scholarly journals The Theological Polemics of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield: Differences in Their Understanding of the "Great Awakening" of the 1740s in New England

2020 ◽  
pp. 162-171
Author(s):  
Irina Yur'evna Khruleva
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
First Great Awakening ◽  
British America ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Ideological Space ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
George Whitefield ◽  
First Time

The first "Great Awakening" took hold of all British colonies in North America in the 1730s-1750s and developed contemporaneously with the Enlightenment movement, which had a significant impact on all aspects of life in the colonies, influencing religion, politics and ideology. The inhabitants of the colonies, professing different religious views, for the first time experienced a general spiritual upsurge. The colonies had never seen anything like the Great Awakening in scale and degree of influence on society. This was the first movement in American history that was truly intercolonial in nature, contributing to the formation of a single religious and partially ideological space in British America. The beginning of the Great Awakening in British America was instigated by both the colonial traditions of religious renewal (the so-called "revivals") and new ideas coming from Europe, hence this religious movement cannot be understood without considering its European roots nor not taking into account its transatlantic nature. The development of pietism in Holland and Germany and the unfolding of Methodism on the British Isles greatly influenced Protestant theology on both sides of the Atlantic. This article explores the differences in understanding the nature of the Great Awakening by its two leaders - J. Edwards and J. Whitefield.

Origins of the Eighteenth-Century Evangelical Revival: England and New England Compared

1987 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
First Great Awakening ◽  
Revival Movements ◽  
British Colonies

Current interpretations of North America's first Great Awakening present a paradox. Historians commonly interpret the Great Awakening as part of the revival of evangelical piety that affected widely scattered elements of the Protestant world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; however, studies of the Great Awakening have almost exclusively focused on the particular local circumstances in which the revival movements developed. Since historians of the Great Awakening have emphasized the peculiar circumstances of each of the regional manifestations, the Revival often appears in their writings to have been composed of several distinct movements separated in time, character, and cause and united only by superficial similarities. In contrast, to say that the local revival movements, despite their distinctive characteristics, were manifestations of a single larger movement is to imply that they shared the same general causes. If we suppose that the Great Awakening was part of the Evangelical Revival, our attempts to explain its origins should take into account those general causes.Two recent reconsiderations of the eighteenth-century revival movements in their broader context come to opposite conclusions. Jon Butler underscores the span of time over which the revivals occurred across the British colonies, their heterogeneous character from one region to the next, and the differences in cultural contexts in which they appeared. He concludes that “the prerevolutionary revivals should be understood primarily as regional events.” Although he sees the eighteenth-century American revivals as part of the long-term evangelical and pietistic reform movement in Western society, he denies any common, single, overwhelmingly important cause.

“The power of religion greatly displayed”

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Eric C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
The South ◽  
Personal Story ◽  
Particular Baptist ◽  
The Common ◽  
Publicly Supported ◽  
Dynamic Series ◽  
George Whitefield

Oliver Hart experienced evangelical conversion at the peak of a dynamic series of revivals known as the Great Awakening. His childhood pastor, Jenkin Jones, publicly supported the evangelist George Whitefield and did all that he could to promote revivalism in Hart’s Particular Baptist congregation. Along with Hart’s personal story, this chapter recounts the Baptist reception of the Great Awakening throughout colonial America, including in New England and in the South. It corrects the common misperception that most Particular Baptists stood aloof from the Great Awakening, and introduces the emergence of the Separate Baptist movement.

Jonathan Edward's Most Popular Work: “The Life of David Brainerd” and Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Culture

1985 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Conforti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Student Leaders ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
New Haven ◽  
College Administration ◽  
First Great Awakening ◽  
Early American ◽  
Evangelical Culture ◽  
Popular Work

When students of early American religion remember David Brainerd, if they remember him at all, it is usually in the context of the First Great Awakening. Born in Haddam, Connecticut in 1718, Brainerd enrolled at Yale in 1739, shortly after he had experienced conversion. By his sophomore year, when New Haven was aflame with the religious fervor that spread like a brush fire through New England, Brainerd was recognized as one of the “New Light” student leaders at Yale. For this reason, he was among the first undergraduates to be disciplined by the college administration as part of an effort to contain religious enthusiasm. Rector Thomas Clap expelled Brainerd in 1742 for remarking that tutor Chauncy Whittelsey had no more grace than a chair and for attending a meeting of Separate Congregationalists in defiance of college rules.

Delineating Lake Types of the Jurassic East Berlin Formation, Hartford Basin, Newark Supergroup

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander A. Conti ◽  
◽  
Elizabeth H. Gierlowski-Kordesch
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Tholeiitic Basalt ◽  
Geochemical Evolution ◽  
Lake Basin ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
Definitive Evidence ◽  
Lacustrine Facies ◽  
Lake Deposits ◽  
First Time ◽  
Biomarker Data

The Mesozoic Hartford Basin, a fault-bounded half-graben in New England, is composed of four sedimentologic units displaying lacustrine, playa, and alluvial conditions separated by three tholeiitic basalt flows. Limited outcrop, however, has restricted analyses across the basin. The Jurassic East Berlin Formation, in particular, crops out only in the southern and northern extents of the basin, exposing the upper 100-118-m of deposits. As a result, a new core analysis across a 600-m-transect of East Berlin rocks has been completed in the central region of the basin, exposing the entire 195-m thickness of the formation for the first time. Cores expose eight 3-m-thick lacustrine mudrock units, the upper six of which are correlative to lake deposits identified in the southern and northern extents of the basin. Additionally, thin chicken-wire evaporites demarcate the lowermost, previously unexposed, lacustrine unit, 7-m beneath a 15-cm-thick tufa horizon. Thin playa deposits and thick sheetflood and Vertisol packages separate these lake sequences over 5-30-m of vertical distance.To supplement these sedimentologic data, and better understand lake geochemistry of the basin during East Berlin time, new biomarker analyses have been applied to each of the eight lacustrine mudrock units for the first time. Biomarker data are useful for determining the lake-basin type, a paleolake classification system derived by Bohacs, Carroll, and others to describe predictable physical and geochemical evolution within rift basins from fluvial facies to over-filled, balance-filled, and under-filled lacustrine facies; subsequently, balance-filled lacustrine facies grade to a terminal fluvial facies during changes in accommodation space through time. While fluvial facies envelope lake deposits within the Hartford Basin, identifying the lake types within the East Berlin has been problematic because of limited exposures. These new sedimentologic and biomarker analyses, however, suggest balance-filled lacustrine conditions at the base of the East Berlin that grade into under-filled conditions upsection. These new biomarker data finally provide definitive evidence for changing lake types during East Berlin time.

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