AP US History 2.7: Colonial Society and Culture

First Great Awakening

A series of Christian revivals that spread through Britain and the thirteen North American colonies during the 1730s and 1740s. It renewed Protestant religious devotion and helped create a trans-denominational Anglo-American evangelical movement.

Why is the movement called the “Great Awakening” in the United States but the “Evangelical Revival” in Britain?

“Great Awakening” is the common American term, while British historians generally call the same eighteenth-century revival movement the Evangelical Revival.

Which earlier religious traditions provided foundations for the First Great Awakening?

Puritanism, Pietism, and Presbyterianism supplied important theological and organizational foundations. Revival leaders adapted these traditions into an evangelical movement that crossed denominational boundaries.

Pietism

A Protestant movement emphasizing heartfelt faith, personal religious experience, devotional practice, and holy living rather than merely intellectual agreement with doctrine. It reacted against what its supporters viewed as spiritually dry Protestant scholasticism.

How did Pietism contribute to the First Great Awakening?

Pietist ideas prepared people for revival by stressing conversion, religious affection, small-group accountability, and personal devotion. Moravian communities, especially Herrnhut under Nicolaus Zinzendorf, helped transmit these ideas to Britain and North America.

Nicolaus Zinzendorf and Herrnhut

Zinzendorf was a German nobleman influenced by Pietism who established a Moravian community at Herrnhut. The community became a refuge for several Protestant groups and a center from which revival ideas spread internationally.

Who were the three major English leaders of the Evangelical Revival?

Anglican priests John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield were the principal leaders. Their ministries helped give rise to Methodism.

Holy Club

A religious society at Oxford associated with John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield. Its members practiced disciplined prayer, Bible study, fasting, and mutual accountability, leading others to call them “Methodists.”

How did Moravianism influence John Wesley?

Moravians modeled confident faith, small-group religious discipline, and the belief that assurance was normal for Christians. Their influence helped Wesley interpret his Aldersgate experience and later shaped Methodist organization.

John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience

In 1738, John Wesley experienced a spiritual transformation at a Moravian meeting in London while hearing Luther’s preface to Romans. He understood the experience as conversion and received the assurance of salvation he had been seeking.

George Whitefield

An Anglican evangelist and leading revival preacher known for dramatic delivery, itinerant ministry, and large open-air gatherings. He preached in Britain and the American colonies and helped popularize the necessity of the new birth.

Why did George Whitefield begin preaching outdoors in England?

Many Anglican clergy refused him access to their pulpits because they considered his revival methods enthusiastic and disorderly. He therefore preached in fields and other open spaces, reaching audiences excluded from established churches.

How did the Evangelical Revival develop in Wales?

In Wales, Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland began preaching after their conversions and helped launch a Welsh Methodist revival.

How did revival traditions develop in Scotland?

In Scotland, Presbyterian outdoor conventicles and communion-season gatherings fostered revival traditions that later expanded in the eighteenth century.

How did John Wesley help transform revivalism into Methodism?

Wesley organized converts into societies and smaller classes, appointed lay preachers, and created a durable system for evangelism and pastoral support. His organizational skill made Methodism an enduring movement rather than a series of isolated revivals.

What were Methodist societies and classes designed to accomplish?

Societies gathered converts into a common movement, while classes provided intimate settings for confession, mutual encouragement, prayer, and moral accountability. These structures reinforced both personal conversion and corporate identity.

Love feast

An early Methodist gathering in which participants shared testimonies and religious experiences. It strengthened fellowship and helped converts publicly express their faith.

What conditions in the North American colonies encouraged the Great Awakening?

Church membership had not kept pace with population growth, and many churches were criticized for formalism and weak experiential faith. Enlightenment rationalism also encouraged some people toward Deism, atheism, Unitarianism, or Universalism, prompting ministers to call for renewed piety.

How did religious diversity affect the Great Awakening in the colonies?

Different regions contained competing Congregational, Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist, Quaker, Lutheran, and Reformed communities. Because revival theology crossed denominational lines, this diversity allowed the Awakening to spread broadly while also intensifying disputes within churches.

Log College

A seminary founded by William Tennent Sr. in the Middle Colonies that trained Presbyterian revivalist ministers, including his sons and Samuel Blair. It helped supply leaders for the evangelical party within colonial Presbyterianism.

Jonathan Edwards’s Northampton revival

A major revival in Northampton, Massachusetts, during 1734–1735 under Congregationalist minister Jonathan Edwards. His preaching on justification by faith alone produced heightened religious commitment and influenced revivals in surrounding communities.

A Faithful Narrative

Jonathan Edwards’s published account of the Northampton revival. Its circulation in Britain made Edwards influential internationally and provided a model for interpreting and promoting later revivals.

How did Jonathan Edwards explain conversion during the Northampton revival?

Edwards, a Calvinist, viewed conversion as movement from spiritual deadness to joy in recognizing God’s saving grace and election. He believed regeneration occurred at a definite point, even if a person could not identify the exact moment.

