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Keyword: Great Awakening
Expression:

The widespread religious revival that began with the Dutch Reformed Churches in New Jersey in 1726, spread to Presbyterians and Congregationalists for the next ten years, and reaching its highest point in New England in the 1740’s has numerous teaching points that should be emphasized. These include:

1. The examination of the effects of the real Holy Spirit movement led by the preaching of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield with an eye toward analyzing the excessive emotionalisms, body agitations, visions, trances, and other odd manifestations that were part of the revival movement. This teaching would discourage the need for seeing the inward grace of a saved Christian and remind students that the Great Awakening was supernaturally stirring to believers in a spiritually supernatural way; but they were taken to attention seeking heights by profiteering itinerants. This uncontrolled exuberance was not revealing of the Lord’s expectations for true pattern of future worship expectations and requirements. That both Edwards and Whitefield also discouraged the excessive emotionalism during the revivals shows God’s desires to focus on the message and not on the feeling or the look.

2. There are historical and biblical patterns established with Great Awakenings. Usually, spiritual revivals on grand scales precede spiritual apathy and exceedingly deviant sin and relaxation of morals with the religious leaders unable to change the direction their church is moving. It seems that God prepares and strengthens his church for future tribulations and trials, and increases those following His will and ways through the advent of special Holy Spirit efforts that awaken the righteous cause and will in mankind. Modern day cries out for such redemption, renewal, and restoration, and Christians should be praying daily for such a supernatural event to occur in their time and place.

3. The United States is still benefitting from the Great Awakening. The revival was not only changing to the Church and personal faith; it contributed to the making of America. Some scholars have declared the arrival of the Fourth Great Awakening that began in the 1960’s with a return to sensuous religion, experiential content to the Bible and a focus upon personal sin, leading through the 1990’s moral majority movement, with the attack on pro-life and pro-family. However, when the spiritual experiences of the First Great Awakening are compared, it is apparent that The Fourth Great Awakening has not yet occurred, but may well be showing developments that will one day quench the wickedness and apathy present in our world today.

Bibliography

Carpenter, John B. "The Fourth Great Awakening or Apostasy: Is American Evangelicalism Cycling Upwards or Spiraling Downwards?" Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44, no. 4 (2001).

Christian History Magazine - Issue 23: Spiritual Awakenings in North America. Worcester, PA: Christian History Institute, 1989.

Cross, F.L. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 3rd ed. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Rogers, Mark. "Review of the Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America by Thomas S. Kidd." Trinity Journal 30, (2009).

Thornbury, John F. "Another Look at the First Great Awakening." Reformation and Revival 4, no. 3 (1995).

References

[1] F.L. Cross, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 705.

[2] Mark Rogers, "Review of the Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America by Thomas S. Kidd," Trinity Journal 30, (2009): 159.

[3] Cross, 705.

[4] Christian History Magazine - Issue 23: Spiritual Awakenings in North America,  (Worcester, PA: Christian History Institute, 1989).

[5] John F. Thornbury, "Another Look at the First Great Awakening," Reformation and Revival 4, no. 3 (1995): 17.

[6] John B. Carpenter, "The Fourth Great Awakening or Apostasy: Is American Evangelicalism Cycling Upwards or Spiraling Downwards?," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44, no. 4 (2001): 649.

Voice: Kathy L. McFarland
Circumstance: Three important teaching points concerning the Great Awakening
Citation: McFarland, Kathy L. 2013 CHHI 694-B01 LUO, DB3. March 2013.
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The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America