and Reformed congregations received the ministry of these missionaries from the homeland produced scenes like those which in other communities have been ascribed to the Great Awakening. Schaltter of Frederick in Maryland tells us this. Indeed the Awakening certainly occurred at widely separated times and places. Frelinghuyssen was one of its early manifestations in New Jersey but the Carolinas frontier occurrence took place as late as the 1790s according to T.L. Smith.

Surely a better was of looking at the events of the early to mid eighteenth century would be to see revivalism in American history as generally serving communal purposes. If this view is adopted one of the consequences of revivalism may have been to nurture the American Protestant consensus of the nineteenth century. But where do all these arguments leave us ? If we allow the term Great Awakening to stand we should not overemphasize its lasting consequences. We really approach the problem from the wrong angle if we look to the events of the 1770s and try to draw a continuous connecting these from the earlier part of the century.

On a practical level its consequences were few. Despite Whitefield, Tenant et alia and the upheaval they created Puritanism as a force was largely spent. The arguments of Miller and Heimert are convincing in the sense that the American mind may have been altered but the evidence is scarce and the ideological consequences uncertain. If one trust collective psychological studies in history then one can conclude that the Awakening had lasting consequences. However, it is the contention of this essay that the term itself clouds the issue and even if we let it stand there seem to be very few concrete and lasting consequences of the Great Awakening.

Dr Simon Harding

www.chronosconsulting.com

www.biblon.com

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