Great Awakening

== First Great Awakening ==
{{main|First Great Awakening}}
{{Historical Christian theology}}

The First Great Awakening began in the 1730s and lasted to about 1740, though pockets of revivalism had occurred in years prior, especially amongst the ministry of [[Solomon Stoddard]], [[Jonathan Edwards (theologian)|Jonathan Edwards]]' grandfather.{{sfn|Curtis|1991|p=135}} Edwards' congregation was involved in a revival later called the "Frontier Revivals" in the mid-1730s, though this was on the wane by 1737.{{sfn|Ahlstrom|1972|p=283}} But as American religious historian [[Sydney E. Ahlstrom]] noted, the Great Awakening "was still to come, ushered in by the Grand Itinerant",{{sfn|Ahlstrom|1972|p=283}} the British evangelist [[George Whitefield]]. Whitefield arrived in Georgia in 1738, and returned in 1739 for a second visit of the Colonies, making a "triumphant campaign north from Philadelphia to New York, and back to the South".{{sfn|Ahlstrom|1972|p=283}} In 1740, he visited New England, and "at every place he visited, the consequences were large and tumultuous". Ministers from various evangelical Protestant denominations supported the Great Awakening.{{sfn|Kidd|2007}} In the middle colonies, he influenced not only the British churches, but the Dutch and German.

Additionally, pastoral styles began to change. In the late colonial period, most pastors read their sermons, which were theologically dense and advanced a particular theological argument or interpretation. [[Nathan O. Hatch]] argues that the evangelical movement of the 1740s played a key role in the development of democratic thought,{{sfn|Hatch|1989}}{{Disputed inline|date=October 2015}} as well as the belief of the free press and the belief that information should be shared and completely unbiased and uncontrolled.{{sfn|Copeland|2006|p=173}} Michał Choiński argues that the First Great Awakening marks the birth of the American "rhetoric of the revival" understood as "a particular mode of preaching in which the speaker employs and it has a really wide array of patterns and communicative strategies to initiate religious conversions and spiritual regeneration among the hearers".{{sfn|Choiński|2016|p=51}} All these theological, social, and rhetorical notions ushered in the period of the American Revolution. This contributed to create a demand for religious freedom.{{sfn|Corbett|Corbett-Hemeyer|Wilson|2014|pp=37–38}} The Great Awakening represented the first time African Americans embraced Christianity in large numbers.{{sfn|Chacon|Scoggins|2014|pp=36–37}}

In the later part of the 1700s the Revival came to the English colonies of [[Nova Scotia]], [[New Brunswick]], and [[Prince Edward Island]], primarily through the efforts of [[Henry Alline]] and his New Light movement.{{sfn|Stewart|1982}}