Interpret the Evidence and Put It in Context

Document Links:

Document 4.5 Nathan Cole, On George Whitefield Coming to Connecticut, 1740

Document 4.6 Benjamin Franklin, On George Whitefield, the Great Revivalist, 1739

Document 4.7 Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, 1741

Document 4.8 Newspaper Report on James Davenport, 1743

Document 4.9 George Whitefield Preaching, c. 1760

Interpret the Evidence

  1. How does Benjamin Franklin’s description of George Whitefield compare to Nathan Cole’s, and how might the Enlightenment have influenced Franklin’s view (Documents 4.5 and 4.6)?

  2. What aspects of God’s will and human sin does Jonathan Edwards emphasize in his sermon? How is Edwards’s interest in science revealed in Document 4.7?

  3. Why does James Davenport (Document 4.8) encourage his followers to burn religious books by Old Light ministers as well as items considered idolatrous, and how does the Boston newspaper respond to the resulting bonfires?

  4. How does the image in Document 4.9 compare to the descriptions by Cole, Franklin, and the Boston newspaper (Documents 4.5, 4.6, and 4.8)? What aspects of these descriptions and of Edwards’s sermon (Document 4.7) do Old Light ministers and civic leaders find threatening?

Put It in Context

How do these documents help explain the appeal of the Great Awakening, particularly to women, workers and other non-elites? What legacies—ideas or practices—remained after the revivals ended?

What was the relationship between the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening in the American colonies?