Video Transcript: Jonathan Edwards and the First Great Awakening -Part 2

I thought I'd read from Jonathan Edwards since we have just finished talking about him, but I want to see if there are questions about Jonathan Edwards. The one sermon you know of Jonathan Edwards would be the fire and brimstone one. What's the title of that sermon? "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." He has lots of other sermons, but for some reason, that one sticks in people's minds. I’d like to read a paragraph near the end of the sermon—this is his evangelistic side coming out:

"And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, stands calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners, a day wherein many are flocking to him and pressing into the kingdom of God. Many are daily coming from the east, west, north, and south. Many that were very lately in the same miserable condition that you are in are now in a happy state with their hearts filled with love to him who has loved them and washed them from their sins in his own blood and rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God. How awful is it to be left behind at such a day, to see so many others feasting while you are pining and perishing, to see so many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart while you have cause to mourn for sorrow of heart and howl for vexation of spirit. How can you rest one moment in such a condition? Are not your souls as precious as the souls of the people at Suffield, where there was a great revival, where they are flocking from day to day to Christ?"

I thought that would be appropriate from Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." I'm on page 13 of the syllabus: The Life and Ministry of Jonathan Edwards. Before we start, are there questions about Jonathan Edwards? He is one of the great figures of this course, and I hate to move through him too quickly. To give him only one class time makes me a little nervous, but we have to keep moving. Are there any questions about his life, ministry, or theology? Do you get a sense of who he was and how important he is?

I feel like I have a good sense of who he was, but if I were to ask you what the main ideas are when we think of Jonathan Edwards, what should come to mind?

Well, a couple of things. If people ask me about Jonathan Edwards, the first thing I would stress is that he is an American-born theologian and philosopher. He’s not an import; he was born in East Windsor, Connecticut. He is part of the American Church experience. He was a great thinker in many areas—philosophy, theology, natural science, linguistics. He brought all of that to the service of the Kingdom of God. He could have been a great philosopher apart from that, but he brought everything under the rule of Christ in his own heart and life. He did this fearlessly, standing up for Christ, the church, and the Kingdom of God in the face of his generation.

The Edwardians didn’t carry on the idea of predestination, right? What ideas did they continue?

The Edwardians were real followers of his, including his son, but there were some differences. The biggest was freedom of the will. There was a rift between them and Jonathan Edwards. Also, Edwards believed in original sin, that we inherit Adam’s sin. The fourth Edwardian I mentioned did not believe in original sin. He believed Adam's sin was his alone and not transferred, but that humans are sinful like Adam, copying his actions. Edwards wouldn’t have agreed. The Edwardians had an impact on American life and culture as preachers, teachers, and writers. We don’t follow them in this course, but they were an important second generation of his ideas, though they disagreed on some.

He was dismissed from his congregation because his standards were too high. He did not allow Halfway Covenant practices, which the congregation wanted. There was a real clash between pastor and congregation, and he was not going to yield. The congregation had the right to vote him out, which they did. Today, we see similar situations—pastors and congregations clashing over theological and doctrinal issues. There are examples of denominations splitting over these kinds of matters, such as the break between Anglicans and the Episcopal Church over authority issues.

There are three other important leaders of the First Great Awakening. It wasn’t all Jonathan Edwards. These leaders worked parallel to him, and there was a tremendous movement in American life and culture. We’ll start with the least known: Theodorus J. Frelinghuysen. He was a Dutch Reformed pastor in New Jersey, working to bring revival to Dutch Reformed churches in the Middle Colonies. Now he's headquartered in New Jersey—that's his home—but he's also an itinerant preacher, like the itinerant Methodist preachers of the next century. He does go around to various middle colonies like New York and Maryland, preaching the gospel because he felt that the Dutch Reformed churches had become too much at ease and really weren't the vigorous kind of church life that was intended to be.

