Church history 路 Module 105
馃敟 The Great Awakening and Charles Finney
The revivals that shaped American Protestantism and the theologians who argued over them: Puritan New England, Jonathan Edwards and Northampton, George Whitefield and Franklin's account, Gilbert Tennent and the Old Light and New Light split, Edwards as a thinker, the Awakening, the Baptists and religious liberty, Hopkins, Bellamy, Dwight and Witherspoon, Cane Ridge and the camp meetings, Charles Finney's conversion, new measures, theology and Oberlin, the Burned-Over District, and Princeton against New Haven. Each side of the Calvinist and Arminian argument in its own words, from the primary sources.
How to read this module
This is a study of the record, not an argument for one school. The Calvinist, Arminian and Wesleyan positions that run through these revivals are each stated in their own writers' words, with footnotes to the first or standard editions: Edwards, Whitefield, Tennent, Backus, Hopkins, Witherspoon, Stone, Finney, Taylor and Hodge. Crowd and convert numbers are estimates and are labelled with who made them and when.
The movements born in the same years (the Millerites, the Latter-day Saints, the Spiritualists and Oneida) are described in their founders' own words and by the record, without ranking faiths. Popular claims are rated in each lesson's "Claims checked" section, and hard questions from every side are answered from the evidence.
Status: built and fact checked October 28, 2026. Every lesson was checked by an independent checker against primary sources; quotations were matched word for word against the editions named. Each lesson ends with a short "Still being checked" list of points not yet confirmed. The denominations behind these revivals are in Church History, Part B; the founding-era people and ideas are in Liberty and the Republic.
- 1Colonial Religion Before 1730: Puritans, the Half-Way Covenant and the Established ChurchesBefore the Great Awakening, the colonies had already built their churches and their quarrels. This lesson reads the founding documents: Winthrop's "Modell of Christian Charity" and the dispute over where it was delivered, the Cambridge Platform (1648), the Half-Way Covenant (1662), Solomon Stoddard's open communion and five "harvests," the Reforming Synod (1679), the Saybrook Platform (1708), and the established churches and charters of liberty from Massachusetts to South Carolina. It closes with the ministers' claim of declension and how historians have tested it.45 min
- 2The First Great Awakening: Edwards at Northampton, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and the Connecticut Valley RevivalsHow a revival at Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1734 and 1735 became the model for the colonial awakening through Jonathan Edwards's A Faithful Narrative, and how the wider revival of 1740 to 1742 produced Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Enfield, July 8, 1741), The Distinguishing Marks and Some Thoughts. The lesson reads the texts closely, weighs Edwards's convert numbers as the estimates they are, and separates the documented record from later legend.55 min
- 3George Whitefield: The Traveling Preacher, the Crowds and Benjamin Franklin's AccountGeorge Whitefield (1714 to 1770) took the new birth into the fields at Kingswood in 1739 and then up and down the American colonies, making seven visits and linking local revivals into one public event. This lesson follows his 1739 to 1741 tour from his Journals, quotes Benjamin Franklin's account of the Philadelphia hall, the collection plate and the crowd calculation exactly, tests the crowd figures, and sets out his record on slavery, his split with John Wesley and his death at Newburyport in his own words and the words of his historians.55 min
- 4Gilbert Tennent, Old Lights and New Lights, Old Side and New SideHow the revival of 1739 to 1742 divided the churches that experienced it. Gilbert Tennent's sermon The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry (1740), the Presbyterian Old Side and New Side schism of 1741 and its reunion in 1758, the founding of the College of New Jersey, and in New England the Old Lights, New Lights, James Davenport's New London book burning and retractions, Charles Chauncy's critique, the Separates and the Separate Baptists, each told from its own documents.45 min
- 5Jonathan Edwards the Thinker: Religious Affections, Freedom of the Will and the Stockbridge YearsAfter the revival of the 1740s Jonathan Edwards wrote the books that made him a lasting thinker: Religious Affections (1746) on telling true religion from false, Freedom of the Will (1754) with its distinction between natural and moral inability, Original Sin (1758) and the two dissertations on God's end in creation and on true virtue (1765). This lesson follows his dismissal from Northampton over the Lord's Supper (June 22, 1750), the Stockbridge mission among the Mohicans, his death after smallpox inoculation as president of the College of New Jersey (March 22, 1758), his wife Sarah Pierpont Edwards, and the record of his slaveholding, each from the documents and in the words of his supporters and critics.55 min
- 6The Great Awakening and the Revolution: The Case For and Against a Link, Isaac Backus and John LelandDid the revivals of the 1740s help bring on the Revolution? This lesson sets out the case for a link (Heimert, Bonomi, McLoughlin), the case against (Butler, Lambert, Wood, Hatch, Noll) and Thomas Kidd's middle position, then follows the evangelical Baptists' fight against tax-supported churches in their own words: Isaac Backus's Appeal (1773) and the 1774 meeting with the Massachusetts delegates, John Leland and Madison in Virginia, the Danbury Baptists' letter and Jefferson's "wall of separation" (January 1, 1802), the mammoth cheese, and the end of the state establishments from 1776 to 1833.50 min
