Great Awakening

The Great Awakening was a series of eighteenth-century Protestant revivals in Britain and North America, marked by itinerant preaching, emotional conversion, and challenges to established church authority.

George Whitefield: An Anglican evangelical preacher whose itinerant sermons helped spark revivals in Britain and North America. His tours linked colonial revivals to Britain and drew large audiences through open-air preaching.
Pietism: A Protestant reform movement emphasizing personal devotion, practical Christianity, and heartfelt faith. Pietist emphases on inward devotion helped shape the religious culture from which revivalism emerged.
Gilbert Tennent: A Presbyterian minister in colonial America known for revival preaching and criticism of unconverted clergy. His attacks on unfit ministers intensified disputes between revival supporters and established church leaders.
New Light (religion): A label for Protestants who supported revivalism and emphasized personal religious experience. The label captured divisions between revival supporters and those wary of emotional religion.
Established church: A church officially recognized and supported by a state or political authority. Revivalists often challenged the authority and privileges of established churches.
Jonathan Edwards: A New England Congregationalist theologian and preacher associated with the revivals of the 1730s and 1740s. His account of the 1734–35 Northampton revival described conversion as an intense experience of divine grace.
Puritanism: A movement within English Protestantism seeking to reform the Church of England according to Reformed theology. New England's Puritan inheritance supplied institutions and expectations that revivalists both used and challenged.
John Wesley: An English cleric and theologian who led the Methodist movement and preached evangelical renewal. His preaching and organizing helped make the British revivals durable beyond individual campaigns.
Old Light (religion): A label for Protestants who opposed or distrusted revivalist methods and defended established religious order. Old Light opposition shows the institutional resistance that revivalists encountered.
Rationalism: A philosophical approach that treats reason as a primary source of knowledge. The revivalists' emphasis on heartfelt conversion differed from rationalist approaches to religious belief.

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