There was a further implication resulting from this newly elevated status; before The Great Awakening, the emphasis was on God; now the emphasis is on people’s response to God. The second result of the Great Awakening, and certainly growing out of the elevated status of people, was a changed concept of the church. Before The Great Awakening there had been the effort to make people conform to a single church. After The Great Awakening, with the down-playing of theology and the new emphasis on emotional conversion experiences, the idea grows up that the church is whatever you want it to be. Before, the church had been forming people; now people formed the church.
In the USA, Fletcher maintained that this social change made it essential for religious morality to change with it. He proposed that rather than continuing to adopt the traditional morality of previous generations, Christian ethics had to be updated. He claimed the way to do this was to employ the single principle of agape – Unmotivated, Christian love exemplified in the ministry and teaching of Jesus: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). The ‘law of love’ would make it possible for
Causes and Effects of the Great Awakening The Great Awakening was a spiritual renewal that moved through the American colonies, particularly New England, during the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. In the Great Awakening, Christians began to separate themselves from the established approach to worship which led to a general sense of complacency among believers. Instead, they adopted an approach which was characterized by great enthusiasm and emotion in prayer. Some people that led this new spiritual renewal included the Wesley brothers, Jonathan Edwards, and George Whitefield in England; furthermore, it crossed over to the American Colonies during the first half of the 18th Century. Unlike the somber, largely Puritan spirituality of the early 1700s, the revivalism accompanying the Great Awakening allowed people to express their emotions more overtly in order to feel a greater intimacy with God.
Although the ideas were brought down to and understood by the common people, the movement’s impetus was a group of philosophers. The Great Awakening was about faith and spirituality. The renewed faith amongst individuals changed the way people saw their own established Churches. This movement affected the established Churches; some were even undermined by the idea that one could receive God’s grace without the clergy. While the Awakening affected the Church, the Enlightenment affected government.
By 1700 in English North America, there was an establishment of a unique Anglo-American society in which religion, race and ethnicity, agriculture, and socio-economic class were fundamental in its creation. Although these factors collectively aided in the foundation of Anglo-America, the religion of the colonists played the most important role in this process. Religion was a central motif in the inception of Anglo-American life. Without religion, the motive for a large amount of immigrants to migrate would have been non-existent; making the colonies nothing more than a tiny hiccup in the English historical timeline. All of these factors were brought out in David Freeman Hawke’s Everyday Life in Early America, a detailed chronology of the life of the colonists.
These included the inquiry room for counseling seekers, the anxious or mourners bench for those responding to the public invitation to Christ, preaching for an immediate decision, emotional prayers which addressed God in a very familiar, informal language, organized choirs and music, advertising and advanced preparation for the revival meeting. Finney believed the gospel did not just get people saved, but it was also a means of cleaning up society. He and his followers worked to make the United States a Christian nation. Finney himself was a strong abolitionist and encouraged Christians to become involved in the antislavery movement. The revivals encouraged people to return to God.
After his first sermon Rambert was so disturbed by the priest’s words that he tried to escape the town. Shortly after Father Paneloux’s sermon, Young Jacques Othon suffers slowly in front of Father Paneloux and while the boy was screaming and dieing slowly, He cried out “My god spare this child!” This had a large effect on the way Father Paneloux looked at the plague. Father Paneloux’s second sermon had a different domineer; he supplied comfort to the community instead of scaring them off. "It gives us a glimpse of that radiant eternal light which glows, a small still flame, in the dark core of human suffering. And this light, too, illuminates the shadowed paths that lead toward deliverance.
The Great Awakening was a tremendous religious revival in colonial America during the mid 1700’s. An expansive point of view would simply show a period of time where, as Benjamin Franklin noted, “it seem’d as if all the World were growing Religious.” Formation of new churches, resurgence in church activity and mass conversions were the standard during the period. However, a look deeper into the repercussions of the Great Awakening introduces principles that later led to Britain’s authority being challenged by the colonies, and consequently the American Revolution. The individuals that were converted during the revivals damaged the habits of respect for authority and encouraged thinking for oneself instead of conforming to someone in higher power. These new inclinations of challenging authority became more and more prevalent as the century wore on and became increasingly popular as Britain started infringing on the political rights of the colonists.
Dawn. Wells wishes to make readers aware of the effects of mixing modernity and culture with religion. He makes mention that the centrality of this book focuses primarily upon the church taking a turn towards modernity and the effect the world and secular culture has placed upon this concern. Because of Wells’ observation of the church’s decline in morality, he often refers to some Christians as consumers of a marketing strategy. What is meant by this?
Being a Christian involves devout prayer and good deeds for others. In points fifty-two through fifty-five Luther expressed the importance of spending time preaching the word, instead of spending time talking about pardons. Points fifty-six through sixty-eight state that it is natural to want riches and the men of the Church had many treasures, but Luther advised the greatest treasure could be found in the Holy Word and in the Grace of God. Again, in points sixty-nine through eight-one Luther warns the people of trusting in the letters of pardon and confusing them with true forgiveness and salvation. Only repentance