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First Great Awakening (view source)

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[[Image:Whitefield.jpg|right|thumb|250px|George Whitefield]]

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The '''First Great Awakening''', or simply '''Great Awakening''', was a religious revitalization movement that swept the Atlantic region, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion.

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The '''First Great Awakening''', or simply '''Great Awakening''', was a religious revitalization movement that swept the Atlantic region, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. Indeed, the First Great Awakening launched the [[Evangelical Christians|Evangelical Christian]] movement in America and laid the foundation for the Evangelical successes of the [[Second Great Awakening]] of 1800-1830.<ref>Thomas S. Kidd, ''The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America'' (2007) </ref>

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The leaders were [[Jonathan Edwards]], [[George Whitefield]] and [[Gilbert Tennent]], among many others.

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It emerged from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal guilt and of their need of salvation by Christ. Pulling away from ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made religion intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual guilt and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality. It brought Christianity to African-American slaves and was an apocalyptic event in [[New England]] that challenged established authority. It incited rancor and division between old traditionalists who insisted on the continuing importance of ritual and doctrine, and the new revivalists, who encouraged emotional involvement and personal commitment. It had a major impact in reshaping the Congregational church, the Presbyterian church, the Dutch Reformed Church, and the German Reformed denomination, and strengthened the small [[Baptist]] and Methodist denominations. It had little impact on Anglicans, and Quakers. Unlike the [[Second Great Awakening]], that began about 1800 and which reached out to the unchurched, the First Great Awakening focused on people who were already church members. It changed their rituals, their piety, and their self awareness.

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The Awakening emerged from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal guilt and of their need of salvation by Christ. Pulling away from ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made religion intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual guilt and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality. It brought Christianity to African-American slaves and was an apocalyptic event in [[New England]] that challenged established authority. It incited rancor and division between old traditionalists who insisted on the continuing importance of ritual and doctrine, and the new revivalists, who encouraged emotional involvement and personal commitment. It had a major impact in reshaping the Congregational church, the Presbyterian church, the Dutch Reformed Church, and the German Reformed denomination, and strengthened the small [[Baptist]] and Methodist denominations. It had little impact on Anglicans, and Quakers. Unlike the [[Second Great Awakening]], that began about 1800 and which reached out to the unchurched, the First Great Awakening focused on people who were already church members. It changed their rituals, their piety, and their self awareness.

To the evangelical imperatives of Reformation Protestantism, eighteenth- century American Christians added emphases on divine outpourings of the Holy Spirit and conversions that implanted within new believers an intense love for God. Revivals encapsulated those hallmarks and forwarded the newly created evangelicalism into the early republic.

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* Jedrey, Christopher M. ''The World of John Cleaveland: Family and Community in Eighteenth-Century New England.'' (1979).

* Keller, Rosemary Skinner, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Marie Cantlon, eds. ''Encyclopedia of Women And Religion in North America'' (3 vol 2006) [http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0253346851/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-4827826-5463040#reader-link excerpt and text search]

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* Kidd, Thomas S. ''The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America'' (2007) , 412pp

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* Kidd, Thomas S. ''The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America'' (2007) , 412pp [http://www.amazon.com/Great-Awakening-Evangelical-Christianity-Colonial/dp/0300118872/ref=ed_oe_h exxcerpt and text search]

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* Lambert, Frank. ''Pedlar in Divinity: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals''; (1994)

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* Lambert, Frank. ''Pedlar in Divinity: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals'' (1994)

* Lambert, Frank. Inventing the "Great Awakening." (1999), 308pp

* McClymond, Michael, ed. ''Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America.'' (2007. Vol. 1, A–Z: xxxii, 515 pp. Vol. 2, Primary Documents: xx, 663 pp. isbn 0-313-32828-5/set.)

* McLoughlin, William G. ''Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977'' (1978). [http://www.amazon.com/Revivals-Awakenings-Chicago-American-Religion/dp/0226560929/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195464898&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search]

* McLaughlin, William G. "Essay Review: the American Revolution as a Religious Revival: 'The Millennium in One Country.'" ''New England Quarterly'' 1967 40(1): 99-110. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/363855 in JSTOR]

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* McLaughlin, William G. ''Isaac Backus and the American Pietistic Tradition'' (1967)</ref>

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* Pope, Robert, ed. ''Religion and National Identity: Wales and Scotland C. 1700-2000.'' (2001) [http://www.questia.com/read/107361140 online edition]

* Schmidt, Leigh Eric. ''Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revivalism '' (2001)

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