Reconstruction of American Religion The Great Awakening

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Reconstruction of American Religion(The Great
Awakening)

• By Claire Cummings
• Period 4
• AP US History

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The Great Awakening

• This was a wave of religious revivals.
• Religion and the Great Awakening were the main
  cause for colonists turning against one another.
• Church membership began declining.

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The Halfway Covenant

• Originally, church members who had been baptized
  as infants but who couldnt give evidence of
  receiving Gods grace could not become full
  members of the church.
• The Halfway Covenant said that church members who
  lived upright lives but had not experienced Gods
  grace could become halfway members.

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Halfway vs Full Church Members

• The halfway church members could not take part in
  communion or vote on church matters.
• The difference between halfway and full church
  members faded as time went on.
• Even with the halfway covenant memberships still
  declined in the church.

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Important Figures

• Reverend Theodore Frelinghuysen he stressed
  piety over good works. He caused tons of people
  to awaken. He came from Holland in 1719.
• Reverend Gilbert Tennent he was a member of the
  Presbyterian Church and caused the revivals to
  spread throughout Conneticut.
• Reverend Jonathon Edwards (1734-1735) he
  started the revival in North Hampton,
  Massachusetts.

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George Whitefield

• He was an English Evangelist who in 1739 lead a
  FLOOD of revivals in Philadelphia which then
  spread.
• He traveled through New Jersey, New York, and New
  England speaking to very large groups of people.
• Whitefield and other revivalist preachers were
  distinctly Calvinists and stressed the distance
  between man and God.

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Effect of the Awakening

• Led to the founding of new colleges (Brown,
  Princeton, Dartmouth, Rutgers, etc.)
• Revivalists founded educational institutions to
  train American-born ministers who could carry on
  their religious traditions.
• The revivals redrew the map of American Religion.

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Old Lights vs New Lights

• Old Lights old conservatives who found
  revivalists offensive and dangerous. They didnt
  let revivalists preach in their churches.
• New Lights the revivalists. To lash back at the
  old conservatives, the revivalists condemded them
  as an uncovented ministry.

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The Presbyterian Church

• It split into two synods. This added to religious
  diversity.
• The conservatives went to the Anglican Church
  which offered order and stability.
• Dissenters distributed themselves among hundreds
  of religious congregations (many of which became
  Baptists).

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Effects of the Great Awakening

• All this brought pressure on the established
  churches (churches that provisional governments
  endorsed and supported).
• Baptists opposed any interference whatsoever by
  civil government in peoples religious beliefs
  and practices.
• All this led to acceptance of religious
  differences.