NHC+1690+Ideas

NHC 1690 (4) IDEAS

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/ideas/ideas.htm

The items on this wiki page are taken from the following website and are only intended for the use of my students:

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/ideas/text2/text2read.htm
 * Ideas (2)**

Religion II: The First Great Awakening - Whitefield revivals described

Benjamin Franklin, 1739 Nathan Cole, 1740

Clergymen debate revivalism, 1742-1743

It is not hyperbole to describe George Whitefield, the English clergyman who riveted colonists with his dramatic evangelical preaching, as a star celebrity. In our day he would have appeared on the covers of People and Time and been interviewed on 60 Minutes and Good Morning, America. He was the "Grand Itinerant," the traveling preacher with no home church (a troublesome point for American clergy) who toured the colonies seven times from the 1730s to the 1760s, delivering open-air sermons that left his huge audiences spellbound, penitent, and with souls "awakened" (thus the term "Great Awakening").

His core question was that of all evangelicals—What must I do to be saved?—and his answer conformed with the prevalent Calvinist doctrine of predestination: that one's eternal fate (salvation or damnation) was determined by God before creation and manifested by a conversion experience, i.e., repentance and "rebirth." Where the evangelicals parted with traditional clergy was about the path to conversion: how one received God's divine grace. Evangelicals depicted a sudden, intense, and overpowering experience, achieved through one's direct personal relationship with God. Traditional clergy preached a more gradual and subtle conversion experience, achieved within the church through the rational guidance of learned ministers. To the critics, revivalism was a "great abandoning"—of the true path to godliness, of the clergy's role as interpreters of God's will, and of the stabilizing influence of the home church.

To an extent, the Great Awakening was a response to the unsettling implications of scientific inquiry and Enlightenment philosophy, aggravating the tension between evangelical and rationalist Christians (see #1: Religion and Reason). In Europe and America, writes historian Christine Heyrman, "a new Age of Faith rose to counter the currents of the Age of Enlightenment, to reaffirm the view that being truly religious meant trusting the heart rather than the head, prizing feeling more than thinking, and relying on biblical revelation rather than human reason."1 (See "The First Great Awakening" in Divining America: Religion in American History, in TeacherServe from the National Humanities Center). Here we examine these theological disputes spurred by the Great Awakening.

Whitefield revivals described. Let us first experience Whitefield's preaching vicariously. Among the millions of people who heard Whitefield (pronounced whit-field) in America were the farmer Nathan Cole, the enslaved African Olaudah Equiano, and Benjamin Franklin, who supported his campaign for an orphanage in Georgia and credited him with the improved moral behavior of common Philadelphians.

Clergymen debate revivalism. Revivalist preaching was not new to the colonies, but revivalism as a mass phenomenon arrived with Rev. Whitefield. The established clergy split on its merits, at times rancorously. "New Lights" such as Jonathan Edwards and Gilbert Tennent (revivalist preachers themselves) heralded the renewal of faith and the increase in church membership (especially among men and young people) and defended the transformative effect of emotion in religious experience (while encouraging some preachers to moderate their oratorical excesses). To "Old Lights" such as Charles Chauncy, revivalists were ill-guided exhorters offering sensationalist theater as religious experience. Here we read two Boston Puritan clergymen, Jonathan Edwards and Charles Chauncy, debate whether the Great Awakening served the "true Interest of Religion." What aspects of revivalism merit the praise of "New Lights" and the censure of "Old Lights"? Identify the religious and secular issues that divide these ministers.

As you read, consider the influence of the Great Awakening on the later revolutionary period. Revivalism was more egalitarian and independent, it is argued, its diverse audiences gathered in open fields instead of in denominational churches led by authoritarian clergy. Yet anointing the Great Awakening as a "rehearsal" for the Revolution is going too far, say many historians, for its effects were not pervasive or longlasting, and its immediate outcome was a lessening of religious, not political, encumbrance.

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/ideas/text3/text3read.htm
 * Ideas (3)**

- Is slavery Christian?, a pamphlet debate in Boston, 1700-1706 - What about slavery is unChristian?, Puritan, Anglican, and Quaker views, 1690-1760

Is slavery Christian? From a pamphlet war in Boston in the early 1700s, we glean the major religious arguments for and against slavery at the time.2 When judge Samuel Sewall condemned slavery in his essay The Selling of Joseph in 1700, his incensed colleague John Saffin published "a brief and candid answer," refuting Sewall's arguments one by one. Sewall didn't respond until 1705 when, opposed to an anti-miscegenation bill under consideration in the colonial assembly, he arranged for the printing and distribution of an English antislavery tract. A year later, the Puritan leader Rev. Cotton Mather published his own views in The Negro Christianized. Opposed to the slave trade but a slaveholder himself, Mather aimed his contempt at those who failed to educate their slaves in Christianity, and dispelled their fear that baptized slaves would warrant freedom.

What about slavery is unChristian? What does the Bible say about slavery? Is it wrong? Is it justifiable as long as slaves are treated humanely and led to Christianity? Is it God's way to bring "heathens" to a Christian land, thus saving their souls? Here we read brief excerpts from eight religious tracts on slavery from 1696 to 1759—two by the Puritan minister and slaveholder Cotton Mather, one by the Anglican evangelist George Whitefield (after visiting the southern colonies), and five from abolitionist Quakers (Society of Friends), whose insistent condemnation of slavery was voiced in many pamphlets as the American printing industry flourished in the 1700s. Upon what scriptural bases do these Protestants support their positions?

How do the writers interpret these scriptural texts in their arguments? Which texts are emphasized by the opposing positions? Which texts are used by both to buttress their opinions? (See biblegateway.com for quick reference.)

OLD TESTAMENT NEW TESTAMENT Genesis 9:25-27 Matthew 7:12 Genesis 37 John 13:34 Exodus 21:16 Acts 17:26-28 Leviticus 25:39-46 Colossians 3:11 Psalm 115:15-16 Revelation 18:10-13 Jeremiah 34:8-10