The Great Awakening and the Role of Religion in Early Colonial America

          Religion has always been and remains a major force in the shaping American culture, but as you pointed out in your opening lecture on the topic, it was even more important during the colonial period.  Religion can be seen as the attempt on the part of man to understand the world around him, and thus it tries to answer some of the hard questions that confront people.  Colonial Americans were troubled by things like; human  suffering, the meaning of existence, and the fact that some people benefit by doing evil, while others suffer when they do what is morally right.  They were also troubled by the loss of life caused by natural disasters and disease, the type of things which human beings have no control over, but which God should have the ability to prevent and yet for some reason He allows to happen.  For the vast majority of the colonists in British North America the answer to these questions was based on the Protestant tradition, a tradition of thought which had begun only a century before in northern Europe.  Within the Protestant tradition, it was specifically the theology of dissenting groups with their Calvinist perspective that would shape colonial life and culture.  So the most important form of Christianity in the early formative period was based on the stark predestinarian theology of John Calvin, a theology that also held that human beings were by nature depraved and sinful.  Although it is true that Calvinism was the dominant form of Christianity in the colonies, there were other currents of thought as well, including the ideas of the Quakers and even the establishment theology of the Church of England.

          As noted above, Calvinism dominated religious thought during the colonial period.  This was especially true in New England where the Puritans, who remained within the Church of England, controlled the wheels of power.  The Puritans had rejected the establishment theology of the Church of England in favor of the Reformed theology of Geneva’s John Calvin.  They accepted a theological position that is commonly known by the acronym TULIP.  This acronym stands for five major theological propositions which are based on the teachings of John Calvin and his successor Theodore Beza.  The first proposition concerns the fall of Adam and the resulting total depravity (T) of the human person, a consequence of this view of mankind is the idea that man is helpless and cannot do anything on his own power to save himself.  The second proposition deals with the unconditional election (U) of those who are to be saved by God’s grace, and is thus centered on the absolute sovereignty of God.  The third proposition concerns the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross and the limited atonement (L) achieved by it, and thus Christ did not die for all people, but only for the elect.  Next comes a concept of irresistible grace (I), that is, the idea that the elect (those who are saved) cannot resist the grace given to them, and the concomitant denial of human free will that results from this.  Finally comes the doctrine of the perseverence of the saints (P), and once again this idea denies that a human being can in any way interfere with the action of God.  Salvation understood in this way is not so much an action of God in, with, and through the human person; instead, it is an action of God done to a human being, a human being who thus remains passive.  These five ideas or propositions are connected to the rejection by the Synod of Dort (1618-1619) of the theology of Jacobus Arminius.  For the majority of the settlers in the American Colonies Arminianism, with its affirmation of human free will, was looked upon as a heresy.

          As it concerns the religion of the Native Americans, it can be said that in the past their religious tradition was seen as completely uniform, but more recent scholarship has recognized that this assumption is incorrect.  But that is not to say that the American Indians’ religious practices and beliefs were totally distinct, they did share a common cosmological view of the world, that is, a common understanding of the hierarchy of being.  Native cultures believed that every being was governed by a spirit or spiritual principle, and that these spirits possessed consciousness and will, and along with these attributes they also possessed knowledge of past and future events.  At the top of this cosmological hierarchy was a good Creator being, and although this being cared about the created world, it was distant from it.  Since this Creator being was held to be transcendent, it follows that human beings rarely interacted with it; instead, they interacted with lesser spirits, and some of these spirits were good, while others were bad.

          Similarly, spirit beings pervaded every aspect of African culture.  These spirits were often associated with tribal ancestors, and were often viewed as in some way connected to a specific place, like a burial ground.  In addition, places like caves and streams, and things like rocks and trees, were often viewed as homes for spiritual beings.  This gave what could be called a sacramental quality to places, people, and things in general.  It is significant that these spirits were understood to be very involved in the lives of men, and more importantly this concept of interaction between the supernatural world and the natural world was shared by all three cultures, the European, the Native American, and the African.  It would be proper to say that at that time there was more in common among these three cultural traditions which were interacting in North America, than there is between the modern world and the European culture of colonial times.

