The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740-1745

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Richard L. Bushman
UNC Press Books, 1970 - 174 páginas
Most twentieth-century Americans fail to appreciate the power of Christian conversion that characterized the eighteenth-century revivals, especially the Great Awakening of the 1740s. The common disdain in this secular age for impassioned religious emotion and language is merely symptomatic of the shift in values that has shunted revivals to the sidelines.



The very magnitude of the previous revivals is one indication of their importance. Between 1740 and 1745 literally thousands were converted. From New England to the southern colonies, people of all ages and all ranks of society underwent the New Birth. Virtually every New England congregation was touched. It is safe to say that most of the colonists in the 1740s, if not converted themselves, knew someone who was, or at least heard revival preaching.



The Awakening was a critical event in the intellectual and ecclesiastical life of the colonies. The colonists' view of the world placed much importance on conversion. Particularly, Calvinist theology viewed the bestowal of divine grace as the most crucial occurrence in human life. Besides assuring admission to God's presence in the hereafter, divine grace prepared a person for a fullness of life on earth. In the 1740s the colonists, in overwhelming numbers, laid claim to the divine power which their theology offered them. Many experienced the moral transformatoin as promised. In the Awakening the clergy's pleas of half a century came to dramatic fulfillment.



Not everyone agreed that God was working in the Awakening. Many believed preachers to be demagogues, stirring up animal spirits. The revival was looked on as an emotional orgy that needlessly disturbed the churches and frustrated the true work of God. But from 1740 to 1745 no other subject received more attention in books and pamphlets.



Through the stirring rhetoric of the sermons, theological treatises, and correspondence presented in this collection, readers can vicariously participate in the ecstasy as well as in the rage generated by America's first national revival.

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PREPARATIONS
3
Samuel Willard The Peril of the Times Displayed 1700
5
Solomon Stoddard Defects of Preachers Reproved 1723
11
Gilbert Tennent Solemn Warning 1735
16
THE ITINERANTS
19
The New England Weekly Journal 1739
22
5 An Invitation from the Eastern Consociation Fairfield County Connecticut 1740
23
6 George Whitefield Journals 1740
26
Jonathan Dickinson True ScriptureDoctrine 1741
77
TROUBLE IN THE CHURCHES
85
23 Gilbert Tennent The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry 1740
87
Solomon Williams A Letter 1744
94
Records of the Presbyterian Church 1741
97
26 The Separates in Norwich Connecticut 17451752
101
C EXPLANATIONS FOR WITHDRAWAL 1745
102
D SUSPENSION FROM COMMUNION 1745
104

Marriage of Cana 1742
33
Boston Gazette 1741
35
Boston Gazette 1742
38
10 Correspondence of a Connecticut Itinerant 17401745
39
B JOHN LEE DECEMBER 1740
40
C DANIEL RUSSELL JANUARY 1741
43
E SAMUEL BUELL APRIL 1742
44
Boston Weekly NewsLetter 1742
45
The Declaration of A Number of the associated Pastors of Boston and CharlesTown 1742
50
Boston Weekly PostBoy 1743
51
A Letter 1743
53
Theophilus Pickering Letters 1742
56
The Public Records of Connecticut
58
B THE ARREST OF BENJAMIN POMEROY 1744
60
A Letter to the Associated Ministers of Boston and Charlestown 1745
61
19 George Whitefield Journals 1744
65
THE NEW BIRTH
66
The Spiritual Travels of Nathan Cole 1741
67
Samuel Blair A Short and Faithful Narrative 1744
71
F Two SEPARATES IN PRISON 1752
105
Ebenezer Frothingham The Articles of Faith and Practice 1750
107
ASSESSMENTS
109
Samuel Finley Letter 1741
111
Charles Chauncy A Letter to Mr George Wishart 1742
116
Jonathan Edwards The Distinguishing Marks 1741
121
The Testimony of the Pastors of the Churches 1743
127
The Testimony and Advice of an Assembly 1743
129
NEW DIRECTIONS
133
Experience Mayhew Grace Defended 1744
136
Joseph Bellamy True Religion Delineated 1750
144
Jonathan Edwards The Nature of True Virtue ca 1755
153
John Caldwell The Nature Folly and Evil of rash and uncharitable Judging 1742
157
Solomon Paine et al 1748
160
Samuel Davies Letter to the Bishop of London 1752
162
Jonathan Edwards The Northampton Covenant 1742
166
Aaron Burr The Watchmans Answer 1757
169
SUGGESTED READINGS
173
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Richard L. Bushman is Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia University and author of the award-winning "From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765" and "King and People in Provincial Massachusetts."

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