There are other people he influences, and the group he influenced the most were the Presbyterians. Presbyterians went to hear Theodore J. Frelinghuysen preach and took his revivalism back to their Presbyterian churches, so he did have an influence beyond his own denomination. Probably the least known of the First Great Awakening preachers, but very important, so we want to take note of him.

One person who knew him was Gilbert Tennant. One person who heard him preach and was really moved by his preaching was Gilbert Tennant. Gilbert Tennant was Presbyterian, but he's a good example of Theodore J. Frelinghuysen having influence over a Presbyterian minister. There is a little bit of a story about Gilbert Tennant we need to tell to get to the First Great Awakening. His father's name is important—William Tennant. William Tennant was a Presbyterian and was convinced that the Presbyterian ministers in the colonies were not being correctly trained for the ministry. He was not going to let that happen to his three sons, who were entering the ministry, so he decided to train them in his own home.

In the late 17th and early 18th century, there weren’t seminaries yet, not as we think of seminaries today—those would come a little later. William Tennant decided to train his three sons in a little log cabin adjacent to his home. Other Presbyterians made fun of what William Tennant was doing because they didn’t think he had the ability to train his own sons to be Presbyterian ministers. They gave it a derisive name: the Log College.

William Tennant and his sons had the last laugh because the Log College became Princeton University in 1746. It was first named the College of New Jersey at Princeton, but in 1746 it became Princeton University, one of the great universities in the world today. It's interesting to note that Princeton University was founded by Presbyterians. Harvard was founded by the Puritans, Brown by the Baptists, and now Princeton by the Presbyterians.

Gilbert Tennant did the same thing that Frelinghuysen did, but for Presbyterianism. He was situated in New Jersey and went around to New Jersey Presbyterian churches, bringing great revival. He also spread out to the middle colonies a bit, but New Jersey was really his place of revival. We are grateful for the work he did for the Lord in New Jersey and in Presbyterian churches.

I got an MTh degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, which has a Tennant campus because they recognize the importance of the Tennant family in its origins. Princeton Theological Seminary is right next to Princeton University, practically on the same campus. Gilbert Tennant was a great evangelist and revivalist, especially among Presbyterians.

A third person who was important, whom Dr. Hilderandt and I often talk about, is George Whitefield. A remarkable person, though I won't spend as much time on him as I did on Jonathan Edwards. George Whitefield (1714–1770) was an Anglican clergyman. Edwards was a Congregationalist, Frelinghuysen was Dutch Reformed, Tennant was Presbyterian, and Whitefield was Anglican. He was called the "Grand Itinerant" because, even though he was an Anglican clergyman ministering to the Anglican Church in England and in the American colonies, his ministry was cross denominational. He was an evangelist for the whosoever and didn’t limit himself to a certain denomination.

He was called the Grand Itinerant partly because he sailed to America seven times, which was remarkable at the time. Traveling by ship for 10 to 15 weeks across the rough Atlantic was not an easy task, and then he would sail home. He is buried in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He only sailed home six times because, on his seventh journey, he was in New Hampshire preaching, became ill, and was brought down to Newburyport, where he died. He was buried under the pulpit of a church he helped build. How many of you have been to that church in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and taken the tour under the pulpit to see Whitefield’s grave? Dr. Hidebrandt and I have done that. If you visit the church, they'll gladly take you down into the basement to see his burial place. In the foyer of the church, there are books, manuscripts, and other materials about George Whitefield because he helped found the church.

At first, when they buried Whitefield under the pulpit, he wasn’t in a casket. He was wrapped in a shroud, and people were so taken with him that when they visited, they would take bits of his remains as relics. Eventually, they had to place him in a proper casket to stop people from taking pieces of Whitefield home. The church is the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newburyport. If you get a chance, you don’t want to miss seeing Whitefield—he’s right in our backyard.

Revival at the time, among Edwards, Frelinghuysen, and Tennant, was generally controlled. People were converted, joined the church, and it was more like a Billy Graham revival—orderly. Whitefield's revivals, however, were different because he preached in the open. His revivals sometimes saw extremes, and we’ll get to that. But so far, the people we've talked about, I would say they're revived. Jonathan Edwards did have some mention of some excesses to the revival, but so far what we've seen is pretty tame compared to George. That's a good segway. 