          With this basic overview of the most important theological traditions affecting the development of society in the colonial period, it is possible to move onto some more specific details concerning religious views in the American Colonies.  It should be noted first that during the 17th and 18th centuries people did not make a sharp distinction between the natural world and the supernatural.  In some sense these two realms, although different, were interconnected, and so  supernatural beings were seen as pervading the natural world.  Natural occurrences were seen as signs to be interpreted in a spiritual light in order to gain insights into the state of one’s soul.  Everything was imbued with a deeper meaning, and one just had to be perceptive in order to discover that meaning.  Religion thus had a controlling function in a person’s life, and religion was not simply a private matter.  Samuel Sewall’s diary is an example of this mentality applied in daily life.  He was a very well educated man and was familiar with the most recent scientific views of his age.  But like all the Puritans colonists he was ceaselessly searching his soul in order to see the activity of God in his life and thus to discover the purpose of his existence. 

          Religion was more than a system of rituals to be performed in a Church building.  Sewall and the Puritans of his day lived in a world of inexplicable dangers and even dangers that we would view as a remote, weighed heavily on his mind.  He constantly expected a French attack on Boston, an example of this being his dream on April 4, 1706, and in that dream he saw “. . .  a vast number of French coming towards us, for multitude and huddle like a great flock of sheep.  It put me in a great consternation, and made me think of hiding in some thicket.  The impression remained upon me after my waking.  God defend!” [Yazawa, 171].  Not only did he fear possible invasion by a foreign power, but he also feared natural disasters and disease, both of which could come upon a person without warning, and so he like all the people of his day held that one must rely on God alone for protection.  This of course is also part of the Calvinist view of God’s absolute control over all things, both as far as human actions are concerned and in reference to natural disasters as well.  In his view, one must look to the hidden meaning in dreams and events in order to see the will of God for one’s life.

          In New England as settlement progressed religious toleration became a burning question.  The New England colonies had been founded as a Puritan utopia.  It was the intention of the founders of those colonies to make a Christian settlement, and as John Winthrop said it was to be, “a City on a hill” [Allit, 61].  The Puritans believed that they were founding a New Israel, and thus they identified their colonies with the idea of a covenantal society.  One could say that they were founding a theocracy.  This religious viewpoint made the Puritans a rather intolerant group of people.  They did not want outsiders to enter their settlements, and in fact they actively persecuted those who dissented from their religious ideology.

          This religious intolerance on the part of some of the colonists was a common trait of European culture at that time.  In fact Europe had been going through great wars of religion.  It is important to note that although the Puritans in New England shared this quality with their European forbearers, their intolerance was not common throughout the colonies.  Colonial life in fact encouraged a form of religious toleration, because unlike Europe, where there was little interaction between the various religious groups, these same groups tended to live in common areas in the colonies.  In Europe people tended to live in geographically unified religious communities, but this was not the case in the American colonies at least outside of New England.  In fact it was nearly impossible for the established Churches to set up their systems in the New World in the same exclusivist pattern that was common in Europe.  Churches could not take for granted that they would have the same kind of influence.  In the colonies those groups that were in some sense dissenters from the established Churches, were often times in the majority.  The colonies also lacked a geographically based unity of religious practice, and this caused direct competition between the various Churches for members.

          All of this was in some sense a natural outgrowth of the reformation principle of private judgment in matters of religious practice. The Protestant Reformers did not want to identify the Christian Church with any particular institution.  In every given culture there must be some kind of inculturation of the faith.  The Reformers believed that the Church was invisible and timeless, and that the Church in some sense stands outside of history.  This is very different from the Catholic view of the Church, Catholicism sees the Church as both visible and invisible, and so the Church is seen as the perpetual extension of the incarnation through space and time.  Implied within the Reformers view, was an implicit recognition that the Christian faith could be expressed in a variety of ways, and that there need not be religious uniformity.  But in spite of their principle of diversity, the Reformers themselves continued to hold that religious uniformity was necessary for the proper ordering of society.  So while dissenting groups in Europe saw membership in the Church as voluntary, this was not how the Lutheran and other established Reformation Churches saw it.  What really effected colonial life was the fact that the dissenting groups often made up a large percentage of the population in the colonies.  Adding to this was the fact that the established Churches were at a disadvantage in the New World, and because no one group could dominate an entire region (New England being an exception), the Reformation principle of variety in religious practice, which still was not fully applied in Europe, was fully applied in the American Colonies.

