First Great Awakening

George Whitefield

The First Great Awakening, or simply Great Awakening, was an eighteenth century transatlantic revival involving England and its North American Colonies. The revival was spurred by the sense that Christian worship had become too formulaic and devoid of emotion. Among the most notable clergy who fueled the awakening was Theodore Frelinguysen who led a revival in the 1720s among members of the Dutch Reformed Church in New Jersey. Jonathan Edwards, the minister of a Congregationalist Church in Northampton, Massachusetts led revivals in the Connecticut River Valley. Edwards is perhaps best remembered for his classic “fire and brimstone” sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. However, his greatest contribution to the awakening was probably his book, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God. For many younger untried clergymen, Edward’s book was a “how to manual” that instructed them as to the finer points of conducting a revival. It influenced even the most famous of the Great Awakening ministers, George Whitefield.

Whitefield was an associate of John Wesley. He was ordained as an Anglican minister. However, he was not assigned a pulpit and began preaching in parks and fields on his own. In short, he preached to people who normally did not attend Church. Like Edwards, he had developed a style of preaching that elicited emotional responses from his audiences. However, Whitefield had charisma, and his voice (which according to many accounts, could be heard over vast distances), small stature, and cross-eyed appearance (which some people took as a mark of divine favor) all served to help make him the first American celebrity. Thanks to the use of print in colonial America, perhaps more than half of all colonists, heard about, read about, or read something written by Whitefield. Whitefield used print extensively. He sent advance men to put up broadsides and to distribute handbills announcing his sermons. He also arranged to have his sermons published (a common practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). Most notably, he entered into a profitable business partnership (and lifelong friendship) with Benjamin Franklin. While Franklin noted that Whitefield’s sermons tended to improve morality among the colonists, Whitefield was never able to get Franklin to embrace Christianity on a personal level.

Many colonial clergymen initially welcomed Whitefield and other revivalists, and opened their churches to them. However, many had second thoughts over time, regarding the revivalists — some of whom lacked theological training — as unorthodox. They saw the revivalists as challenging their own authority and regular church attendance. As a result, many denominations split into “Old Light” and “New Light” factions. As a rule, the “Old Lights” preferred the order of regular church services, while the “New Lights” favored the more emotional appeal of the revivalists. Newer denominations, particularly the Baptists and the Methodists, gained many converts.

Divisions between “Old Lights” and “New Lights” did not stop at the church door. As a rule, older more established, and wealthier colonists (particularly in the South) tended to prefer the “Old Light” while poorer colonists and new arrivals gravitated toward “New Light” services.

References

Frank Lambert, Inventing the Great Awakening (Princeton University Press, 1999)