The Great Awakening and Its Effect on the Society
and Religion of the Connecticut River Valley
by Meaghan S. McCormick

The Great Awakening was a religious movement during the 1730's and 1740's in which itinerant ministers presented powerful messages of salvation and which provided early Americans with a greater sense of nationality. This religious movement also had a lasting effect upon the manner in which the people in the American colonies viewed themselves, their relationships with each other, and their faith. The Great Awakening and its " 'fire' of spiritual enthusiasm leaped out toward the Connecticut Valley" and Western Massachusetts. (Demos, p.199). While "[t]his prairie fire of revivals started with several local flames in the brush," one of its most notable points of origin was in the Connecticut River Valley under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards. Then, as the movement grew, it became "a conflagration through all the colonies by the extraordinary English traveling evangelist George Whitefield." (Miller, pp. 209-210).

In the 1700's, most Americans were scattered throughout the countryside. Traveling from one colony to another and from one city to another was difficult. ( Newhouse, p. 59). There were often no roads and few bridges. Mail was irregular. Communities of the day were centered around a church or meetinghouse which were the centers of worship, business, and social gatherings. The ministers of these churches were much more than preachers. They were highly respected members of the community, who many times served as doctors, teachers, and even counselors.

Significantly, "the church also prepared people for death." (Newhouse, p.59) The possibility of death in colonial times was everywhere. Such adversities as the severity of climate, disease carried by insects, animal attacks, high fevers, floods, malnutrition, and complications resulting from childbirth were experienced on a daily basis throughout the colonies. In this perilous time, the established church taught that without God's forgiveness for sins in life, a person would burn in hell for eternity. Members were told that they needed the church each day in order to attain salvation. Because of this belief, many felt that they needed their church as much as food, clothing, and shelter. (Newhouse, p. 63). The sermons during this time presented a picture of gloom and damnation. For instance, Jonathan Edwards, the famous preacher from Enfield, Connecticut, often told his congregation that they "hung by a slender thread," inferring that without the church's guidance and instruction, and the strict observance of a pious life, sinners would drop into the pit of hell. (Newhouse, p.59).

Settlements were growing rapidly, both in number and size. This presented a problem for the church, for it was unable to meet the needs and demands of the colonists as they continued to spread across the land. Because of the problems presented by remoteness and difficulties of communication, "those who went to no church at all remained the majority." ( Nash, p. 124). This religious apathy was a great concern of the established church in the early 18th century.

In the beginning of the 1730's, itinerant ministers began to travel throughout the colonies and to preach about God in such places as meetinghouses, greens, city streets, and clearings. These traveling preachers provided a diversion from the boredom and rigors of daily life. More importantly, in their sermons they presented a hope for salvation that seemed far more attainable than that which colonists had heard from ordained ministers. These itinerant evangelists were lay ministers, generally untrained and unrecognized by the established churches of the day. They would present a message of salvation in which the audience became very moved and inspired. This was accomplished by the use of unorthodox methods. George Whitefield, perhaps the greatest of these preachers, and others "turned the church into a theater with dramatic gestures...divines preached sermons laden with vivid, terrifying images of the torments of hell. The pathos, simplicity, and stark violence of such appealed to people of all classes, ethnic groups and races." (Davidson, p.143). The preachers, at times, "became frenzied to the point of hysteria, with the congregation weeping, screaming and writhing in the ecstasy of salvation." (Weisberger, p.470). Their approach was most effective. "Leaders of the Great Awakening had known how to rake a mass of hearers over the coals of hell so earnestly that they infected one another with apprehensive hysteria and eventual joy as 'the victory' succeeded 'conviction of sin.'" (Furnas, p.327). These evangelists appealed so greatly to the public that they drew huge crowds. Whitefield is said to have preached in Boston "to 19,000 in three days. Then, at a farewell sermon, he left 25,000 writhing in fear of damnation." (Nash, p.128). Moved by their powerful speeches and their renewed faith in their salvation, many colonists would then organize churches, build houses, and hire ministers to help them in their new Christian life. (Newhouse, p.63).

New England, and certainly the Connecticut River Valley, was feeling the effects of the religious revival brought on by the Great Awakening. On July 7, 1741, Jonathan Edwards presented a moving sermon in Enfield, Connecticut, which has been described as "one of the most famous sermons in all American history: Edwards's depiction of 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.'" (Demos, p.199). Interestingly, there was recorded in history only one eyewitness account of this sermon - that of Longmeadow's own Stephen Williams. Williams, Longmeadow's first minister, was famous as the "Boy Captive of Old Deerfield," having been kidnapped by Indians in the Deerfield massacre in 1704. By the time of the period of the Great Awakening and its itinerant preachers, Williams had long since returned to civilization and had become a minister following his education at Harvard University. (Rodger and Rogeness, pp.14-15). His vivid account of the fiery sermon by Edwards, himself a Northampton native, is recorded in his diaries that have been transcribed and can be found in the Storrs Library in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. (Stephen Williams Diary, pp.374-384).

