In January and February, I’m teaching a class on Religious Affections for my church in Sunday School. As such, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the awakenings that Edwards and much of Colonial New England experienced in the mid-eighteenth century. Every time I read the Affections, I’m struck by the balance that Edwards achieves [...]

As with any cultural, social, religious, etc. movement, the Great Awakening was not immune to criticism. Those unhappy with the stirrings of revival cited excesses among the so-called “enthusiasts,” as they sought to discredit what was going on. One of the biggest problems these critics had was in regard to “lay exhorters.” Here is a [...]

On July 8, 1741, at the First Church of Christ in Enfield, Massachusetts (Enfield, Connecticut today), Jonathan Edwards delivered perhaps the most famous sermon in American history. For good or ill (mostly ill, in my opinion), Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God has been cast as the archetypal 18th century Puritan sermon, sometimes [...]

With a short teaser of the period of the Great Awakening given by Dr. Harry Stout the previous day, today we were to look at Edwards and the awakening in greater detail. In the years just before the awakenings really took off a highly noticeable declension in church attendance and new membership was plaguing the [...]

The rise of American evangelicalism has long fascinated scholars.  In his recent work, The Great Awakening, Thomas S. Kidd presents the story of American evangelicalism through the lens of the concurrent rise of American revivalism.  Revivalism has often been discussed in terms of the “First” and “Second” Great Awakenings, but such a dichotomy does not [...]

I’m still reading through Kidd’s The Great Awakening and came across this story that needs to be shared.  The story involves Philip Mulkey, a rough and tumble back country man, who would later help found a Separate Baptist church in South Carolina in 1760.  Kidd describes that shortly after his conversion, Mulkey began to preach, [...]

I’m currently working through Thomas Kidd’s recent work, The Great Awakening, and he broaches a question that I’ve often asked myself, but never really thought too deeply on.  That question is, “why do we remember Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?”  Of all the revival sermons that were preached in the various revival [...]