The movie A Great Awakening is in theatres and sparking great interest in the historical story it tells. While primarily focusing on the unlikely partnership between Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield (to be explained below), it also portrays a mighty spiritual movement instrumental to the founding of our nation.
The First Great Awakening (sometimes simply called “The Great Awakening”) is typically dated from 1735 to 1743, though its effects lasted long in the nation it helped to birth.
The awakening began amid a dire spiritual crisis in the colonies. Not one in twenty people claimed to be a Christian. Samuel Blair, a pastor of the day, said religion lay as it were dying and ready to expire its last breath of life.
But Theodore Frelinghuysen, a Dutch Reformed minister who had come to the New World from Holland in 1720, would not give up on his adopted homeland. He began praying fervently for revival to come to the colonies, first with himself and his church, and then with his larger community. Others joined his fledgling prayer movement. The Spirit began to move.
As a Harvard student during the First Great Awakening wrote, “There is a great and glorious work of the Spirit of God among us.”
Two preachers are especially identified with this “work.”
Jonathan Edwards and the wrath of God
The first is Jonathan Edwards (1703–58). Edwards’ father and grandfather were both pastors. After rigorous homeschooling, he entered Yale College at the age of thirteen and later became a tutor there.
Edwards is widely considered the greatest theologian America has produced. He was an intellectual recluse who studied twelve hours a day and read his sermons, face buried in his manuscript. When he experienced the anointing and power of God, however, his sermons took on an electrifying capacity to lead hearers to repentance.
His most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” was printed and widely circulated throughout the area. One passage reads:
The wrath of God burns against [sinners], their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened her mouth under them.
In another, he warned sinners of the urgency of repentance:
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. . . . There is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up.
Edwards’ message awakened many who thought their church affiliation was sufficient for their salvation, transcending denominational boundaries to help spark a transforming spiritual movement.
George Whitefield and the attraction of the gospel
The other great preacher of the First Great Awakening was George Whitefield (1714–70). His influence was so massive that Thomas S. Kidd, one of America’s foremost church historians, titled his biography George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father.
While a student at Oxford, Whitefield became closely associated with John and Charles Wesley. At their invitation, though only twenty-five at the time, he joined them in their missionary work in the colony of Georgia in 1738. He spent the rest of his life preaching throughout the American colonies and itinerantly in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.
In total, he made seven trips to America. He usually woke at 4 a.m. and began to preach at 5 or 6 a.m. In one week, he often preached a dozen times, spending forty or fifty hours in the pulpit.
In the colonies, Whitefield embarked on multiple tours up and down the eastern seaboard. He spoke in churches and outdoors; his voice was so powerful that as many as 30,000 people could hear him. He focused on slaves, Native Americans, and colonists of all social strata. On one occasion, more than 8,000 people in New York City heard him preach (the city’s population was 8,624 at the time).
Whitefield’s theatrical style was unlike anything most in the New World had heard. His preaching electrified his audiences and sparked a massive response to the gospel. Benjamin Franklin noted his appeal and began printing his sermons and promoting his ministry, forming an unlikely partnership that greatly expanded Whitefield’s ministry.
Approximately 80 percent of all American colonists heard him preach at least once. Aside from British royalty, he was perhaps the only living person whose name would have been known by any colonial American.
Whitefield’s farewell sermon on Boston Commons drew twenty-three thousand people, more than Boston’s entire population and probably the largest crowd that had ever gathered in America.
Calvinism and evangelism
One of the significant distinctives of both Edwards and Whitefield was their strong Calvinistic theology, which emphasized the sovereignty of God in all realms of life. This would seem a deterrent to evangelism, but both believed (as did Charles Spurgeon and many other Calvinists afterwards) that it was rather an incentive: if you are in the elect, when you hear the gospel, you will respond. If you do not respond, that is not the fault of the preacher but the non-elect hearer.
In addition, with regard to salvation, Calvinistic theology emphasized that the elect are saved apart from any works on their part. In a day that defined spirituality by church attendance and personal morality, this message was a powerful incentive to repentance and faith, the acknowledgement that we are utterly lost apart from grace and that receiving grace is our only hope.
Multitudes responded: as a result of this transforming movement, as much as 80 percent of the colonial population became identified with a Christian church.
But many did not. The awakening caused a split between those who followed the evangelical message (the “New Lights”) and those who rejected it (the “Old Lights”). Elite ministers in British America were firmly Old Lights and censured the new revivalism as emotionalism and chaos.
On occasion, they were right. In 1743, an influential New Light minister named James Davenport urged his listeners to burn books. The next day, he encouraged them to burn their clothes as a sign of their casting off the sinful trappings of the fallen world. To set an example, he took off his own pants and threw them into the fire, but a woman saved them and tossed them back to Davenport, telling him he had gone too far.
Uniting the colonies and breaking the bonds of England
The evangelical awakening sparked by the Holy Spirit not only led multitudes to Christ—it also changed the trajectory of the nation America was to become.
Recall that Edwards and Whitefield were strong Calvinists, emphasizing the fact that salvation is by grace apart from any works we can do on our own behalf. This insistence not only led many to repent of their sins and accept such grace but also broke down denominational barriers and helped unite the very disparate colonies in a larger spiritual movement.
Prior to the awakening, the colonies were deeply divided by religious affiliation: the majority of New Englanders belonged to congregational churches, while the Middle Colonies were composed of Quakers, Anglicans, Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, the Dutch Reformed, and Congregationalists. Southern colonists were mostly Anglicans, but there were many Baptists, Presbyterians, and Quakers as well.
However, Edwards and especially Whitefield persuaded many that church membership not only does not save, but religion apart from grace can be a detriment to knowing and following God fully. The awakening helped bridge denominational, social, and economic gaps and was crucial in forging a singular American identity.
The awakening served yet another purpose in colonial America: it convinced many that their liberty was a gift from God, not the British crown.
The Church of England was and is under the titular authority of the British monarch. Its leaders serve at his or her pleasure; its members understand themselves to be under the rule of their secular ruler. The Great Awakening, by bringing multitudes into personal relationship with God apart from clerical or secular authority, helped break this bond with England.
From Awakening to Revolution
The children of the Awakening, therefore, became the soldiers of the Revolution.
Thomas Kidd was right: just as George Washington can be seen as America’s secular founding father, George Whitefield was our spiritual founding father. He and those who worked with him to advance the gospel helped create the nation whose 250th anniversary we celebrate this July.
Now it’s our turn to pick up their torch, to continue preaching the same message that so animated their minds and inflamed their hearts.
If America’s past was dependent on the liberty found only in the gospel, how much more is our future?
Denison Forum
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