So, George comes over. Now, here's an example of George in terms of his preaching in 1740. It is estimated that during that time, he was around this area, preaching to 8,000 people a day for a month. He preached in these great open-air places, one of them being the Boston Common. Benjamin Franklin gives witness to this in Philadelphia when he heard George Whitfield preach. Whitfield was a very powerful preacher, but he also preached in places with natural acoustics where 8,000 to 10,000 people at a time could hear him. Franklin confirmed this when he walked the edge of the crowd in Philadelphia and could always hear Whitfield preaching. Did you say 8,000 to 10,000 at a time? Yes, at an event, there would often be that many people. In 1740, we know he preached to about 8,000 per day, though not every event had that many. Sometimes, 6,000 to 10,000 people could hear him preaching, which is remarkable.

Where does George part company with Edwards, Frelinghuysen, and Tennent? Whitfield was convinced he should preach in the open air, not just in churches. He wanted to preach on the Boston Common and other public spaces. That's how he reached so many thousands—by going to places like the Boston Common, setting up a pulpit, and preaching. He'd also go into towns, stop in the center, and begin preaching, drawing crowds.

I had an interesting experience in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, where there's a beautiful museum. Inside, I found George Whitfield's field pulpit. He invented a collapsible pulpit that he could roll out, open up, and climb into to preach. He figured out that open-air preaching was how to reach people and get them saved. He would also preach in churches and other places, but anywhere he could find an audience, he would preach. 

Now, what was our definition of preaching earlier when we talked about Jonathan Edwards? Preaching is God's truth coming through personality. You couldn't have two more different personalities than Edwards and Whitfield. Edwards was structured, almost like a lawyer, keeping his eyes on the church bell rope while he preached. Whitfield, on the other hand, would stand on anything he could, even while people tried to drown him out with trumpets and drums. Whitfield convinced John Wesley to preach in the open air. Wesley, also Anglican, was hesitant, but Whitfield persuaded him. This was something other preachers of the First Great Awakening didn’t do.

He always preached in his Anglican collar and robe. A different kind of personality. The Anglican collar came from Anglicanism's break from Roman Catholicism under Henry VIII, but they kept liturgical dress. Oxford students also wore robes, so this tradition continued in ministry.

Whitfield was a different kind of preacher. Edwards was careful and methodical. Whitfield was energetic, a wild man in some ways.

Now, the setting for the gospel was very important to Whitfield. Four things about it:

1. He preached in the open air, not confined to indoor spaces.

2. He preached in the language of the people, making the gospel relevant and understandable.

3. His appeal was to the heart and emotions, unlike Edwards' rational, lawyer-like preaching. Some excesses did occur in the revival because of this.

4. He was an inspiration for later preachers, especially in the Second Great Awakening. His style influenced future preaching.

These four elements—preaching in the open air, using common language, appealing to the heart, and inspiring future preachers—were later used politically. The broader culture learned that this style could influence not just religious life, but political life as well. This had a tremendous impact on American culture, and no one exemplified it more than George Whitfield. Whitfield died in Newburyport.

Before this time, governors were elected congregationally. You had to belong to the Congregational Church to vote, and only men could vote. They're not out on the stump, they're not doing this, and would that have been different from those in the island? That would have been true in colonial life. Colonial political life is how it was. The basic arguments were made in the church. People voted, but it was a very calm process compared to what would happen at the beginning of the American Revolution. And then now look at today—it's not very calm, is it? Today, it's not; we're not too calm today, but we can't blame George for that, of course.