Not everyone, however, approved of the existence or the methods of these ministers. There were those who felt that the Great Awakening brought about " turmoil that threatened the existence of many established religions." (Weisberger, p.470). The popularity of what the itinerant preachers had to say appealed more to the heart than to the head. "They preached that the established, college-trained clergy was too intellectual and traditional-bound to bring faith and piety to a new generation." (Nash, p.128). The movement itself was sending the message to the ordinary person that religions and all classes of people were equal, a novel idea to many at the time, and one unpopular to the established church. "The Awakening promoted religious pluralism and nourished the idea that all denominations were equally legitimate; none had a monopoly on the truth." (Nash, p.130). Understandably, this was disturbing, even repugnant to the upper class, who were used to a system in which they were considered superior and therefore alone enjoyed certain rights and privileges.

One can only speculate how the principles of the Great Awakening were received in a town like Longmeadow, with its share of well to do citizens. There may well have been a reluctance to accept these ideas. This appears to have been the attitude of Stephen Williams himself. "Williams's reaction to the Great Awakening and to the endless pamphlet wars that debated religious issues was one of skepticism and amazement at the emotional excesses which the Great Awakening triggered." (Rodgers and Rogeness, p.15).

As the Great Awakening swept through the colonies, it had varying effects in different regions. In New England, this movement was introduced at a time when both political and social relationships among the people were in a state of turmoil. One class, generally made up of wealthy merchants, was often at odds with another class, comprised of "local traders, artisans, and the laboring poor..." (Nash, p.129). In Boston, a controversy had arisen between these two groups concerning the need to issue new currency. While the wealthy supported a currency backed by silver, the latter favored a currency backed by land. When such ministers as George Whitefield began preaching in New England, the gentry expected the spiritual message to serve more as a diversion to their adversaries, and to "restore social harmony by redirecting people from earthly matters such as the currency dispute to concerns of the soul." (Nash, p.129). But, what the elite soon heard was a common theme in these sermons that emphasized equality among religions and among classes. "Respectable people grew convinced that revivalism had gotten out of hand, for by this time ordinary people were verbally attacking opponents of the land bank in the streets as 'carnal wretches, hypocrites, fighters against God, children of the devil, cursed Pharisees.'" (Nash, p.129). These seemingly harmless religious events had now, in fact, effected the region's politics and social harmony. Interestingly, the revival movement created great controversy within the New England clergy as well. Two groups formed, "one heartily supported the revival and its methods; the other condemned and looked upon its results as but temporary." (Sweet, p. 134). The result in New England was that a religious revival, intended to preach salvation, had given rise to political and social unrest that challenged the traditional roles in society that both lay people and clergy had lived by for many years. The Great Awakening made clear "the interests of The New Englander in fundamental law, his belief that any violation of it by those in authority was tyranny and that revolt against such tyranny was legal and not only legal but a religious duty. What civil and religious liberty, property, and equality meant to both clergy and laity at the opening of the revolution can not be fully grasped without a study of the Great Awakening." (Baldwin, p. 47).

In the southern colonies, the Great Awakening was again an unwelcome challenge to the established and privileged position of the upper class. "As in other colonies, Virginia's leaders despised traveling evangelists, for like lay exhorters, these roving Awakeners conjured up a world without properly constituted authority." (Nash, p.129). The Presbyterian form of the revival in Virginia, for example, had more than a religious effect. "Indeed, it was the 'first mass movement that was to bring about a social and political upheaval in Virginia - the first breach in the ranks of privilege.'"(Sweet, p.149). A Baptist influence to the Awakening was seen in both New England and in the southern colonies, although it was more rapid in the North. "Those responsible for the Baptist revival in Virginia and North Carolina came directly from New England and were the products of the great New England awakening." (Sweet, p.150).

As in New England, the traveling ministers in the south emphasized the "conversion experience." Many of these preachers were not only unordained, but even "uneducated farmers who called themselves 'Christ's poor.' They stressed equality in human affairs and insisted that heaven was always more populated by the humble poor than by the purse - proud rich."(Nash, p. 129). It is not surprising that this message, which was so popular to the poor and the large number of southern slaves, was disturbing to the rich.

Although the Great Awakening, as a religious movement, had come to an end by the early 1740's, its effects were long lasting. In both New England and the South, "social changes had weakened the cultural authority of the upper class and, in the context of religious revival, produced a vision of society drawn along more equal lines."(Nash, p. 130). The Awakening in the end "had lasting social effects as a more tolerant and democratic popular spirit began to emerge in the colonies. It was carried over into social and political thought."(Weisberger, p. 470). The Great Awakening had brought about a change of values that effected politics and daily life. It had created within the common man "a new feeling of self-worth. People assumed new responsibilities in religious affairs and became skeptical of dogma and authority."(Nash, p. 131). These attitudes were the beginnings of a sense of independence and equality that would set the stage for the American Revolution. And, as the spirit of independence was proclaimed in the colonies by the Declaration of Independence, it was often the local clergy, such as Stephen Williams who rose to read to their congregations the words of that document which would spark independence in America and elsewhere.