Robert Curry notes that Christianity was the unifying force that brought the colonies together before the War of Independence.
In the America of the Enlightenment
By Robert Curry
In the America of the Enlightenment…the specifically American form of Christianity—undogmatic, moralistic rather than creedal, tolerant but strong, and all-pervasive of society—was born, and…the Great Awakening was its midwife.
Paul Johnson, A History of the American People
The Great Awakening was the great Protestant revival which swept the American colonies during the first half of the 18th century. One of the key events of American history, its importance to America’s Founding was enormous yet is often overlooked. Paul Johnson puts it like this:
“The Great Awakening was thus the proto-revolutionary event, the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible. It crossed all religious and sectarian boundaries…and turned what had been a series of European-style churches into American ones “[emphasis added].
It also broke down the geographical boundaries.
Each colony had been largely a world unto itself, more oriented to London than to its neighbors. The Great Awakening changed all that. George Whitefield, “the Grand Itinerant”, made seven continental tours between 1740 and 1770, speaking to enormous crowds everywhere he went—10,000 was not uncommon—and became the first truly American public figure, equally well known in every colony. Whitefield and the other revival preachers of the era brought about a new sense of geographical unity, and a new sense of what it meant to be an American. The Great Awakening has had an enduring impact on America, persisting in the great camp-meetings that played such an important role in American life for the next two hundred years and in the great non-denominational mega-churches of our day.
The fact that the Great Awakening prepared the way for the American Revolution had the greatest of consequences. Growing as it did out of a period of deep religious fervor and ferment, the American Revolution was not going to be an anti-religious revolution like the one in France. In the words of John Adams:
“The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the mind and hearts of the people: and change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.”
The specifically American form of Christianity was matched by the specifically American form of the Enlightenment. Gertrude Himmelfarb distinguishes the American Enlightenment from the French one in this way:
“The French had [an] exalted mission: to make reason the governing principle of society as well as mind, to ‘rationalize,’ as it were, the world. The Americans, more modestly, sought to create a new ‘science of politics’ that would establish the new republic upon a sound foundation of liberty.”
The leaders of the French Revolution abolished the Christian calendar, gave the months of the year names that they thought were more rational and enshrined the Goddess of Wisdom in Notre Dame. Instead of abolishing history, the leaders of the American Revolution wanted to learn from history in order to find a new way forward that benefited from what the West had learned about human nature from experience and from Scripture.
The specifically American combination of the Enlightenment and of Christianity made the American experiment what it was and is. That combination is perfectly evident from the beginning:
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”
This famous passage opens with the Enlightenment claim to self-evident truth and closes with the claim that our unalienable rights are endowed by our Creator.
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