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124 PERIOD 2 Colonial America amid Global Change: 1607–1754

Enlightenment thinkers believed in a Christian God, they rejected the revelations and
rituals that defined traditional church practices and challenged the claims of many
These sample pages are distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
ministers that God was directly engaged in the daily workings of the world.
There were, however, opposing forces. Many Protestant ministers, possibly afraid
that material concerns increasingly overshadowed spiritual devotion or that growing
religious diversity was undermining the power of the church, lamented the state of faith
Copyright (c) 2024 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
in eighteenth-century America. Ministers eager to address this crisis of faith — known
New Light clergy as New Light clergy — worked together to reenergize the faithful and were initially
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Colonial religious leaders welcomed, or at least tolerated, by more traditional Old Light clergy.
who called for religious Some New Lights took inspiration from German Pietist (a Protestant sect) ideas crit-
revivals and emphasized the icizing the power of established churches and urged individuals to follow their hearts
emotional aspects of spiritual rather than their heads in spiritual matters. Pietist ideas influenced John Wesley, the
commitment. The New Lights
were leaders in the First founder of Methodism (an English Protestant denomination) and a professor of the-
Great Awakening. ology at Oxford University, where he taught some of its central ideas to his students,
including George Whitefield. Like the Pietists, Whitefield considered the North Ameri-
Old Light clergy
Colonial religious leaders can colonies a perfect place to restore intensity and emotion to religious worship.
from established churches Ministers in the British North American colonies also questioned the status of reli-
who supported the religious gion, challenging the religiosity of urban churches that maintained class distinctions,
status quo in the early with wealthier members paying high rents to seat their families in the front pews. Farm-
eighteenth century. ers and shopkeepers rented the cheaper pews in the middle of the church, while the
poorest sat on free benches at the very back or in the gallery. One such clergyman was
Jonathan Edwards, a Congregational minister in New England. A brilliant scholar who
studied natural philosophy and science as well as theology, Edwards viewed the natural
world as powerful evidence of God’s design. He came to view the idea that God elected
some individuals for salvation and others for damnation as a source of mystical joy. His
sermons of 1733 to 1735 joined Enlightenment ideas with religious fervor, and they
initiated a revival that reached hundreds of parishioners.
At around the same time, the English clergyman George Whitefield was perfectly
situated to extend the series of revivals in North America that scholars later called the
First Great Awakening First Great Awakening. Gifted with a powerful voice, he understood that the expand-
Series of religious revivals in ing networks of communication and travel — developed to promote commerce — could
colonial America that began also be used to promote religion. Advertising in newspapers and broadsides and travel-
in 1720 and lasted until about ing by ship, coach, and horseback, Whitefield made seven trips to the North American
1750.
colonies beginning in 1738 as part of a fifteen-month preaching tour that reached tens
of thousands of colonists, from Georgia to New England to the Pennsylvania backcoun-
try, and inspired other ministers in the colonies.
Like Edwards, he asked individuals to invest less in material goods and more in spir-
itual devotion. If they admitted their depraved and sinful state and truly repented, God
would hear their prayers. Whitefield’s preaching style was larger than life: He shouted
and raged, and gestured dramatically, drawing huge crowds everywhere he went. He
attracted 20,000 people to individual events, at a time when the entire city of Boston
counted just 17,000 residents.
New Light ministers carried on Whitefield’s work throughout the 1740s, refining
their methods and appeal. Less concerned with what church their followers belonged to
AP EXAM TIP than with their core beliefs, New Lights denounced sophisticated and educated clergy,
®
®
The AP Exam calls for you to used spontaneous speeches and outdoor venues to attract crowds, and invited colonists
understand the social effects from all walks of life to build a common Christian community. Some became traveling
of the First Great Awakening. preachers, preferring to carry their message throughout the colonies than to be limited
Be sure you can detail one to a single church.
cause and one effect of the
Great Awakening on British New Light clergy brought young people to religion by the thousands. In addition,
North American colonial thousands of colonists who were already church members were “born again,” recom-
society. mitting themselves to their faith. Poor women and men who felt little connection to

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