The Great Awakening:Reflection

This is the final "reflection" blog for this section. The First Great Awakening, occurring around 1730s  and  1740s, had a profound impact on the course of the United States. Although not widely spoken of in modern times, the Great Awakening was a movement rooted in spiritual growth which brought a religious  identity to Colonial America. Christians, Quakers, and Puritans wanted to express themselves. The Declaration of Independence inculcated for the "social compact."

 Influential preachers like Jonathan Edwards who wrote the powerful speech "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," had a tremendous impact throughout the Great Awakening. It encouraged people to express their beliefs, which in England at the time was mostly Christianity. 

Question: Compare the ways in which religion shaped the development of colonial society (to 1740) in two of the following regions:New England,Chesapeake,Middle Atlantic

Thesis:During the 1730s and the 1740s, the mother country went through a series of revolutions that fought for religious freedom and therefore crossed social,political, and economic changes. The Great Awakening was major impact to the New England colonies and shaped their society and caused, many colonist to creativity. 

Through the Awakening, the Colonists realized that religious power resided in their own hands, rather than in the hands of the Church of England, or any other religious authority.This goes back to Johnathan Edwards and another preacher George Whitefield.  After a generation or two passed with this kind of mindset, the Colonists came to realize that political power did not reside in the hands of the English monarch, but in their own will for self-governance (consider the wording of the Declaration of Independence). 

By 1775, even though the Colonists did not all share the same theological beliefs; they did share a common vision of freedom from British control.