What was the First Great Awakening?
The First Great Awakening was a period when spirituality and religious devotion were revived. This feeling swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and 1770s. The revival of Protestant beliefs was part of a much broader movement that was taking place in England, Scotland, and Germany at that time.
Whats the difference between the first and Second Great Awakening?
Unlike the Second Great Awakening, which began about 1800 and 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.
What happened in the First Great Awakening?
The First Great Awakening (sometimes Great Awakening) or the Evangelical Revival was a series of Christian revivals that swept Britain and its thirteen North American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s.
How was the Second Great Awakening similar to the First Great Awakening?
Like the First Great Awakening a half century earlier, the Second Great Awakening in North America reflected Romanticism characterized by enthusiasm, emotion, and an appeal to the supernatural.
What two factors influenced the 2nd Great Awakening?
Changes in work, geography, and economics influenced the emergence of the Second Great Awakening.
What was one result of the Second Great Awakening?
The repeated and varied revivals of these several decades helped make the United States a much more deeply Protestant nation than it had been before. Finally, the Second Great Awakening also included greater public roles for white women and much higher African-American participation in Christianity than ever before.
What was the purpose of the Great Awakening?
Q: What is the significance of the Great Awakening? The movement reduced the higher authority of church doctrine and instead put greater importance on the individual and his or her spiritual experience. An important effect of the Great Awakening was the transformation of the religious climate in the American colonies.
Who started the First Great Awakening?
The Puritan fervour of the American colonies waned toward the end of the 17th century, but the Great Awakening, under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and others, served to revitalize religion in the region.
What did the Second Great Awakening do?
The Second Great Awakening made soul-winning the primary function of ministry and stimulated several moral and philanthropic reforms, including temperance and the emancipation of women.
What was the difference between old lights and new lights?
In the Church of Scotland in the 1790s the "Old Lights" followed the principles of the Covenanters, while the "New Lights" were more focused on personal salvation and considered the strictures of the Covenants as less binding moral enormities."
How did the Second Great Awakening affect the slavery issue?
Historians believe ideas set forth during the religious movement known as the Second Great Awakening inspired abolitionists to rise up against slavery. This Protestant revival encouraged the concept of adopting renewed morals, which centered around the idea that all men are created equal in the eyes of God.
Overview
Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening (sometimes known simply as "the Great Awakening") was a religious revival that occurred in the United States beginning in the late eighteenth century and lasting until the middle of the nineteenth century. While it occurred in all parts of the United States, it was especially strong in the Northeast and the Midwest. This awakening was unique in that it moved beyond the educated elite of New England to those who were less wealthy and less educ…
First Great Awakening
The First Great Awakening began in the 1730s and lasted to about 1740, though pockets of revivalism had occurred in years prior, especially amongst the ministry of Solomon Stoddard, Jonathan Edwards' grandfather. Edwards' congregation was involved in a revival later called the "Frontier Revivals" in the mid-1730s, though this was on the wane by 1737. But as American religious historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom noted, the Great Awakening "was still to come, ushered in …
Third Great Awakening
The Third Great Awakening in the 1850s–1900s was characterized by new denominations, active missionary work, Chautauquas, and the Social Gospel approach to social issues. The YMCA (founded in 1844) played a major role in fostering revivals in the cities in the 1858 Awakening and after. The revival of 1858 produced the leadership, such as that of Dwight L. Moody, out of which came religious work carried on in the armies during the civil war. The Christian and Sanitary Com…
Fourth Great Awakening
The Fourth Great Awakening is a debated concept that has not received the acceptance of the first three. Advocates such as economist Robert Fogel say it happened in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Jesus Movement is one evidence of this awakening, and it created a shift in church music styles.
Mainline Protestant denominations weakened sharply in both membership and influence while t…
Terminology
The idea of an "awakening" implies a slumber or passivity during secular or less religious times. Awakening is a term which originates from, and is embraced often and primarily by, evangelical Christians. In recent times, the idea of "awakenings" in United States history has been put forth by conservative American evangelicals.
See also
• Calvinism portal
• Evangelical Christianity portal
• Methodism portal
• Religion portal
Further reading
• Butler, Jon (1982). "Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction". Journal of American History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 69 (2): 305–325. doi:10.2307/1893821. ISSN 0021-8723. JSTOR 1893821. S2CID 59494141.
• ——— (1990). Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press (published 1992). ISBN 978-0-674-05601-5.