Democracy
The First Great Awakening democratized religion by redressing the balance of power between the minister and the congregation. Rather than listening demurely to preachers, people groaned and roared in enthusiastic emotion; new divinity schools opened to challenge the hegemony of Yale and Harvard; personal revelation became more important than formal education for preachers. Such concepts and habits formed a necessary foundation for the American Revolution.
Read more about this topic: George Whitefield
Famous quotes containing the word democracy:
“Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve.”
—Maureen Dowd, U.S. journalist. The New York Times, “Giant Puppet Show,” (September 10, 1995)
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)
“We need not fear any isms if our democracy is achieving the ends for which it was established ...”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)