In the mid-eighteenth century, Americans experienced an outbreak of religious revivals that shook colonial society. This book provides a definitive view of these revivals, now known as the First Great Awakening, and their dramatic effects on American culture. Historian Thomas S. Kidd tells the absorbing story of early American evangelical Christianity through the lives of seminal figures like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield as well as many previously unknown preachers, prophets, and penitents.The Great Awakening helped create the evangelical movement, which heavily emphasized the individual’s experience of salvation and the Holy Spirit’s work in revivals. By giving many evangelicals radical notions of the spiritual equality of all people, the revivals helped breed the democratic style that would come to characterize the American republic. Kidd carefully separates the positions of moderate supporters of the revivals from those of radical supporters, and he delineates the objections of those who completely deplored the revivals and their wildly egalitarian consequences. The battles among these three camps, the author shows, transformed colonial America and ultimately defined the nature of the evangelical movement.

A study of the religious upheaval that swept through New England in the 1740s, looking at the changing attitudes toward religion that preceded the Great Awakening, and discussing events and people, including itinerant preacher George Whitefield, credited with precipitating the revival.

This text presents an account of the evangelical revival known as the Great Awakening. It demonstrates that the 'awakening' was invented by 18th-century evangelicals who were religious promoters. It shows how these people told and retold their account to themselves, their followers and opponents.