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In his chapter on the religious revivals that transpired in British colonial America during the eighteenth century, Taylor debunks the popular myth that North America was colonized solely for the purposes of religious freedom. Aside from the Quakers, who genuinely sought a plurality of religions in the colonies, the majority of the colonists who settled North America intended to replicate the homogenous religious atmosphere that dominated England during this time period (339). He explains that every region of colonial America was peppered with different congregations, each competing for religious dominance. The Congregationalists primarily dominated New England, the Anglicans largely controlled the South, while the Quakers and the Presbyterians composed the largest denominations of the Protestant faith in the middle colonies (342).
As the author of “Religious Awakening in the Colonies” astutely notes, religion in the colonies was far more complex than numerous denominational divisions. In addition, each congregation was internally divided between rationalists and evangelicals. The rationalists rejected the traditional foundations of Christianity, opting instead to focus their faith on science. They believed that God never interfered with the laws of the natural universe since he had created it. Therefore, rationalists believed epidemics and natural disasters to be “natural” instead of interpreting them as divine anger. Additionally, rationalists preached eternal salvation through good behavior (344 – 345). Evangelicals, on the other hand, believed eternal salvation could only be attained through God’s grace. The evangelicals emphasized emotions and individualism, disturbing listeners with images of terror during their sermons to remind them of “their impending and eternal sentence in hell.” They balanced these depictions however, with images of eternal joy in heaven. The purpose of these “revivals” was to get their listeners to surrender to God and ultimately feel the exhilaration of God’s saving grace (345). Known as the Great Awakening, these series of revivals were led by prominent religious figures such as Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Gilbert Tennents.
The evangelicals would eventually be referred to as the New Lights while their opponents – those who dismissed the emotional sermons of the evangelicals and defended the traditional foundations of the Christian faith – became known as the Old Lights (351). In addition to this divide, the evangelicals split into moderates and radicals. The moderates rejected the radicals’ belief in the free flow of divine grace and attack on the establishment of the Christian church. They accepted evangelical preaching, conversions, and most of the professional clergy who supported the revivals, but denounced the emotional outbursts of the poorly educated exhorters in order to maintain their own power and authority in colonial society (353). Overall, I enjoyed and favorably received Taylor’s take on the Great Awakening. His account thoroughly dissected the religious complexity of colonial America that is noticeably absent from traditional American history texts.