| The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740-1745 Contributor(s): Bushman, Richard L. (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0807842605 ISBN-13: 9780807842607 Publisher: Omohundro Institute and Unc Press OUR PRICE: $40.38 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 1989 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Christianity - General - Religion | History |
| Dewey: 209.73 |
| LCCN: 74108821 |
| Series: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American Histo |
| Physical Information: 0.55" H x 6.01" W x 8.98" (0.68 lbs) 192 pages |
| Themes: - Religious Orientation - Christian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Most twentieth-century Americans fail to appreciate the power of Christian conversion that characterized the eighteenth-century revivals, especially the Great Awakening of the 1740s. The common disdain in this secular age for impassioned religious emotion and language is merely symptomatic of the shift in values that has shunted revivals to the sidelines. The very magnitude of the previous revivals is one indication of their importance. Between 1740 and 1745 literally thousands were converted. From New England to the southern colonies, people of all ages and all ranks of society underwent the New Birth. Virtually every New England congregation was touched. It is safe to say that most of the colonists in the 1740s, if not converted themselves, knew someone who was, or at least heard revival preaching. The Awakening was a critical event in the intellectual and ecclesiastical life of the colonies. The colonists' view of the world placed much importance on conversion. Particularly, Calvinist theology viewed the bestowal of divine grace as the most crucial occurrence in human life. Besides assuring admission to God's presence in the hereafter, divine grace prepared a person for a fullness of life on earth. In the 1740s the colonists, in overwhelming numbers, laid claim to the divine power which their theology offered them. Many experienced the moral transformatoin as promised. In the Awakening the clergy's pleas of half a century came to dramatic fulfillment. Not everyone agreed that God was working in the Awakening. Many believed preachers to be demagogues, stirring up animal spirits. The revival was looked on as an emotional orgy that needlessly disturbed the churches and frustrated the true work of God. But from 1740 to 1745 no other subject received more attention in books and pamphlets. Through the stirring rhetoric of the sermons, theological treatises, and correspondence presented in this collection, readers can vicariously participate in the ecstasy as well as in the rage generated by America's first national revival. |
Contributor Bio(s): Bushman, Richard L.: - Richard L. Bushman is Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia University and author of the award-winning From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 and King and People in Provincial Massachusetts. |