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The Great Awakening as Artifact. George Whitefield and the Construction of Intercolonial Revival, 1739–1745

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Frank Lambert
Frank Lambert
Affiliation:
Mr. Lambert, presently lecturer in history inNorthwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, will be assistant professor of history in Purdue University, South Bend, Indiana, as of August.
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Extract

Throughout the 1720s and 1730s evangelical preachers sparked revivals from New England to New Jersey. In his long pastorate at Northampton, Massachusetts, Solomon Stoddard reported five “harvests” of souls in the Connecticut Valley. His grandson Jonathan Edwards succeeded him and led a spiritual awakening in 1734 and 1735 resulting in the “Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton and Neighboring Towns and Villages.” In the late 1720s the pietist minister Jacob Frelinghuysen inspired a renewal of piety among the Dutch Reformed in New York. At the same time the Presbyterian evangelists William and Gilbert Tennent reported revivals in the churches they had established between New Brunswick, New Jersey and Staten Island, New York.1 While sharing a common message, these evangelical revivals remained local, private affairs, contained within specific geographic and denominational boundaries. Although each proclaimed the necessity of a spiritual new birth and the primacy of divine grace in salvation, theawakenings did not expand into a larger, united movement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , June 1991 , pp. 223 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1991

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References

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89. See for example ibid., 15 January 1740.

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