The Great Awakening in New England

by Edwin S. Gaustad

Book by Gaustad, Edwin

Genres: History

Paperback

First published June 1, 1965

About the author

A leading scholar of American religious history, Edwin Scott Gaustad was Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. He earned his B.A. in history from Baylor University (1947), and his M.A. (1948) and Ph.D. (1951) in History of Religions from Brown University.

Reviews

[Everett F. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edwin Gaustad's "The Great Awakening in New England" is an interesting introductory overview history of the Great Awakening as it was in New England in the early part of the eighteenth century. Through the eyes of prominent players like George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Richard Buell, Charles Chauncy, and several others, Gaustad seeks to help readers (and himself) understand the factors that caused the Awakening to happen and why it did. The author argues that the Great Awakening was the result of the effects of the Half-Way Covenant of the previous century as the American descendants of the original English settlers began to become lax in their religious commitments. This laxity (which was apparent as early as a generation or two after initial settlement) began to concern many preachers, who worried that unconverted non-Christians were vastly outnumbering actual Christians within their congregations. Adding to that concern was the number of seemingly unconverted parents presenting children for baptism and themselves for communion, which these pastors felt was unworthy. For this reason, after much debate, a compromise was reached called the Half-Way Covenant, where the children of unconverted church members (who were themselves admitted in a second class of membership) could be admitted to the life of the church in some sense. However, because full church membership was required for things like voting, this placed the New England leadership in a strong predicament, especially as more and more unconverted persons began requesting admittance to baptism (for their children) and communion. This large proportion of unconverted "half-members" in the minds of many meant that church had become a mere formal thing of cultural deadness. However, after a series of spiritual revivals in places like Northampton in the 1730s and early forties, the beginnings of what is now called the Great Awakening came to be seen. As the Awakening progressed, the New England world divided into various factions of Old and New Lights, those opposed and supported to the revivals. In time, these revivals would spread beyond New England, and would only grow in intensity with the electrifying evangelistic crusades of Anglican preacher George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers—who would change the face of faith in America and the world forever. Along with the Whitefield-Wesley team, others, including Gilbert Tennant, James Davenport, and Samuel Dickinson made converts around the land, adding new members to the heretofore minuscule Baptists and the increasingly dominant Presbyterians of the middle colonies, as well as to the new sect called Methodists—started by the Wesleys themselves and originally an Anglican renewal movement. The effects of the revivals on New England society were profound, with the established Congregational and Baptist factions opposed to the revival or Old Lights (eg. Rev. Jeremiah Condy of Boston's First Baptist Church and Dr. Charles Chauncy of the prominent First Congregational Church of the same city) coming to embrace the germ of today's liberal or Unitarian theology that would eventually come to deny such things as the trinity, the atonement (and not just the Calvinistic view, either), the exclusivity of the gospel, and even the Bible as the infallible, inerrant word of God. Why was this so, and why did New England established ministers (be they Rhode Island Baptists or Massachusetts or Connecticut Congregationalists) come to deny or outright reject key tenants of the Christian faith? Gaustad pins the blame on the rise of Enlightenment thinking and its teachings on the schools—Harvard and Yale particularly. Most elite Baptist and Congregational preachers had been trained at either school (alongside the occasional Presbyterians from the middle lands) for more than a century by now, and with an increase of the "new knowledge" from Europe, Harvard and Yale slowly churned out more and more liberals. This alarmed many New Lights, some of whom were members of Separate congregations of either a Baptist, Congregationalist, or (sometimes) Presbyterian persuasion. These groups responded to the threat of liberal theology by founding their own schools, the first among them being Princeton in 1746 by a group of Separate Presbyterians influenced by the teachings of Evangelist Gilbert Tennant. Separate Baptists would found Brown in the 1760s, and several more schools would be founded in time to train orthodox ministers outside of the established framework. Save Brown and Princeton, the majority of these "bush colleges" founded by itinerant Separates like the Baptist Shubal Stearns or others no longer exist; many folded within a few years of their founding. The rise of Methodism (which itself could be seen as a part of the Separate movement all alone) and Separatism amongst the established denominations sowed the seeds (argues Gaustad) for the modern mainline-evangelical divide seen in Christianity today. Though in time the Separate movement died out in New England as Separate congregations of whatever character dissolved and returned to their former homes, its embers would, through the work of men like Stearns, make a lasting impact on the South still felt today. Indeed, it can be said that the Great Awakening is a large reason why New England is liberal and the South conservative today, and likely helps to explain the later divisions over theology and slavery present in the denominations a century later.

The book does well being an introductory survey, and has a good bibliography, too. One of the chapters could have been made a bit shorter with lots of cutting, as I found that one rather a long read. Other than that, well done in this work!