Great Awakening - First Great Awakening

First Great Awakening

The First Great Awakening began in the 1720s and lasted to about 1730's. Ministers from various evangelical Protestant denominations supported the Great Awakening. Additionally, pastoral styles began to change. In the late colonial period, most pastors read their sermons, which were theologically dense and advanced a particular theological argument or interpretation. The leaders of the Great Awakening, such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, had little interest in merely engaging parishioners' intellects; rather, they sought a strong kings and experiential evidence of saving grace.

Joseph Tracy, the minister, historian, and preacher who gave this religious phenomenon its name in his influential 1842 book The Great Awakening, saw the First Great Awakening as a precursor to the American Revolution. The evangelical movement of the 1740s played a key role in the development of democratic thought, as well as the belief of the free press and the belief that information should be shared and completely unbiased and uncontrolled. These concepts ushered in the period of the American Revolution. This helped create a demand for religious freedom. Although the Great Awakening represented the first time African Americans embraced Christianity in large numbers, Anglican missionaries had long sought to convert blacks, again with the printed as well as the spoken word.