          Contributing to the wide variety of religious practice in the colonies was the general lack of institutions and structures of support within society.  Without the traditional institutions underpinning daily life people felt cut loose from any spiritual or moral foundations.  Religion is not just about the relationship of the individual to some kind of ultimate reality; instead, by its very nature religion includes certain societal norms which establish society along hierarchical lines, but without solid institutions in the colonies people had to rely on their own abilities.  This led to a strong sense of individualism, and not only in religious matters.  The rise of itinerant Baptist preachers is a result of this institutional vacuum, and these preachers were not normally ordained, they were in some sense self-appointed, or they served at the will of their various congregations they were associated with.

          People could no longer depend on an elite class (i.e., ordained ministers) to tell them what to do, and as a result, when things in the colonies became more settled and as more ministers became available, people continued to assert their independence of religious authorities.  They no longer would simply follow the minister’s commands; instead, they made their own decisions about their spiritual life.  This radically changed the relationship between the laity and the ordained leaders in the various denominations in the colonies, and so there was a noticeable shift in power in favor of the laity.

          The Great Awakening added to this sense of independence on the part of laymen as various ministers began to publically argue with each other and as they tried to gain members to their particular congregation.  In the past this kind of debate between ministers would have been kept quiet, but in this case the insurgent ministers went public.  A new light preacher named Gilbert Tennent delivered a sermon called “On the Danger of an Unconverted Ministry” in which he openly challenged the spiritual authority of what came to be called the older light clergy [see Middleton, 289].  This sermon was eventually published as a pamphlet and was used to push the New Light position.  The New Lights were promoting a more experiential form of Christianity than the more conservative clergy.  They saw feelings and emotional experiences as signs of grace, and gave them more importance in theology than the more traditional clergy.  This theological difference of opinion on the part of ministers, caused a split in many of the congregations.  All of this created even more competition among religious groups in the colonies as they all struggled to get new members, and as indicated above this gave greater power to the laity. 

          All of these issues caused a form of religious toleration to develop in the colonies.  The fact that various groups were not separated geographically and actually had to learn to live with each other created a sense of tolerance.  The intense competition among groups for members, and the idea that membership in the Church was voluntary added to this as well.  The vast majority of the religious groups in the colonies all fell under the larger umbrella of Protestantism and this also helped create tolerance.  The small numbers of Jews and Catholics living in the colonies were tolerated, but there was a decidedly anti-Catholic sentiment in most of British North America.

          All of this lay involvement in the running of local Churches, and the fact that people could choose and were expected to choose where they would attend Church, helped to develop a democratic sensibility among the American people.  Many of the ideas which played a part in the American Revolution can be traced to the religious awakening that occurred in the earlier part of the 18th century.  It can be said that the religious situation in the colonies produced a sense of individualism and egalitarianism that was foreign to European sensibilities.

The Role of Immigration and Land Speculation in the Development of American Colonial Society

          Land speculation was at the center of the expansion of the colonies and was also one of the main catalysts for the development of wealth by many of the people who would one day become prominent in the newly independent United States of America.  At the same time that land speculation was occurring, and connected with it, there were major efforts to get more people to come to live in the colonies.  The land speculators in the colonies were working with agents in Europe who were encouraging immigration to the New World.  These recruiting agents were not just encouraging immigration from England, but from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and even continental Europe.  In fact there are some signs that the government in England was concerned about the number of people leaving the mother country in order to live in the colonies.

          The continuing growth of colonial population and the desire on the part of young men to own their own farms and thus to begin their own families, led to the constant push for the opening up of new lands in the west.  Land speculation was based on two things: firstly, on the fact that the ratio of settlers to arable land was low; and secondly, on the fact that this ratio was inevitably going to change as the colonies continued to expand.  Many people realized that a massive increase in colonial population was going to happen and they determined to take advantage of it by gaining grants for large tracts of land in the west.  They did this with the idea that they could either sell or lease these lands to new immigrants who would then make improvements in the area and thus cause the value of the lands to increase even further.  This is one reason why the speculators did not sell all the land in an area at one time, because they were expecting to make an even larger profit once the land’s value had increased due to development.  The land speculators would often lease or sell certain tracts of land within a land grant and would keep adjacent tracts of land in their own hands.  Once the settlers in the area had made substantial improvements and when they were sure that they could make a good profit, the land speculators would sell the other tracts of land, at increased prices and thus make a nice sum of money.  It should be noted that often times these land speculators were given the grants by the crown government and so whatever price they sold the land for was pure profit.  That is also why they would often times allow the first wave of settlers to lease the land for very low rents or even no rent, as long as the settler made improvements to the property.

