Hands unto God
THE GREAT AWAKENING:
The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America
By Thomas S. Kidd
416 pp. Yale University Press $35
Reviewed by Nancy R. Davison
The Great Awakening is a comprehensive, deeply researched overview of the beginnings of Evangelical Christianity in the United States. Given the number of evangelical Protestants in the United States—about 26 percent of the adult population, according to a new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life—and their influence on public debate, it is useful to have a dispassionate, detailed account of the origins of the evangelical movement.
Thomas S. Kidd, an associate professor of history at Baylor University, summarizes current and traditional scholarship in his excellent introduction and defines his own field of study. “I provide, in this book, a single, coherent narrative of evangelicalism’s development in America over its first fifty years.” He expands his study beyond New England to Nova Scotia, the South, and related events in the British Isles. He regularly includes ministries to Native Americans and African Americans. Chapter 13, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Out Her Hands unto God: Slavery, African Americans and Evangelism” alone, is worth the price of the book.
“Early American evangelicalism was distinguished from earlier forms of Protestantism by dramatically increased emphases on seasons of revival, or outpourings of the Holy Spirit, and on converted sinners experiencing God’s love personally. Both the role of the Spirit and the methods of revival were hotly contested among early American evangelicals.”
Kidd divides the contestants into three basic groups. “On one end were the anti-revivalists, who dismissed the revivals as religious frenzy or enthusiasm.” In the middle were the moderate evangelicals, who supported the revivals at their outset but became concerned about the chaotic, leveling extremes that the awakenings produced. Finally, on the other end were the radical evangelicals, who eagerly embraced the Spirit’s movements even if social conventions had to be sacrificed.”
Increased ease of communication and transportation led to wide distribution of letters, pamphlets, and newspaper accounts of religious revivals beginning in Western Massachusetts, and expanding to Nova Scotia, Georgia and points in between from the 1730s through the 1780s and beyond. Revival fever, beginning in Northampton, Massachusetts, with Jonathan Edwards, never really broke. Edwards’ book, A Faithful Narrative, is used even today as a primer for revivals. Books and other printed material told the people what revivals were about, how they could participate and how they should react. Professor Kidd’s reading of this vast body of material helps him to portray the revival and conversion experience in vivid detail.
Improvements in transportation not only promoted the spread of written materials but also allowed the itinerant preachers, chief among them George Whitefield, to travel widely throughout the Colonies. Preachers, some self-ordained, others educated and fully credentialed, ‘itineranted’ to hold outdoor meetings when denied pulpits by established churches or to simply accommodate huge crowds. Thousands of people left their daily drudgery to be told the depth of their sinfulness, the horrible fate of unrepentant sinners and the possibility of grace and salvation through the inrushing of the Holy Spirit.
Evangelical Christians have never been monolithic in their beliefs and practices. Preachers took Galatians 3.28—“There is no longer Jew or Greek, ... slave or free ... male and female: for all of you are one in Jesus Christ,”—quite seriously, especially in the earlier revivals. There was a certain amount of retrenching when it became obvious that slaves and women were taking this invitation seriously and getting radical ideas. Evangelicals were unusually democratic in fits and starts. Their religion was personal and tightly focused on the salvation of the individual. There was no public debate on justification by works or on living a Christian life. A thorough knowledge of the Bible was assumed, but salvation only came through the inrushing of the Holy Spirit, not the study of scripture. The concept of Free Will as opposed to Predestination did arise from time to time.
Other conflicts and tensions included the challenge of itinerant preachers to the established Anglican and Congregational churches and the introduction of additional Protestant denominations into the mix. Kidd does not describe the basic beliefs and organization of Presbyterianism and Methodism as well as he describes the ideas of the Baptists. He does describe the abiding tension between the concept of the equality and liberty of all Christians and slavery that continued through the Civil War.
Itinerants were generally graciously received. George Whitefield’s supposed “persecution” in South Carolina meant only that he could not preach in an established church. Later radical evangelists, such as James Davenport, were arrested or run out of town by local officials fed up with disorder and challenges to their authority. At their most vigorous, revivals empowered the marginal and subservient members of a stratified society to experience the ecstasies of personal salvation. “In the revivals, the world seemed to turn upside down as those with the very least agency in eighteenth century America felt the power of God surge in their bodies.”
Evangelicalism led to a population of individuals accustomed to taking personal responsibility for their own religious choices, one that easily questioned authority. “The revivals aided in the creation of an American culture ready for revolution, and though a seeming majority of evangelicals supported the Patriot side, many other evangelicals remained loyal to Britain or tried to stay neutral.... For most American Evangelicals...faith provided a framework through which to interpret the crisis.”
Kidd keeps his focus on the revivals. He provides background information when it is relevant to the revivals such as the earthquake of 1727, and the Dark Day of May 19, 1780. In his earlier book The Protestant Interest: New England After Puritanism (2004), he describes the international stresses that spilled over into the Colonies—Protestant England vs. Catholic France, the French and Indian Wars, and the Catholic menace. In this book he gives just enough detail on international events and threats to ground his story in time and space.
The Great Awakening is a fine reference book and a good read. I found it to be especially useful in its analysis of the evangelical vision. Focused on faith and personal salvation by the inrushing of the Holy Spirit, the evangelical world-view is often deep and narrow. A culture focused on the next world can be careless of this world. A society of the elect can choose to ignore the unconverted. In current practice, the personal religious views of political candidates and their opinions on abstinence, gay marriage, and school prayer are seen to be as important as their views on climate change, world and local hunger and nuclear proliferation. Professor Kidd’s study provides perspective on this vision of God and the world.
Nancy R. Davison is an artist-printmaker who lives and works in Maine. She holds a PhD degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan.
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