How did Jonathan Edwards evaluate emotional and mystical revival experiences?

He defended experiences such as intense emotion or visions when they led people to glorify God and live faithfully rather than to glorify themselves. The value of an experience was judged by its spiritual fruits, not by emotional intensity alone.

What roles did Gilbert Tennent and James Davenport play in the colonial Awakening?

Gilbert Tennent was an influential New Light Presbyterian preacher whose intense evangelism extended the revival through New England. James Davenport became notorious for attacking supposedly unconverted ministers and promoting extreme behavior, causing opponents to associate revivalism with fanaticism.

How did extemporaneous preaching affect revival audiences?

Spontaneous, emotionally forceful preaching created a sense of personal conviction about sin and the need for salvation. It encouraged introspection, conversion, and commitment to a more moral life.

How did the Great Awakening affect church membership in New England?

Large numbers of people joined Congregational churches, and expectations for membership became more demanding because personal conversion was increasingly treated as necessary evidence of genuine faith. The revival also revived the Puritan ideal of a converted church membership.

What was the First Great Awakening’s major effect on Protestantism?

It permanently increased emphasis on individual piety, personal conversion, spiritual experience, and moral commitment. It also encouraged a shared evangelical identity across Protestant denominations.

What distinguished revival theology from traditional Protestant formalism?

Revival theology retained Protestant doctrines such as justification by faith but added strong emphasis on personal conversion, inner religious experience, assurance, and the Holy Spirit’s providential outpouring. It judged faith partly by transformed conduct and personal holiness.

What did revivalists mean by the “new birth”?

They meant an inward spiritual transformation in which a person personally experienced salvation through Jesus Christ. Christianity was therefore more than intellectual assent to correct doctrine or participation in external religious duties.

How did revival theology define conversion?

Conversion was understood as a transformation from spiritual deadness to renewed life and devotion to God. Revivalists emphasized a personal experience of grace rather than mere formal membership or doctrinal knowledge.

What role did assurance of salvation play in revival theology?

Revivalists taught that believers could normally expect an inward assurance that they had received salvation. This assurance was closely connected to conversion and personal trust in Christ.

What were the three teachings that Methodists identified as foundations of Christian faith?

People are naturally “dead in sin”; people are justified by faith alone; and genuine faith produces inward and outward holiness.

How did the First Great Awakening create a common evangelical identity despite denominational differences?

Revivalists emphasized shared experiences and teachings—especially the new birth, justification by faith, assurance of salvation, and holy living—rather than allowing every traditional doctrinal boundary to define Christian identity.

New Lights and Old Lights

New Lights supported revival preaching, emotional religious experience, itinerant ministers, and personal conversion. Old Lights opposed revivalist enthusiasm and itinerancy, preferring orderly worship and a settled, formally educated clergy.

Why did the Great Awakening produce divisions within Protestant churches?

Supporters and opponents disagreed over the proper relationship between religious experience and doctrinal or institutional authority. Disputes over emotional worship, itinerant preaching, ministerial education, and church order produced schisms and separatist congregations.

What was the central theological dispute in the Old Side–New Side Presbyterian controversy?

The dispute concerned whether doctrinal orthodoxy was sufficient without a personal, experiential knowledge of Christ. New Siders argued that an unconverted minister could possess correct doctrine yet lack genuine Christian faith.

How did the Great Awakening affect Congregationalists and Presbyterians?

It caused major internal divisions and the formation of separatist or competing groups. Congregationalists experienced numerous schisms, while Presbyterians divided into Old Side and New Side factions over revivalism.

Why did opponents accuse revivalists of disorder and fanaticism?

They objected to emotional reactions, uneducated itinerant preachers, attacks on established clergy, and disregard for parish boundaries. Episodes associated with radical figures such as Davenport reinforced fears that revivalism undermined church order.

How did the Great Awakening contribute to Baptist growth?

Many New Light Congregationalists became convinced of Baptist teachings, particularly believer’s baptism. Some entire separatist congregations adopted Baptist beliefs, producing significant Baptist expansion by the late eighteenth century.

How did the Great Awakening affect Methodists and Baptists compared with Lutherans and Quakers?

It strengthened Methodist and Baptist denominations and helped Methodism emerge as a major movement. It had little immediate effect on most Lutherans and Quakers, although it later contributed to a lasting Quaker schism.

How did the Awakening affect African Americans and enslaved people?

Revivalists sought to include people in conversion regardless of race or social status. In the colonies, especially the South, the movement increased the number of enslaved and free Black people exposed to and converted to Christianity.

What were the long-term institutional consequences of the First Great Awakening?

It helped establish evangelicalism as a cross-denominational Protestant identity, expanded Methodist and Baptist institutions, and encouraged new missionary organizations. It also normalized itinerant preaching and lay participation in many revival-oriented traditions.