CA - Benjamin Franklin and the Great Awakening (Lesson)
Benjamin Franklin and the Great Awakening
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin, along with George Washington, is the best known of America's founding fathers. Franklin was born into a poor Boston family in 1706. At age 12 he became an apprentice to one of his older brothers who was a printer. At age 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia to start a life of his own choosing, independent from his family. A few months later, he sailed to London to gain more experience in the printing business. He returned to Philadelphia in 1726 as an experienced printer, writer, and businessman. These are just some examples of how throughout his life Franklin sought ways to improve himself (individualism) and rise in society (social mobility). Over his 84-year life, Franklin succeeded in making himself one of the world's leading authors, philosophers, scientists, inventors, diplomats, and politicians.
The Great Awakening
Christian worship changed in the 1730s and 1740s in the northeastern colonies.
Ministers in Boston were concerned that their parishioners were no longer as devout as their ancestors had been. The established ministers in Boston invited George Whitefield, a charismatic minister, to lead revival-type church services to entice the people to come back to church.
When Whitefield began to criticize the ministers who had invited him to preach in their churches, the established ministers (called “Old Lights”) invited Whitefield to leave. Whitefield began holding church services in town squares and in fields much like early camp meetings. Whitefield and other like-minded clergy took to traveling the countryside to preach the Gospel. (These traveling ministers like George Whitefield were labeled “New Lights.”)
The movement was a wave of religious revival that occurred over a period of roughly 30 years (1730-1760) and it took hold all up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
Ministers said the people would feel God's love only if they admitted their sins. The people were told that each believer should seek his or her own personal and emotional relationship with God, and that doing this was more important than the Puritan idea of congregations needing to gather together to hear intellectual sermons.
Ministers preaching such sermons attracted enormous audiences and often traveled from colony to colony to preach to anyone who wanted to listen, regardless of to what church he or she might belong. Two of the most well-known preachers of the Great Awakening were Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.
Christianity grew proliferated throughout the colonies, although established churches lost members to the new way of Christian worship. Some preachers said American society had become as corrupt as the English society the colonists’ ancestors had escaped. As a result, some people started saying that America needed to cut its ties with Britain to keep its religion pure. Additionally, colonists began to think more independently rather than blindly following the clergy as they had done for centuries.
There was an increase in seminaries to train ministers during this period to satisfy the demand for clergy. The College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and Yale College (now Yale University) were founded in this period as a part of the Great Awakening. Many Methodist and Baptist churches were established (particularly in the Southern colonies) during this period too.
(The movement was not labeled the “Great Awakening” at the time that it was occurring.)
[CC BY 4.0] UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED | IMAGES: LICENSED AND USED ACCORDING TO TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION