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3. INDEPENDENCE – AND THE NEW REPUBLIC

THE AMERICAN "GREAT AWAKENING" OF THE MID-1700s

CONTENTS

Freylinghuysen, Tennent and Edwards

George Whitefield

Opposition to the "style" of this Awakening

But there was great Divine Purpose in this strange event

The textual material on this webpage is drawn directly from my work
        America's Story – A Spiritual Journey © 2021, pages 72-75.
FREYLINGHUYSEN, TENNENT AND EDWARDS

By the early years of the 1700s pastors were complaining about their empty churches, Christians entering church doors only to participate in the annual Christmas and Easter celebrations – or even just weddings and funerals when absolutely necessary.

Then without warning, a great wind of spiritual enthusiasm swept through the colonies (also parts of England and continental Europe) in the 1730s and 1740s – which brought forward a number of preachers (such as Theodorus Freylinghuysen, Gilbert Tennent, Jonathan Edwards, and George Whitefield) in support of this new development.

Freylinghuysen, Tennent and Edwards.  This spiritual "awakening" actually started rather quietly here and there in the colonies, for instance in the Dutch-cultured Raritan Valley region (New Jersey) where, beginning in the 1720s, Dutch Reformed pastor Freylinghuysen preached a form of pietism (similar to the Puritans), calling on his people to examine their lives deeply, and take careful note of where their lives stood in relationship with God in Jesus Christ.  In doing so, he was able to reach deeply into the hearts of what soon became a growing congregation, fanning the flames of Christian revival – which others began to take note of.

One of those was the young Presbyterian minister, Gilbert Tennent, pastoring a church in nearby New Brunswick.  Tennent picked up Freylinghuysen's message (the two often preached in each other's pulpits), and Tennent began to have his own impact in bringing a growing number of people to Christ.  Something was clearly stirring here.

That same spirit was to reach also into New England, where a young and very scholarly Jonathan Edwards, in taking over his father's pastorate in Northampton (Massachusetts) in 1729, began to take a similar interest in awakening his congregation to the need to look deeply into their lives and see where sin had blinded them and cut them off from God's powerful grace.  Calmly, but steadily, he got this message across to his congregation, until by the winter of 1734-1735 it was quite obvious that his message was stirring deeply the hearts of a growing congregation.  Clearly a spiritual awakening was underway in Northampton.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD

Then the dynamic seemed to begin to stall somewhat, only to get underway again with the arrival of George Whitefield to America at the end of the 1730s.  Whitefield would preach a message of spiritual revival which would reach deeply into the hearts of Americans, from Georgia in the South all the way north to Maine.

When Whitefield was a student at Oxford University, he befriended Charles Wesley, who in 1733 invited him to become involved in his brother John's Holy Club ... the "Methodists," as they were contemptuously called by fellow students – because of their efforts to discipline themselves to a life of holiness.  But try as Whitefield might, he just could not achieve the holiness he craved, and finally crashed spiritually, only then to be filled by a strange new spirit, which he recognized came solely from the grace of God, not from Whitefield's own efforts to be holy.  This discovery would stand at the basis of everything Whitefield was to teach and preach from that point on.

Finally ordained to pastor the area of Bristol (England) in 1736, he found that his message of immediate salvation through simple repentance before God was touching the hearts of the British working classes, the way the doctrinal and ritualized pattern of Church of England worship did not.  Soon, Whitefield had a huge revival ministry going on in England, even in its fields and streets.

But in 1738 he felt called to go to the new colony of Georgia, where, once there, he took a great interest in building an orphanage (his Bethesda Orphanage).  Thus after a short stay in Georgia, he returned to England to raise funds for his orphanage project.   To raise that money (and bring his listeners to salvation at the same time), he took his preaching wherever he could, to churches, or, as back in England, to the streets and fields if necessary.  This very unorthodox method of preaching to the masses gained him a great deal of attention, both positive and negative.  Thousands would come out to hear his preaching, falling into tears of repentance and calling for God to retake the lead in their lives.

Now, Whitefield undertook to cover the broader reach of the colonies, taking himself to Pennsylvania with the intention of founding an orphanage there in partnership with the Moravians (a large religious group in the rural region north and west of Philadelphia, who founded towns of their own named Bethlehem and Nazareth!).  On his way there, he found himself preaching every step of the way – often several sermons a day!  Then Tennent and Edwards invited Whitefield to New Jersey and Massachusetts to preach.   And thus it was that Whitefield's open-air revival method reached north.[1]

Most surprisingly, the greatest American sage of the time, Ben Franklin, found himself warmed at least intellectually by this massive religious revival of Whitefield's.  In fact, he personally saw to the publishing of forty or more of Whitefield's sermons on the front page of his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette.  Indeed, Franklin and Whitefield formed a friendship that lasted the entire span of Whitefield's remaining life (he died in America on a preaching tour in 1770).

[1]But at the same time Whitefield never lost interest in orphanage development, continuing to travel back and forth between England and America to promote the development of orphanages (in Georgia and Pennsylvania principally).

OPPOSITION TO THE "STYLE" OF THIS AWAKENING

Once again, there were Christians who found all this open-air activity rather un-Christian – because it did not occur in churches with people properly arranged in their pews in front of real pulpits.  Also, the idea that everyone should be called to repentance for their sins seemed scandalous for those "proper" Christians who were quite certain that they had nothing serious to repent of.  Such repentance was to be directed only to wastrels and scoundrels, not proper Christians.  Also there simply was a certain amount of bitter jealousy on the part of frustrated pastors who watched the huge crowds gather in the fields – when they still faced somewhat empty pews on a Sunday morning.  It just wasn't right.  Eventually even church leaders, or the "Old Light" group began to challenge the theological correctness of the so-called "New Light" revivalists – causing splits to occur within the traditional denominations, especially the Congregationalists of New England and the Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies.

BUT THERE WAS GREAT DIVINE PURPOSE IN THIS STRANGE EVENT

Yet, with this Great Awakening, God was being faithful to keep his side of the Covenant with America in bringing on this very spirit.  And Americans were responding, by awakening to their own responsibilities taken on in this covenant with God, responsibilities that would require all the spiritual empowerment that God – and God alone – could, and would, provide.[2]

God was strengthening the colonists as "Americans," citizens of a budding nation in which its members were well aware of their connectivity with him, through such events as these revivals, ones which reached from the north to the south of Colonial America.  This larger sense of social unity and purpose defined them once again as a unique people "called" to take up the old Covenant – to be a Light to the Nations in the way they went at life as born-again Christians.

And also they would need this new spirit, this Divine empowerment, to hold their ground against what the King of England would one day soon be throwing at them to get them back under his total authority as their King.  But as a renewed Christian society, they knew fervently that they had "no king but Jesus."  They would not be broken by the rising political ambitions of a far-away English king.

[2]Thus it was that by the later 1700s, God would frequently be identified as "Providence", or "The Provider," as in "The One Who Provides."  They were well aware of how God's provisions worked so well for them.



Go on to the next section:  The War to Confirm American Independence

  Miles H. Hodges