          As indicated above, the land speculators worked with agents in Britain and on the European mainland in order to recruit new immigrants.  The recruiting agents would get paid per head for each immigrant that they signed up to come to America.  One of the techniques that they used to convince people to come to the New World was through advertisements.  These advertisements usually described the American colonies in glowing terms, and Pennsylvania was often described as the best poor man’s country, because it was seen as a place where a poor man could advance himself and eventually own his own farm.  These recruiting agents were usually affiliated with shipping companies in European port cities, and thus the whole immigration business was set up for the profit of the land speculators in the colonies, the immigration recruiters in Europe, and for the shipping companies as well.  Of course the settlers would benefit as well, but only after a lot of hard work.

          The constant need for new immigrants began to effect the demographic situation in the colonies.  At the beginning of the 18th century the number of non-English settlers in the colonies began to grow as a proportion of the population.  The number of Scots-Irish and German immigrants grew to the point that in places the non-English white population was in the majority or was at least a plurality of the settlers.  This was especially true in places like New York and Pennsylvania.  By 1790 in Pennsylvania in particular the number of non-English white settlers was as high as eighty percent (statistic from the class handout).  The German population in Pennsylvania was very high, as many as one third of the people in that colony came from Germany.  There was some fear on the part of the English settlers that there were too many foreigners in the colonies, and they began to worry that the English cultural character of colonies would be lost.  Benjamin Franklin was one of those who worried about what he saw as the Germanization of the colonies.

          Another area where land speculation influenced migration patterns was in the push to the west.  Land speculation promoted continual expansion of the colonies in a westward direction, and in fact many of the original royal land grants hypothetically extended all the way to the Pacific Ocean.  Royal policy in this area would change drastically after the French and Indian war.  The royal government in London decided to reorganize the empire after the war, not just in North America, but worldwide, and one of the major decisions they made was that they should limit the expansion of the American colonies.  With the reorganization of the empire under way the government in London decided that it should take over the management of Indian affairs.  This area of policy had traditionally been in the hands of local officials and the colonial governments did not appreciate what they saw as the interference of the central government in affairs that were of capital importance to the existence and peace of the colonies themselves.  In October 1763 the royal government issued a proclamation limiting expansion of the colonies west of the Appalachian mountain range.  This proclamation was very unpopular in the colonies, and not only with the land speculators, but even with the common people.  Most people had assumed that with the defeat of the French it would now be possible to expand the colonies even further to the west.  But the British government appeared to reverse policy, at least from the perspective of the colonists, and they decided that it was prudent to stop colonial expansion and to protect the Indians of the interior.

          The imperial government wanted to insure that the colonies benefitted the Metropolis, that is, the imperial homeland.  The purpose of the empire was to economically benefit the mother country, and the colonies were thus a means to an end, and were not an end in themselves.  This policy meant that a conflict between the interests of the Metropolis and the colonial areas was inevitable.  Unlike other colonies in the empire, the American colonies had begun to develop not only extraction industries, but even some minor manufacturing industries.  Although farming continued to be the main economic force in the colonies, there were also fledgling industries, including ship building, iron production and other commercial industries.

          The constant expansion of the colonies led to a view of life that was uniquely American.  The idea that each generation would in some way live in better economic and social conditions than the previous one.  The majority of people in America could actually own land, and this was very different from the conditions in Europe at the time.  When the eastern seaboard areas became crowded, relatively speaking from an American perspective, expansion to the west was seen as a way of allowing younger sons to gain a piece of the American dream.  That fact that people could periodically relocate led to a culture that encouraged peoples geographical mobility.  This mobility was very different from the situation in Europe, people in Europe often lived within the same small area all their lives, never traveling far from their place of birth, but this pattern was completely changed because of conditions in the New World.  All of this helped to lead to American individualism and the idea that economic and social progress was to continue to advance with each successive generation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Patrick Allitt.  Major Problems in American Religious History.  (New York:  Houghton Mifflin, 1999).

Richard Middleton.  Colonial America.  (Oxford:  Blackwell Publishers, 2001).

Mel Yazawa.  The Diary and Life of Samuel Sewall.  (New York:  Bedford Books, 1998). 

Early Colonial America

by Steven Todd Kaster 

San Francisco State University

History 420:  American Colonial History

Professor Longmore

26 April 2002

Copyright © 2002-2024 Steven Todd Kaster