The First Great Awakening : redefining religion in British America, 1725-1775 / John Howard Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, John Howard, 1968- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Great Awakening.

Religious awakening--Christianity.

Religious awakening.

United States--Church history--To 1775.

United States.

Church history.

Physical Description:

x, 345 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Madison, [NJ] : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, [2015]

Summary:

The First Great Awakening, an unprecedented surge in Protestant Christian revivalism in the eighteenth century, sparked enormous 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, m recent decades, its having happened at all has been challenged as being either an exaggeration or an "invention." The First Great Awakening: Redefining Religion in British America, 1725-1775 expands the movement's geographical, theological, and sociopolitical scope. Rather than focus exclusively on the clerical elites, as earlier studies have done, this book deals with religious leaders alongside ordinary people and includes the experiences of women, African Americans, and Indians as the observers and participants that they were. The book challenges prevailing scholarly opinion concerning what the revivals were and what they meant to the formation of American religious identity and culture. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I "No Small Appearances of a Divine Work" 15

1 "Vital Piety" 17

2 "Looseness, Irreligion, and Atheism" 39

3 "Communion Times" 65

4 "A Glorious Work of God's Infinite Power" 85

Part II "The Late Revival of Religion" 105

5 "Many Thousands Flocking to Hear Him Preach the Gospel" 107

6 "Blessed be God that Hath Done It!" 127

7 "Glorious Distraction" 149

8 "Unhappy Contention" 173

Part III "Methinks I See Mighty Cities Rising on Every Hill" 197

9 "I Claim Jesus Christ to Be My Right Master" 199

10 "A Salvation from Heaven" 225

11 "More Like True Religion Than Any I Ever Observed" 247

12 "The Seed of Dissention and Discord" 271.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-334) and index.

ISBN:

161147714X

9781611477146

OCLC:

889168725