Yes, in terms of converts, I don't know in terms of converts, but certainly, he... when we get to this impact that these people had, he is the best-known person in American culture other than the president of the United States, which is pretty amazing. People knew the name of George Whitfield, who didn't know the name of anybody else other than the president. But he was, I think, influential upon Benjamin Franklin, but Benjamin Franklin remained a deist. He didn't have any great conversion experience. And maybe because of the way, maybe because of the appeal that he had to the common people and to their language and to their hearts and so forth. But he certainly had an impact upon the broader culture, so the whole First Great Awakening did because people began joining churches, going to church, and so forth. So certainly, that impact was pretty great. Yeah, something else. Take a 10-second break on a Friday, and it's hard to believe. Reactions to the First Great Awakening, and then we'll look at results of the First Great Awakening. I don't think we'll get through all this today, so we may have to go on to Monday, that's fine.

Reactions to the First Great Awakening—was everybody into this? Did everybody think this was the greatest thing that ever happened in American public life? Well, the answer to that, of course, is no. There were reactions to the First Great Awakening, and I'm going to mention three of them. First of all, there were divisions among some denominations. Some denominations were quite divided over the First Great Awakening, but no denomination was more divided than the Presbyterians. Now, this didn't mean that you've got two Presbyterian denominations because you don't. You will eventually have different Presbyterian denominations, but you do have two different groups within Presbyterianism. One group is called the New Side party, and the other group is called the Old Side party. Okay, so this is going to give you a sense of what's going on here.

Now, the New Side party is a party that loves revivalism and loves evangelism and loves vital piety among the people. If that means loosening up some restrictions, so be it. If that means sometimes lay people are going to preach, so be it. This is the work of God, as far as the New Side party was concerned. Okay, so the First Great Awakening—these people are all for it. Obviously, the Old Side party, the Old Side party within the Presbyterian Church, is much more traditional, much more conservative, and there were people in the Old Side party who wanted a much more tightly controlled Presbyterian church, and that was especially true when it came to ordination to ministry. Who should be up there preaching behind the pulpit? Are you going to let some lay person get up there and begin preaching? No, you're not going to, the Old Side party said. They were much more traditional in those kinds of things, much more conservative in those kinds of things. So, they tended to see the First Great Awakening as anti-Christian. So many bad results have come from this First Great Awakening. And the Old Side party was in great opposition. Now, as I mentioned, these are not two different denominations; this means that in one Presbyterian Church, you might have New Side people, you might have Old Side people in that same church. So that's a division within denominations, but the Presbyterians were the most.

Second, a real reaction to the First Great Awakening was a man by the name of Charles Chauncy. Now, there's a great name just to pronounce, isn't it? Charles Chauncy. Well, Charles Chauncy sounds very sophisticated, doesn't it? Charles Chauncy. Well, he was very sophisticated. He was the pastor of Boston's First Church Congregational, and Charles Chauncy preached vociferously against the First Great Awakening. He thought the First Great Awakening was a total botch to the church and a total disgrace to the church. And so, on Sunday mornings at this very prestigious Church of wealthy and influential Bostonians, Charles Chauncy is trying to convince them that the First Great Awakening is the worst thing that's ever happened in Christianity. So, by his preaching and teaching, he's trying to convince them of that. He wasn't taken either with a lot of the theology of the First Great Awakening that was emphasized in the First Great Awakening, like the divinity of Jesus and so forth. So, he eventually himself... he eventually became a Unitarian. So, he dropped any idea of Trinitarian theology and Trinitarian beliefs and dropped all that. He became a Unitarian eventually—not during this time, but eventually became a Unitarian. So, Charles Chauncy, very vociferous and, what shall I say, powerful opponent of the First Great Awakening. And here you can picture Charles Chauncy at the same time preaching in Boston at the same time that George Whitfield is getting 8,000 people to meet in the Boston Common to hear the word of God proclaimed and people become believers. So, there was quite a clash here in Boston over that.

