Great Awakening Essay
Bridgette Davis
Grand Canyon University: HTH379 (379-0101) History of Christianity
November 16, 2014

I will discuss the significance of the Great Awakening (Revelation 14:6) and how it impacted the church. This was the first religious revival in the British American colonies, which spread from Europe to England. This was an important evangelical and revitalization lasting nearly 30 years.
From 1720 to 1740 British American colonies encounters religious revival movement known as The Great Awakening Religious revival (Lambert 2009). The Quietism and Pietism that spread through Europe was a movement that was preached by John Wesley. The movement had a significant influence to the philosophy of Calvin.
The church had an enormous decline in membership and wanted to get people to come to church to praise God. The initial religion for the country was the Church of English, in 1688. Some religions were suppressed. In fact, people were uninterested in church. God was not worshipped from the heart. Members were not attending church; while years were passing the (Great Awakening) congregation fell-off.
Nothing like the, the largest Puritan religiousness at the beginning of the 1700s, the revivals that accompanied the Great Awakening allowing those that believed expressing themselves emotionally and openly feeling the need to have an intimate with God. In the 1739-1740 a lot of noise in the colonies was done by the tour of one of the founders of Methodism, George Whitfield, who also supported the theology of Calvin. Bringing those that was listening to hear the sermons preached. There were churches that did not want to provide accommodations for the people wanting to hear him, so Whitfield had to preach outdoors. For example Edwards, gave a warning opposing being tempted of agnosticism (Kidd 2007).
Meanwhile people slacked religiously, several concerned about Deity, the ideology God created the earth but remains indifferent towards it and agnosticism were spreading. In addition to all of this, there was a wave of disease outbreaks. Thousands were dying of cholera, caused by polluted water and insanitation. Some people believed this was a sign of God’s wrath because of the loss of religious interest. Another cause of the Great Awakening was the major impact of the Enlightenment Age in urban areas. Because people were discontented (particularly the youth) with lackluster Anglican and Congregational teaching methods, people veered away from religion. In the Great Awakening, people divided into the “old” believers and the “new” converts who joined after the revivals. In England, they were known as the “Old Lights” and “New Lights.” The “Old Lights” stressed scholarly aspects of the Bible and religion while the “New Lights” preached raw emotion. George Whitefield a great leader of the movement, known as the Anglican minister from England, was so popular that it is estimated that he preached to over 20% of the colonial population personally. His basic teachings included freewill and personal accountability, the role of women in a family’s salvation, and all God’s people are important and have souls to save. Another leader Jonathan Edwards was preaching his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” John Wesley, founder of the United Methodist Church, played a vital role in the Great Awakening. After the Great Awakening, the churches unification led to lasting consequences. First, the membership of the churched increased, specifically the earlier “unchurched.” New denominations were established, particularly Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist. These began to attract new converts and would soon replace the older Anglicans, Puritans, and Quakers. Denominationalism, the division of one religion in separate groups, was more