- 7Early American Theologians: Samuel Hopkins, Joseph Bellamy, Timothy Dwight and John WitherspoonAfter Jonathan Edwards died in 1758, his students Joseph Bellamy and Samuel Hopkins built the New Divinity: natural ability and moral inability, disinterested benevolence, the governmental atonement and some of the earliest antislavery writing by New England ministers, carried on by Jonathan Edwards Jr., Nathanael Emmons and Lemuel Haynes. Timothy Dwight, Edwards's grandson, led Yale through the revival of 1802 and modified the system, while John Witherspoon brought Scottish common sense philosophy to Princeton, preached on providence in May 1776 and signed the Declaration. Each is quoted from his own books, with the scholarly debates about where each belongs.55 min
- 8The Second Great Awakening: Cane Ridge, Camp Meetings, Circuit Riders and the FrontierFrom the Presbyterian sacramental meetings of Logan County, Kentucky (1800) to the great communion at Cane Ridge (August 1801), this lesson reads the eyewitness accounts of McGready, Stone and Cartwright, sets every crowd estimate beside its source, and follows the camp meeting into Methodist hands. It covers Asbury and the circuit riders, Methodist growth from the Minutes and Finke and Stark's estimates, the Cumberland Presbyterians, Richard Allen and the AME Church, and the quieter New England revivals of Dwight, Beecher and Nettleton.50 min
- 9Charles Finney: The Conversion, the Rochester Revival and the New MeasuresCharles G. Finney, a law student at Adams, New York, was converted on October 10, 1821, and by 1825 was leading revivals across central New York. This lesson follows him from his own account of that conversion through the Oneida County revivals, the protests of Asahel Nettleton and Lyman Beecher and the New Lebanon Convention of 1827, to Rochester in 1830 to 1831 and his New York pulpits. It sets out the "new measures" (anxious meetings, protracted meetings, the anxious seat, praying by name, women praying in mixed meetings) in Finney's words and his critics', and weighs the convert numbers and Paul Johnson's reading of Rochester.60 min
- 10Finney's Theology: Lectures on Revivals, Systematic Theology and the Debate with the Old SchoolWhat Charles Finney taught, in his own words from the 1835 Lectures on Revivals and the 1846 to 1847 Oberlin Lectures on Systematic Theology: revival by means, natural ability, sin as choice, the governmental atonement and justification as pardon. Where those ideas came from (Edwards Jr., Taylor, Grotius), how Charles Hodge's 1847 review and B. B. Warfield's 1921 articles answered them, how Finney replied, and how the charge of Pelagianism looks when the texts are set side by side.55 min
- 11Finney, Oberlin and Reform: Abolition, Women, Perfectionism and the LegacyHow Charles Finney came to Oberlin in 1835 after the Lane Seminary walkout, on conditions that put admissions in the faculty's hands and opened the school to Black students. The lesson follows Oberlin's first women graduates, Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown, Finney's words and strategy on slavery, the Oberlin doctrine of entire sanctification, the Oberlin-Wellington rescue of 1858, Finney's last years, and how historians from Warfield to Hatch judge his legacy.60 min
- 12The Burned-Over District and Its Offshoots: Millerites, Latter-day Saints, Spiritualists and OneidaWestern and central New York, opened by the Erie Canal, produced a cluster of new movements between 1825 and 1850: the Millerites and the Seventh-day Adventists who came from them, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, modern Spiritualism, the Shaker villages of Sodus Bay and Groveland, and John Humphrey Noyes's Oneida Community. This lesson traces the name from Finney's 'burnt district' to Whitney Cross, sets out what each movement taught in its founders' own words, checks the dates and numbers against the records, and reports how other Christians answered, without judging any claimed revelation.55 min
- 13Charles Hodge and Princeton, Nathaniel Taylor and New Haven: Old School and New SchoolPrinceton Seminary (1812) and Yale's Nathaniel Taylor gave rival answers to the questions the revivals raised: what sin is, what a sinner is able to do, and how Presbyterians and Congregationalists should work together. This lesson follows the argument through Taylor's Concio ad Clerum (1828), the Beecher and Barnes heresy trials, the abrogation of the Plan of Union and the Old School and New School division of 1837 to 1838, the 1861 Gardiner Spring Resolutions and Hodge's protest, and the reunion of 1869 to 1870, quoting each side from its own documents.55 min
- 14Review: Timeline, Terms and How the Awakenings Still Shape American EvangelicalismThe review lesson of the module sets the whole story from 1630 to 1875 on one timeline, places every major figure in a who-is-who table and on a Calvinist to Arminian map built from their own words, and weighs whether "awakening" is a useful category at all. It then follows the line from Finney to Moody, Billy Sunday and Billy Graham, the altar call, the Holiness and Pentecostal churches, Bebbington's definition of evangelicalism and the revivals' part in religious liberty, abolition and temperance, and ends with the primary texts to read first.55 min
Related courses
- Church History, Part B: Denominations: the Congregationalists and Puritans, Calvinism and Arminianism, the Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists, and the Restoration movement that came out of Cane Ridge.
- Church History, Part C: American Movements, Calvary Chapel and Vineyard: Pietism and the Holiness movement, Pentecostalism and what evangelicalism means.
- Church History, Part A: Beginnings to the Reformation: Augustine and Pelagius, Calvin and the Reformation.
- People of the Revolution: John Witherspoon, Lemuel Haynes, Samson Occom, Benjamin Rush and Phillis Wheatley.
- Principles of Liberty and Ideas and Values Since the Enlightenment: virtue, faith and self-government, and the Scottish Enlightenment behind Princeton.