Number three, there were oppositions within universities. There were universities who thought that the First Great Awakening was not really a good thing—very anti-intellectual, very anti-rational, and so within the universities, the professors, the presidents, the students argued against the First Great Awakening. Two examples of this are Harvard and Yale. Very interesting that Harvard and Yale would argue against the First Great Awakening. Harvard was founded by the Puritans to train Puritan preachers, and Yale was founded by the Congregationalists to train Congregational preachers. You would say to yourself, "Boy, this is odd that they would be arguing against the First Great Awakening." But by this time, Harvard is starting to become Unitarian. Now, it doesn't take the full step forward for another few years, but Harvard is starting to become a place where Unitarianism is taught. It becomes known as a Unitarian place. A Unitarian university. Well, that would cause poor John Harvard, whose statue you see, the sitting statue of John Harvard you see in Harvard Yard—that would cause him great grief to know that his Harvard University became Unitarian. Yale will become Unitarian, but interesting story about Yale. Long story short, Yale will be the... now remember, so here we are, First Great Awakening 1734 and on up to the Revolutionary War, Yale speaks against this. Yale's not happy with this, you know, but Yale will become the place where the Second Great Awakening begins in America in 1800. So, it's interesting that at this point, on the university campus, people are arguing against the First Great Awakening, but Yale is going to have a real turnaround and will become the center of the Second Great Awakening in America. So, lots is happening here, but you get pushback to the First Great Awakening. Not everybody thinks it's a great idea.

It's a lot of it is this kind of thing that is happening in public. And there were some excesses in Jonathan Edwards as well, but a lot of it is what is happening in public. And the common people are becoming Christians, and also sometimes in some situations, common lay people are standing up and speaking from the Bible. These things can't happen, and you can imagine Charles Chauncy just taking an evening stroll across the Boston Common and seeing this kind of thing going on. All the ruckus and noise and some people trying to shout down Whitfield, and other people trying to play him down, and other people trying to listen to him, and people fainting. They didn't think this was funny at all. This was a circus here. 

John Wesley now has a great revival going on in England. We'll talk about that later, so we don't have to worry about it now. John Wesley, he was convinced to preach in the open air, like George Whitfield can preach. Convinced him to preach in the open air, but John Wesley had some excesses to his revival in England, and one of them was while he was preaching, you know, take, let's pretend this is Wesley, in London, for example. While he was preaching, people began to yowl like dogs. They began to bark like dogs during the service. So, they're barking away, barking away, barking away. And John Wesley doesn't think this funny at all. He... so he just... he's very autocratic, like George. So he just stopped the whole show. You know, we're not going to have this. This is... but can you imagine if someone like Charles Chauncy was walking through an evening stroll in the Boston Common? George is preaching, and he hears people starting barking like dogs? He'd think they were out of their minds. So it's those excesses that were the greatest problem. 

Pushback on the first Great Awakening, there were three major pushbacks, three major criticisms of the first Great Awakening.

Yes, we’re going to talk about Unitarianism. We’ll say a lot about Unitarianism because they’re very important in terms of American Church Life. Yes, basically it’s a denial of Trinitarian belief and a formation into a denomination. Now, the last thing I want to do, as you can see in your syllabus, I want to look at the results of the first Great Awakening. I’ve broken this down into two areas: the theological results and the social results, because it had influence in both ways.

Number one, theological contributions. We’ve already mentioned this under Jonathan Edwards, but the first result of the first Great Awakening is a resurgence of Calvinism in American Church Life and public life. Remember, the Puritans brought Calvinism over with them. It died down, but those four leaders of the first Great Awakening were all Calvinists. That was their theological orientation. They were Calvinists. An example: George Whitfield was a Calvinist, and that’s why he disagreed with his friend John Wesley over the issue of predestination. The four preachers we’ve looked at are all Calvinists, and so they bring back Calvinism. There’s a whole resurgence; the pendulum swings back toward Calvinism in American life, no doubt about that.

Number two, there’s a revival of experiential piety. What that means is that the Christian religion is not just a matter of reasonable doctrinal knowledge. The Christian religion has something to do with the heart. It has something to do with your own experience, with your own inner life. We call that experiential piety. The preachers of the first Great Awakening preached not just to the minds of people, but to the hearts of people. They preached to the total person.

