1. A NEW ORDER OF THE AGES
THE GREAT AWAKENING
1

2. THE UNITED STATES BEGIN
• On July 4, 1776 Benjamin Franklin and Thomas
Jefferson were appointed as a committee to prepare a
Seal of the United States of America. By the time of
final adoption the biblical content nearly evaporated,
they found in the Bible those symbols that would unite
and interpret their people’s experience. One out of
many has smiled on our undertakings 1776 a new
order of the ages.
• No one knows exactly what they meant by new order
of the ages, it is the rhetoric of the revolution. No
event marked the new order for Christianity more
clearly that the religious explosion we call the Great
Awakening, the first in the long history of American
revivals.
2

3. NEW ORDER FOR THE CHURCHES
• The reformation unintentionally shattered
traditional Christendom. It prayed and preached
and fought for the true faith until no single
church remained, only what we now call
denominations.
• The churches was faced with the problem of
providing everyone in the colonies religious
freedom to proclaim its own view. The only way
each group could get such freedom for
themselves was to grant it to all the others.
3

4. VOLUNTARYISM
• The condition the church found themselves
in, was they could not have a state church. Now
they had to depend of voluntaryism because the
state would no longer support the churches. They
had to grow and maintain their mission of
preaching and teaching on a voluntary basis. Men
could accept or reject the gospel as they pleased.
• The Great Awakening proved crucial in the “new
order”. It convinced hosts of Christians that
voluntaryism could work. After the first ecstatic
waves of the Spirit, many believers considered
revivals God's gift for the creation of a Christian
America. 4

5. GOD’S WILL IN SOCIETY
• A Christian people if they are to enjoy the
corporate blessings that God alone can give, must
walk in His ways and fulfill His commands even in
their civil government.
• God’s will was embodied in “wholesome laws”.
Puritans held that law without a moral base is no
law at all. Since the sins of men are like raging
seas which would overwhelm all if they have not
banks. The test of any law, however, was whether
or not it advanced the public good, which was
another way of saying fulfilling God’s will in
society.
5

6. LEGISLATE MORALITY
• This attempt to legislate morality is one reason
later Americans came to hate the Puritans.
Because it did not allow what Americans prized
most their personal freedoms.
• The Puritans holy experiment blending belief in a
church of the truly converted with the idea of a
Christian state seemed destined to fail almost
from the start. There are problems in operating
any church on earth when only God knows who
the real members are.
6

7. WORLDLY PURITANS/GODLY PURITANS
• After the eighteenth century, two types of
Puritans were visible. The spiritual heritage fell to
the children of the Great Awakening. The call for
personal conversion as the basis of church
membership soon echoed throughout the
Connecticut River valley. The preaching of
Jonathan Edwards
• The worldly puritans continued the Puritan sense
of civic responsibility and concern for lawful
government. Even when they could no longer feel
the dread of living before the awesome Lord of
history, these colonialists still held that empires
rose and fell depending on whether men obeyed
or disobeyed the design of Divine Providence.
7

8. THE GREAT REVIVALIST
• George Whitefield he was brought to the colonies
by the Wesley brothers in 1739, and he preached
his way through Georgia, the
Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and
New York. He left the colonies after a month but
by now the revivals had become a hurricane.
• Edwards was a brilliant psychologist, and a
brilliant theologian, and the third president of
Princeton. Some think he was only a revivalist
preacher of hellfire and brimstone.
8

9. ADVOCATE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
• Isaac Backus: in 1741 a seventeen year old Isaac
mother was converted to Christianity. Not long after
his conversion Isaac Backus felt the call to join the
ranks of the revivalists.
• He formulated and publicized the evangelical position
of the church and state that was ultimately to prevail
throughout America.
• In 1769, Baptists in New England formed the Warren
Association to advance the cause. Basic to the Baptist
position was the belief that all direct connections
between the state and institutionalized religion must
be broken.
9

10. ADVOCATE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
CONT.
• By resisting established churches the revivalists
never intended to surrender their dream for a
Christian America.
• In 1760 that was more than an empty dream.
From 1740-1742 the Awakening had swept
25,000-50,000 members into the New England
churches alone.
• As a lasting legacy what the revivalists had set out
to do was finalized when the Constitution was
created the very First Amendment stated
“Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof. 10