The Great Awakening

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

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

 

 

 

In late 17th Century England, fighting between religious and political groups came to a halt with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, an event which established the Church of England as the reigning church of the country. Other religions, such as Catholicism, Judaism, and Puritanism, were subsequently suppressed. From a political perspective, this led to stability since everyone now practiced the same religion. But instead of being a positive driving force for religious belief in general, it created complacency and spiritual “dryness” among believers. Religion became something of a pastime in which people would “go through the motions” during religious services without deeply-felt convictions of the heart and soul. It was only after some decades of this kind of complacency in both England and the American colonies that the spiritual “revival” of the Great Awakening came about. The fire leapt over to the Baptists of Pennsylvania and Virginia before the extraordinary awakening that began in Northampton, Massachusetts, under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards in December 1734.