The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents

The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents

Thomas S. Kidd

Pages 43-73

 

This reading was a culmination of primary source documents from the 1730s to the 1740s regarding different people’s views of religion. The documents included journals, ads, sermons, declarations, pictures, and diaries. Kidd put together these documents to help the reader come to their own conclusions about religion in the 1730s and 1740s to the common people and to the nobles.

I feel as if most people during this time period felt that God didn’t inherently love everyone and no one was ever worthy of his love because they were so filled with sin. In George Whitefield’s journal, he commented to the reader: You lied, not unto man, but unto God.” Others merely begin to question their faith. “How can we be led by the Spirit or have Joy in the Holy Ghost, without some sensible Perceptions of it!” (Josiah Smith) In Yale College’s “The Declaration of the Rector and Tutors”, I was particularly surprised by, “Another Principle which you have advanced, is, That all unconverted Ministers are half Beasts and half Devils, and can no more be the Means of any Man’s Conversion, than a dead Man can beget a living Child.” So not only were people questioning their faith, they completely denounced other’s faiths. I find this completely hypocritical; in fact, I find most of this time period hypocritical. So many people would argue with other people, claiming that they know the absolute truth in everything, even if other people provided them with evidence to the contrary. While reading these documents, I couldn’t help but think of watching “Luther” a film about Martin Luther becoming a Monk and a heretic. Watching it nowadays, we all know that he brought up some excellent points and was right about many things, especially indulgences. To us, the idea that someone could absolve themselves of sins or free their ancestors from purgatory because they paid money to someone is completely absurd. To us, we believe that you must confess your sins, show repentance, apologize, etc. to help wash away your sins. When Luther posted his “Truths” he genuinely thought that he was correct and that the Church was not only wrong, but they were scamming people, committing sin themselves in the name of the Church. Luther was the first person to show that the Church was the Pot calling the Kettle black. The Church preyed on those who thought they were damned. “What shall I do to be saved?” “Natural Men, not having true Love to Christ and the Souls of their Fellow-Creatures, hence their Discourses are cold and sapless, and as it were freeze between their Lips! And not being sent of GOD, they want that divine Authority, with which the faithful Ambassadors of Christ are clothed, who herein resemble their blessed Master [Jesus].” This was a time of people stepping out of the norm, and if these people didn’t make the changes they did, who knows where we would be today? It’s weird to think of what my family might have believed if we had been around during that time. Who knows, maybe even I would have been paying indulgences to free my Great Grandmother from purgatory.