The Great Awakening free essay sample

During a time when spiritual feelings where non-existing, the American people where searching for something to bring back the spiritual ness of Christianity. This was the start of the Great Awakenings. These big revivals had a large and lasting affect on American society. They introduced changes in social and religious practices. The first Great Awakening started in the 1730’s and ended in the 1740’s. It brought with it a new spirit of religious fervor to the colonies. The revival appealed mostly to women and sons of the third and fourth generation because the revival emphasized the potential of every person to be able to start anew, no matter their past, with their relationship with God. People associated this with the ability to break away from their family or community and start a new life. The Great Awakening also led to the division of many existing congregations and to the founding of new ones. Edwards was dismissed by his parishioners in 1749 and he later died on a mission with Indians. The great awakening also Instilled religious toleration In the colonies. One of the major results of the Great Awakening was it unified most of the Americans in a understanding of the Christian faith and life. Education also was a major result of the Awakening. The colleges of , Brown, , and Dartmouth were all founded because of the Awakening. It also led most evangelicals to denounce slavery as sinful. With the end of the Great Awakening drawing near, Americans were already rejecting both the radical views as well as Armenian ones.Europe was going through another change of their own as well, the Enlightenment. This like the Great Awakening had a keen affect on colonists since many of its great leaders were greatly influenced by English thought. It was a movement marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition. Science started appealing to more people as well as a representative government in place of a monarchy. Isaac Newton discovery of the works of gravity and the other laws of motion propelled the Enlightenment. AsAmericans developed a new mode of thought that impersonal laws governed all matter the so called age of reason came about. New religious views then came out of this such as Deism. Ben Franklin, an enlightenment thinker and deist, believed in the ideal of humane rationality. He Founded the American Philosophical Society, so that he and other men could discuss morals, politics, and natural philosophy. The Enlightenment could be considered a huge advances in science at the time, because of breakthroughs in electricity by Benjamin Franklin.