History of Christianity in America

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History of Christianity in America
The First Great Awakening and the Origins of
American Evangelicalism Park Street
Church Linford Fisher May 22, 2005 www.fisherkids
.net/psc2.htm
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Roger Williams

• desired more complete separation from the church
  of England
• didnt think the king of England had the right to
  grant native lands to the Puritans
• didnt believe the government should police
  spiritual matters
• banished from Boston in 1635 founded
  Providence, RI

Anne Hutchison on trial, 1637
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Antinomian Controversy
John Cotton (1585-1662)
Anne Hutchison on trial, 1637
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Punishments in 17th. New England

• Example cases
• c. 1633 Richard Hopkins was sentenced to be
  whipped and branded on one cheek for selling
  powder and bullets to the Indians
• 1635 Robert Scarlett to be whipped and branded
  on the forehead with a letter T and banished for
  felony
• March 4, 1633 It is ordered that Robert Coles
  for drunkenness by him committed at Rocksbury
  shalbe disfranchised, wear about his necke soe
  to hang upon his outward garmet a D made of redd
  cloath sett upon white, to contynue this for a
  yeare not to leave it of att any time when he
  comes amongst company under penalty of a fine

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Treatment of Quakers in Mass Bay

• first offense imprisoned, banished (sometimes
  whipped and put to hard labor)
• second offense branded with an H on the hand,
  imprisoned, assigned to hard work, banished
• third offense branded on the other hand,
  imprisoned assigned to hard labor
• fourth offense tongue bored through with hot
  iron, imprisonment, hard labor
• final recourse hanging

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Treatment of Quakers in Mass Bay

• June 1, 1660 Hanging of Mary Dyer on the Boston
  Common
• Between 1658 and 1664 in Massachusetts twenty-two
  Quakers had been banished on pain of death,,
  three had their right ear cut off, one had been
  burned in the hand with a letter H, three had
  been ordered by the court to be sent to Barbados
  as slaves, thirty-one had received six hundred
  and fifty stripes administered with extreme
  cruelty, 1044 of property had been taken, and
  four hanged

Statue of Mary Dyer at Mass State House
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Puritans and toleration

• Puritanism is the fear that someone somewhere
  is having a good time. H.L. Mencken (20th c.
  author)
• He that is willing to tolerate any Religion, or
  discrepant way of Religion, besides his own,
  unlesse it be in matters meerly indifferent,
  either doubts of his own, or is not sincere in
  it.
• Nathaniel Ward, The Simple Cobbler of Aggawam
  (c. 1646)
• "To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but
  simply to kill a man. Sebastian Castellio
  (after Calvin had the anti-Trinitarian Michael
  Servetus burned at the stake in Geneva in 1553)

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Cotton Mather

• focused on piety
• ecumenical efforts connected with larger
  religious world
• corresponded with German pietists
• participated in the ordination of a Baptist
  minister
• emphasis on evangelism and moral reform societies

Cotton Mather
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Snapshot of Colonies, c. 1740

• Massachusetts (1620/1630 Puritan)
• Connecticut (1636 Puritan)
• Rhode Island (1636 Puritan/Baptist)
• New Hampshire (1638 Puritan)

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Snapshot of Colonies, c. 1740

• New York (1626, Dutch Dutch Reformed taken
  over by British in 1660s)
• Maryland (1633 Catholic)
• Delaware (1638, Swedish)
• New Jersey (1664)
• Pennsylvania (1682 Quaker)

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Snapshot of Colonies, c. 1740

• Virginia (1607 Anglican)
• South Carolina (1653 Anglican)
• North Carolina (1663 Anglican)
• Georgia (1732)

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Presbyterianism in America

• Presbyterianism a form of church government that
  emerged out of the Reformed tradition
• Presbyterianism brought to U.S. by immigrants
  from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland
• Francis Makemie (1658-1708) Father of U.S.
  Presbyterianism
• Makemie founded first Presbyterian church in the
  New World in 1684 in Snow Hill, Maryland

Francis Makemie (1658-1708)
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Quakers

• Founded by George Fox in England in 1647
• Criticized formal, external religion focused on
  the Inner Light of Christ and the immediacy of
  revelation
• Pennsylvania established by Quaker William Penn
  in 1682 as an intentionally religiously tolerant
  colony
• Rhode Island and Pennsylvania two centers of
  Quaker activity

George Fox
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Methodism

• 1729 John and Charles Wesley formed the Holy
  Club at Oxford
• 1736-8 served as a missionary to Native
  Americans in Georgia
• 1738 returned home had his heart strangely
  warmed at a Moravian meeting
• Rise of evangelical Methodism (within
  Anglicanism) corresponded with revivals in America

John Wesley (1703-1791)
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• became pastor in Northampton with his
  grandfather Solomon Stoddard in 1724
• Two main periods of revival 1734/5 and early
  1740s
• Early on he embraced revival by the 1740s he
  began to pull back from the excesses of the
  revivals
• Congregation ousted him in 1750 went to
  Stockbridge, Mass. for seven years, as a
  missionary to the Native Americans
• In 1757 invited to be the president of Princeton
  University died in 1758 six months after moving
  to NJ

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
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• Made huge preaching tours of the American
  colonies
• emphasized preaching out of doors and to the
  common people neglected by the established
  churches
• Used engaging methods no sermon notes, spoke
  forcefully and with emotion and charisma
• Was widely popular in America throughout all the
  colonies
• Whitefield greatly popularized this new way of
  doing church and a new emphasis on conversion,
  piety, and religious experience

George Whitefield (1715-1770)
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• Danger of an Unconverted Ministry
• stressed the importance of having a converted
  minister encouraged congregations to get rid of
  their minister if he was not converted

Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764)
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Charles Chauncy (1705-1787)
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)