Religion

Awakening: n. the act of rousing from sleep or inactivity; specifically a revival of religion. Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. The emergence of American Pietism and the Great Awakening of the early colonies, by definition, is one of the most singular defining moments of our great country.

As soon as the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem was over, the erosion of man’s personal intimate relationship with God started. Up until the time of the colonies man had slowly taken away personal knowledge from his fellows and placed it upon kings, the church leaders and clergy. Man was separated from the Bible and God’s word. Only a select few had access to the Bible. The emergence of Pietism in the early 1700 and the Great Awakening that followed brought the Holy Scriptures out of the hands of kings, the church and clergy and gave it to the common people as well as the elite.

This act in itself eventually brought about a unique nation. Early on, even those who were persecuted in America had access to the Bible. The slaves, yeoman, and landless free were all able to read and interpret the Bible themselves. All around the world, at that time, the very idea was totally unheard of. Common people reading and personally interpreting the Bible, the book the Holy Roman Empire structured its state morality around, the book that gave birth to the truth of the human condition?

Although the whole sum of men and women who came or were brought to early America did not come for religious reasons, the benefits of the freedom of religion that came out of the 1700 time-frame affected everyone. Even those who fought for freedom from taxes or from land restrictions must have felt the undertow of revivalism.

Take everything else away and isolate the Great Awakening in America. Without that one occurrence things would be vastly different. America would possibly be a divided place of restrictions and parliamentary rule, perhaps with a head church of Roman...