Most twentieth-century Americans fail to appreciate the power of Christian conversion that characterized the eighteenth-century revivals, especially the Great Awakening of the 1740s. The common disdain in this secular age for impassioned religious emotion and language is merely symptomatic of the shift in values that has shunted revivals to the sidelines. The very magnitude of the previous revivals is one indication of their importance. Between 1740 and 1745 literally thousands were converted. From New England to the southern colonies, people of all ages and all ranks of society underwent the New Birth. Virtually every New England congregation was touched. It is safe to say that most of the colonists in the 1740s, if not converted themselves, knew someone who was, or at least heard revival preaching. The Awakening was a critical event in the intellectual and ecclesiastical life of the colonies. The colonists' view of the world placed much importance on conversion. Particularly, Calvinist theology viewed the bestowal of divine grace as the most crucial occurrence in human life. Besides assuring admission to God's presence in the hereafter, divine grace prepared a person for a fullness of life on earth. In the 1740s the colonists, in overwhelming numbers, laid claim to the divine power which their theology offered them. Many experienced the moral transformatoin as promised. In the Awakening the clergy's pleas of half a century came to dramatic fulfillment. Not everyone agreed that God was working in the Awakening. Many believed preachers to be demagogues, stirring up animal spirits. The revival was looked on as an emotional orgy that needlessly disturbed the churches and frustrated the true work of God. But from 1740 to 1745 no other subject received more attention in books and pamphlets. Through the stirring rhetoric of the sermons, theological treatises, and correspondence presented in this collection, readers can vicariously participate in the ecstasy as well as in the rage generated by America's first national revival.

Interpreting the Great Awakening of the 18th century was in large part the work of Jonathan Edwards, whose writings on the subject defined the revival tradition in America. This text demonstrates how Edwards defended the evangelical experience against overheated zealous and rationalistic critics.

Gathering the attention and excitement of American colonists from Boston to Charleston, the religious revival of the 1740s traditionally known as the First Great Awakening provided colonial newspaper printers with their first story of transcolonial importance. At the time of the Awakening, American newspapers had become a vital part of the colonial information network as each major city offered at least one weekly paper. Papers printed weekly reports on revivalist preaching, eye-witness accounts of revival meetings, shocking stories of improper ordinations and church separations, as well as numerous contributed letters praising or denouncing virtually every aspect of the Awakening. No other colonial event of the 1740s, including the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Jacobite Rebellion (1745), came close to receiving as much newspaper coverage, making the First Great Awakening America’s first “Big Story.” In The First Great Awakening in Colonial American Newspapers: A Shifting Story, Lisa Smith offers the first scholarly work to examine in detail the printed newspaper record of the revival. This comprehensive, in-depth examination of colonial newspapers over a ten-year period uncovers information on shifts in the presentation of the revival over time, specific differences in regional reporting, and significant transformations in the newspaper personae of popular revivalists such as George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent. Using original newspaper excerpts and graphs revealing reporting trends, this book presents an engaging, detailed picture of how colonial newspaper printers covered the experience of the First Great Awakening.

The First Great Awakening, an unprecedented surge in Protestant Christian revivalism in the Eighteenth Century, sparked enormous of controversy at the time and has been a source of scholarly debate ever since. Few historians have sought to write a synthetic history of the First Great Awakening, and in recent decades it has been challenged as having happened at all, being either an exaggeration or an “invention.” The First Great Awakening expands the movement’s geographical, theological, and sociopolitical scope. Rather than focus exclusively on the clerical elites, as earlier studies have done, it deals with them alongside ordinary people, and includes the experiences of women, African Americans, and Indians as the observers and participants they were. It challenges prevailing scholarly opinion concerning what the revivals were and what they meant to the formation of American religious identity and culture. Cover image: NPG 131, George Whitefield by John Wollaston, oil on canvas, circa 1742. © National Portrait Gallery, London

C. C. Goen's landmark study on the effects of revivalism during the latter half of the 18th century filled a great void in understanding the Great Awakening, and it continues to influence the work of scholars today. Full of artful contextualization of the issues that plagued colonial churches, Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740-1800 documents the ways in which revivalism helped pave the way for a new religious identity in America. Goen underscores how these congregations responded to state involvement in matters of religion and sheds new light on the development of the Baptist denomination by locating its growth within fringe communities in New England rather than organized structures in the Middle Colonies.

A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God Preface Sect. I. A general introductory statement. Sect. II. The manner of conversion various, yet bearing a great analogy. Sect. III. This work further illustrated in particular instances. The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God Mr. Cooper’s Preface to the Reader Sect. I. Negative Signs; or, What are no signs by which we are to judge of a work and especially, What are no evidences that a work is not from the Spirit of God. Sect. II. What are distinguishing scripture evidences of a work of the Spirit of God. Sect. III. Practical inferences. Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England The Preface Part I. Showing the Extraordinary Work Which Has Oflate Been Going on in This Land, Is a Glorious Work of God Sect. I. We should not judge of this work by the supposed causes, but by the effects. Sect. II. We should judge by the rule of Scripture. Sect. III. We should distinguish the good from the bad, and not judge of the whole by a part. Sect. IV. The nature of the work in general. Sect. V. The nature of the work in a particular instance. Sect. VI. This work is very glorious. Part II. Showing the Obligations That All Are Under to Acknowledge, Rejoice in, and Promote This Work; And the Great Danger of the Contrary. Sect. I. The danger of lying still, and keeping long silence, respecting any remarkable work of God. Sect. II. The latter-day glory, is probably to begin in America. Sect. III. The danger of not acknowledging and encouraging, and especially of deriding, this work. Sect. IV. The obligations of rulers, ministers, and all sorts to promote this work. Part III. Showing, in Many Instances, Wherein the Subjects, or Zealous Promoters, of This Work Have Been Injuriously Blamed. Part IV. Showing What Things Are to Be Corrected or Avoided, in Promoting This Work, or in Our Behaviour Under It. Sect. I. One cause of errors attending a great revival of religion, is undiscerned spiritual pride. Sect. II. Another cause of errors in conduct attending a religious revival, is the adoption of wrong principles. Sect. III. A third cause of errors in conduct, is, being ignorant or unobservant of some things, by which the devil has special advantage. Sect. IV. Some particular errors that have risen from several of the preceding causes—Censuring others. Sect. V. Of errors connected with lay-exhorting. Sect. VI. Of errors connected with singing praises to God. Part V. Showing Positively, What Ought to Be Done to Promote This Work. Sect. I. We should endeavour to remove stumbling-blocks. Sect. II. What must be done more directly to advance this work. Sect. III. Of some particulars that concern all in general.