Blog 4 and 5: The Great Awakening

Before reading Thomas S. Kidd’s book The Great Awakening: the Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America I had only heard of the Great Awakening enough to know that it was some type of religious revival period or something. However, after reading some of the chapters in Kidd’s book I now feel as though there was much more to this period of time. After some reading and searching on the internet I have found more information on both the Great Awakening. Apparently, in the mid-eighteenth century, Americans experienced an outbreak of religious revivals that changed colonial society. The Great Awakening was characterized by widespread revivals led by evangelical Protestant ministers, a sharp increase of interest in religion, a profound sense of conviction and redemption on the part of those affected a jump in evangelical church membership, and the formation of new religious movements and denominations. I believe that Thomas Kidd’s book provides a much more complete view of these revivals, now known as the Great Awakening, and their dramatic effects on American culture. Historian Thomas S. Kidd tells the interesting story of early American evangelical Christianity through the lives of influential figures like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield as well as many other previously unknown people. In fact, according to the textbook and the two primary sources, George Whitefield had a very large role in the beginning of the Great Awakening.

After reading the two primary sources George Whitefield Comes to Middletown and the Grand Itinerant along with the Colonial Religion and the Great Awakening section in the textbook, I feel as though all three are telling similar stories. The textbook’s accounts of how the Great Awakening was influenced by George Whitefield and others are very accurate when compared to the primary sources. I believe that the textbook rendition of the Great Awakening gives an accurate account that coincides well with the short primary sources, and that the only disconnect between the primary and secondary sources comes from the fact that the primary sources only speak of George Whitefield, whereas the textbook gives a much more thorough account of the Great Awakening.

“One question readers may ask at the outset is why the Great Awakening happened” (xvii). This question is a difficult one to answer because there was no single formal start to the movement now known as the Great Awakening. As far as I can tell, the Great Awakening started when the New England colonies began having a multitude of “free thinkers”. Because of the education that these people received they were able to start questioning England and soon they began revolting. This explanation is as close as I can get to explaining how or why the Great Awakening took place.