The Great Awakening

By Bruce P. Stark

The Great Awakening, the most significant religious revival in American history, was launched in October 1740 by Anglican priest George Whitefield (1714-1770), the most powerful preacher of his day. The Awakening did not, however, take place in a religious vacuum. Many ministers had for decades been aware of a decline in spirituality in New England and had long prayed for a revival of religion. As the minister and historian Benjamin Trumbull (1735-1820) put it:

As the good people who planted the country died...there was a sensible decline, as to the life and power of godliness.... The third and fourth generations became still more generally inattentive to their spiritual concerns, and manifested a greater declension from the purity and zeal of their ancestors.

George Whitefield was followed by a host of other itinerants, including Presbyterian Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764), James Davenport (c. 1716-1757), and such Connecticut revivalists as Eleazar Wheelock (l711 -1779), Jonathan Parsons (1705-1776), and Benjamin Pomeroy (1704-1784). The revival affected young, old, rich, and poor in all parts of the colony.  Nevertheless, support for the Awakening was strongest in eastern Connecticut, a region plagued by such problems associated with rapid growth as disputes over land titles, economic uncertainties, and a concern for an adequate medium of exchange. It is likely that ten percent of the population of Connecticut, some 9,000 people, made a profession of faith and joined churches between 1740 and 1743. The revival eventually ebbed because emotional and religious intensities cannot long be maintained and because the Awakening was discredited by its strongest supporters. James Davenport, for example, the most notorious of all revivalists, publicly denounced fellow ministers as unconverted blind guides and wolves in sheep's clothing. His excesses culminated with the celebrated burning of religious tracts in a huge New London bonfire in March 1743.

The Great Awakening lasted barely three years, but its political and religious consequences shaped Connecticut life for decades. The established Congregational Church became split between supporters of the revival, called New Lights, and opponents, designated Old Lights. Ardent revivalists who rejected the Saybrook platform and the Half-Way Covenant and believed that the established church's standards for admission were too low, gravitated to the Separatist and Baptist churches, while those who were horrified by the excesses of the revival and the disputes tearing Congregationalists apart drifted into the sober and conservative Church of England. New Light opposition to anti-revival legislation passed by Old Lights who dominated the General Assembly had the effect of politicizing a religious dispute. New Lights, therefore, began a struggle to expel their religious and political opponents from office, a struggle that would not be resolved until the Stamp Act election of 1766.

For Further Reading

Bushman, Richard L. From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967. See chapter 12.

Gaustad, Edwin Scott. The Great Awakening in New England. New York, 1957.

* Entry under revision.