27 - Evangelical Awakenings in the Atlantic Community

Summary

The eighteenth century in British America witnessed the flowering of an evangelical movement, especially within, but not entirely limited to, the Protestant churches. The spiritual phenomenon flourished during the first half of the century in many parts of the eastern colonies in what has often been called the Great Awakening. Many people of the time were certainly aware of a more widespread quickening of the Spirit in the ministries of the churches along the Atlantic seaboard, but the term has become a moniker by which historians now treat the American developments as part of a broader transatlantic spiritual awakening during that period.

Historians have debated such epoch-naming as though such questioning itself was part of their vocation. Is “medieval” an appropriate denominator for a period, seen as a “middle age” between the grandeur of the Greco-Roman world and its renaissance centuries later? Is “renaissance” a fitting term for a multifaceted movement that is difficult to define and date? Is “reformation” a singular term that fits a series of movements with different goals in different places at different times? Is “enlightenment” a useful designation for a movement that manifests itself in so many ways? The didactic usefulness of such terminology provides constant grist for the careful historian's mill, and the debates over such terminology will be endless. So it is also with the topic of this essay, the so-called evangelical awakenings, especially in their American manifestation.