U.S. History IColonial America (1607 to 1754)D2.His.1.9-12
The Great Awakening and the Enlightenment
The First Great Awakening (1730s and 1740s, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield) brought revival preaching and new churches; Enlightenment ideas of reason and natural rights (John Locke) spread through books, Benjamin Franklin and colonial colleges.
In the 1700s two movements swept the colonies and changed how people thought about authority. One was about the heart and faith, the other about reason and science. Both grew from soil prepared by New England's churches and schools.
🔑 Key idea
The First Great Awakening (1730s and 1740s) was a wave of religious revival led by preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. The Enlightenment stressed reason, science and natural rights, from thinkers such as John Locke, and reached the colonies through books, newspapers, colleges and Benjamin Franklin.
💡 Why it works
The Awakening taught that each person needed a heartfelt conversion and could judge whether a minister truly preached the gospel. Churches split between "New Lights," who welcomed the revivals, and "Old Lights," who distrusted them. The Enlightenment taught that people could understand the world by reason and that governments exist to protect natural rights. One spoke the language of faith and the other of reason, but both encouraged ordinary colonists to question established authority.
✏️ Worked example: Two movements, one printer
Benjamin Franklin, an Enlightenment man, printed George Whitefield's sermons and became his friend. What does that show?
Franklin admired Whitefield's preaching and his power to draw crowds; he once estimated a crowd in Philadelphia at about 25,000.
Printing the sermons also sold well.
The two movements were different, but people in them mixed, and print spread both.
Answer: The movements overlapped in daily life, and newspapers and print carried both across the colonies.
✏️ Worked example: Locke's idea
In Two Treatises of Government (1689), John Locke argued that people have natural rights to life, liberty and property, and that government rests on consent. How could colonists use that idea later?
If government exists to protect rights, a government that destroys them loses its claim to obedience.
If government rests on consent, taxes without consent are wrong.
Answer: It gave colonists a reason to resist laws they had not consented to; the Declaration of Independence echoes it.
The Awakening also founded colleges to train ministers, among them the College of New Jersey (1746), later Princeton University. Revivals reached enslaved and free Black people too, and many joined Baptist and Methodist churches.
⚠️ Common mistake
Students sometimes treat the two movements as the same thing. The Awakening was religious revival grounded in personal faith; the Enlightenment stressed reason and science. Be ready to name one figure and one idea for each, and to explain how both, in different ways, taught colonists to question authority.
Practice
Pass with 3 right answers, the last 2 in a row. Each right answer earns 2 XP.