Number three, the major test for religious life becomes personal conversion. Then we know if you’re a Christian, can you bear witness that you have received Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? That’s the major test for religious life. Not do you know all the doctrines of the church, do you know all the hymns of the church, do you know all the verses of the Bible? Not those things. Those things are all good, but they are not the major test of your religious life. There are a lot of people who know a lot of doctrine, a lot of Bible verses, and a lot of hymns who aren’t Christians. They may have an appearance of being Christians; they may go to church and recite all these Bible verses, but in this first Great Awakening, the major test is personal conversion. That’s really going back to the Puritans in a sense.

Number four, it stimulated concern for higher education. We’ve already mentioned the first two: Princeton, founded by the Presbyterians, and Brown University, founded by the Baptists. It was originally called Rhode Island College and changed its name to Brown University. Here’s some place we haven’t mentioned: Queens College, founded in 1766, now known as Rutgers in New Jersey. It’s a very good state school, but founded by the Dutch Reformed. And then Dartmouth, founded as a congregational college in 1769. Dartmouth had a missionary ministry to the Native Americans before that but eventually took this name and they give that date as the time of their founding.

Some theological contributions, no doubt about that. So I’ve put these under theology rather than social, because the theology was what was important in the teachings in these places, and that’s why they were founded to teach theology and raise preachers in the various traditions.

Let me just mention social contributions. Number one, the elevation of the common person. The common man, the common woman, is now elevated. Elevated in two ways that are important. Elevated because his or her religious experience is as important as someone of wealth and influence. Someone of wealth and influence may be a religious person, but now, because of personal conversion being the test, the common person, maybe even the illiterate person, maybe even the very, very poor person, that person is on the same religious level as the priest, the pastor, the minister. So that person is elevated in that way, and that’s how it should be biblically, of course.

Second place for elevation for the common person: the common person, the everyday person, some of them can now speak in the church. Can you imagine that? Heaven forbid for Charles Chancy, but some of them can actually speak in the church because they’re moved by God to speak, and the pastor of the church gives them an opportunity to speak or preach. So now the common person has opportunities that usually only a minister gets. So the common person is definitely elevated with this social contribution.

The second one is similar: lay activity is stressed. Lay activity is stressed, which means new roles of leadership. Leadership roles are given to lay people. It’s not just the pastor, the preacher, the minister, or the priest who’s the leader of the church. The church lay people can lead the church. And of course, congregationalism had already figured this out, so congregationalism was already being led by lay people. But now, because of the first Great Awakening, a lot of other Christians are finding this out too. The importance of lay people.

Let me mention one more here: personal independence in religious life. Religious life is personal free choice. I’m saying yes to God, or I’m saying no to God. I’m free to choose, free to say yes or no to God. It pointed to independence in political life because, in political life, now in the American colonies, people are starting to say, wait a minute, maybe we should have people freedom to say no or yes to the British government. Maybe people should be free, like they are religiously, to say no or yes. Maybe they should be free to say no or yes in political life as well. This would not sit well, of course, with England, that people are doing this.

Let me do one more. I’ve got just time for one more. Separation of church and state. Remember the Congregationalists and the Baptists and Roger Williams and William Penn? Just remember that this becomes a major issue: separation of church and state, and it finds its way into political life. The separation of church and state comes into political life because we don’t want the state telling the church what to do. We don’t want the state controlling the church. You can’t have that. Now, remember, we said the conversation about state church today has gone the opposite way. We don’t want the church influencing the state. That’s not really why this separation of church and state began, because we don’t want the state telling the church what to do, like they were in Europe and those European wars.

Okay, bless your hearts. Have a good weekend. We’ll finish this off on Monday, and we’ll remember what we’re doing Wednesday with the questions and then Friday. Okay, have a good weekend. 

This is Dr. Roger Green in his teaching on American Christianity. This is session number six, Jonathan Edwards and the first Great Awakening.