The First Great Awakening: Religious Revival and Cultural Transformation in Colonial America

Vocabulary flashcards generated from lecture notes on the First Great Awakening in colonial America.

First Great Awakening

A major religious revival movement sweeping across the American colonies in the 1730s–1740s, characterized by emotional preaching, personal spiritual rebirth, and large-scale gatherings.

Anglican Church

The Church of England, which served as the official church of the British colonies.

Congregational Church

A Christian denomination in the New England colonies that developed out of the Puritan church.

New Lights

The revivalist preachers and evangelists of the Great Awakening, such as George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley.

Old Lights

Anglican and traditional Puritan leaders who criticized George Whitefield and the emotional revivalist preaching of the Great Awakening.

George Whitefield

An eloquent and dramatic revivalist minister from England (1714–1770) who traveled throughout the colonies preaching gospel revivals and maintained a 30-year friendship with Benjamin Franklin.

Jonathan Edwards

A New England Congregationalist theologian, pastor, and Princeton president (1703–1758) educated at Yale who preached repentance before God and remained a Calvinist.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

The most famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards, preached at Enfield on July 8th, 1741, which vividly depicted human sinfulness and God's wrath.

John Wesley

An Oxford-educated Anglican minister (1703–1791) and founder of the Methodist denomination who served as religious leader of the Georgia colony from 1736 to 1737, rejected Calvinist predestination, and supported the abolition of slavery.

John Wesley's American Parish

A National Historic Landmark in Savannah, Georgia, commemorating the site of John Wesley's inclusive ministry embracing Native Americans and colonists from February 6, 1736 to December 2, 1737.

Eruditio et Religio

The Latin motto of Duke University (founded as a Methodist university in 1838), meaning 'Knowledge and Faith'.

Democratization of Religion

The shift toward viewing salvation as open to everyone through faith and personal choice, fostering religious individualism and laying egalitarian foundations prior to the American Revolution.

Phillis Wheatley

An enslaved African woman living in Boston who became a celebrated poet, publishing 'Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral' in 1773 and corresponding with General George Washington in 1775.

On Being Brought from Africa to America

A poem written by Phillis Wheatley expressing religious conversion and asserting that Black people can be spiritually refined and join the Christian faith equally.

Dr. Squintum's Exaltation or the Reformation

A satirical political engraving targeting George Whitefield (caricatured as Dr. Squintum) and criticizing Methodist revivalist enthusiasm.