Religion in Early America Flashcards
1
Q
Awash in a Sea of Faith - Jon Butler
A
- American religion doesn’t have puritan origins
- Religious eclecticism, not puritanism, better explains rise of religion in the US
- occult and Christian beliefs blended together in the popular imagination
- a spiritual holocaust destroyed African religious systems until 1800
- the Great Awakening tended to strengthen rather than weaken clerical institutions
- religion wasn’t as much of a force in the colonial era as is popularly believed
2
Q
The Great Awakening - Thomas S. Kidd
A
- The Great Awakening birthed evangelicalism
- Evangelicals emphasize the necessity of conversion
- The GW was unique due to the role of the Holy Spirit and how it made people act out in fits
- spiritual equality and social equality went hand in hand (lol)
- there was no 2nd Great Awakening, just one prolonged one
3
Q
New Lights
A
- Radicals who believed in all aspects of the Great Awakening especially the bodily fits
4
Q
Old Lights
A
- Conservatives who saw the Great Awakening and its fits as evidence not of God’s work at all
5
Q
Moderate New Lights
A
- Those like Jonathan Edwards who supported the Awakening but condemned bodily sensations and fits
6
Q
The Long Argument - Stephen Foster
A
- Puritans made America
- 1572 Admonition to Parliament to Whitefield’s first American mission in 1740
- why did Puritanism survive in New England rather than Old England?
- The Great Awakening shattered religious consensus
- Combining English and American puritan historiography
7
Q
The Halfway Covenant of 1662
A
- Attempted to create a “big tent” version of Puritanism that attempted to keep puritanism from collapsing in on itself
8
Q
Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgement - David Hall
A
- that there is a popular tradition of Christianity that incorporates “wonders”
- that this is perpetuated by the print culture and literacy
- that this is the status quo until rifts between clerical and popular religion expand post-1700
