IV. The Great Awakening.

Articulating the American Dream

Jonathan Edwards: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (EAR pp. 311-324) - Phyllis Wheatley On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield (EAR pp. 340-42) - Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography (EAR pp. 61-115)

The Twilight of Puritanism

1630-1690 the triumph of New England congregationalism 1692 Salem (now Danvers) witch trials: 20 people executed during this mass hysteria; subsequent loss of faith Arguments over individual or collective accountability to God; 1734-1750 new stage in the American Faith, the Great Awakening in Europe: the Enlightenment (rationalism of Descartes and Newton, empiricism of Bacon and Locke; deism; equality at birth; man is not evil) Enlightenment ideas influenced America during the revolutionary and constitutional phases.

 Protestant denominations in English America (early 18th century): Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Dissenters, Independents. Pursuit of material success, secularization, emergence of industrial society, frontier advancement result in lesser role for religious faith and spiritual matters in American colonies. Local revivals starting in late 17th century limited to certain denominations; revivalist ministers: Samuel Stoddard and Jonathan Edwards (Massachusetts), Gilbert Tennent and Theodorus Frelinghuysen (New Jersey). Arrival of famous English evangelist George Whitefield in America (1739) precipitates Great Awakening. Revivalist meetings focus on repenting & personal conversion; very emotional response from audience; interdenominational phenomenon.

The Great Awakening (1734-1750)

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

Jonathan Edwards (1703-58)

Greatest Calvinist theologian in America; best-known revivalist minister; Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741) most famous imprecatory sermon (jeremiad) in English; self-examination key principle; Personal Narrative (c. 1740) an account of the progress of his personal faith; not intended for publication, only the result of applying selfscrutiny; Faith as an act of hope, not assurance; conviction of personal sin & unworthiness; Gods grace as a gift; Edwards wants to bring to us the sensation of what its like to be a convert (J. Lockes influence: our ideas are based on sensations); Calvinist (and, later, existentialist) dilemma: in order to be sure one has to be unsure.

From Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)

Direct address to the audience A jeremiad (<The Book of Jeremiah) The bow of Gods wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls, all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: His wrath towards you burns like fire. O Sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. Therefore, let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come.

 Stress on individual choice of denomination, democratization of religion; religion became the direct concern and experience of the individual; Deeper sense of unity this inter-colonial movement anticipated American nationality; First in a long line of Great Awakenings in the history of American religion.

Consequences of the Great Awakening

 Best known African American poet of the colonial and revolutionary eras. Much appreciated in London, she had a hard time as a poet, a woman, and a former slave in America; even so, she remained a very popular poet in the U.S. until the early 1800s; President Washington spoke favorably of her poetry, but for Jefferson she was at best an imitator and living proof that blacks dont possess the humanity requisite for the production of works of art (Houston Baker). Mid-20th century African American writers and critics dismissed her as the prototype of acculturation for her obedience to white cultural norms (H. Baker): Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,/May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train (On Being Brought From Africa to America). She is now considered the first that made the African voice heard within American literature.

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1754 1784)

Phyllis Wheatley portrait by Scipio Moorhead

From On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield

Hail, happy saint, on thine immortal throne first line Take him, ye wretched, for your only good, Take him ye starving sinners, for your food; Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream, Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream, Ye preachers, take him for your joyful theme; Take him my dear Americans, he said,
Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid: Take him, ye Africans, he longs for you, Impartial Savior is his title due: Washd in the fountain of redeeming blood, You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God. [Gods imagined address]

th At 12 he becomes an apprentice and indentured servant to his older brother James Franklin, a successful printer, creator of the first independent newspaper in the colonies The New-England Courant; At 17 B.F. runs away to Philadelphia where he establishes his own printing business; His fame grows with the publication of essays, hoaxes, satires, bagatelles, and especially Poor Richards Almanac (1733-1758); The Way to Wealth (1758) - compilation of prudential maxims; A Founding Father of the United States, first U.S. Postmaster General, diplomat, and member of the 1787 Constitutional Convention; Public works: founder of first public library in America (1731); initiator of one of first volunteer firefighting companies (1736); The Academy and College of Philadelphia (1751); co-founder of Pennsylvania Hospital (1751); organizer of the Pennsylvania Militia (1756); abolitionist society; Inventions & scientific interests: lightning rod, bifocal glasses, Franklin stove, glass armonica (also a composer!); experimented with electricity, metallurgy; interested in light theory, meteorology.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Puritan background; 15 child of a chandler from Boston;

 The Autobiography (1771-1790): unfinished, published and entitled posthumously; Why did Franklin write his autobiography? In order to secure my credit and character as a tradesman, I took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to avoid all appearances of the contrary. I dressed plainly; I was seen at no places of idle diversion; I never went out a-fishing or shooting; a book, indeed, sometimes debauched me from my work; but that was seldom, snug, and gave no scandal: and to show that I was not above my business, I sometimes brought home the paper I purchased at the stores, through the streets on a wheelbarrow. Thus being esteemed an industrious thriving young man, and paying duly for what I bought, the merchants who imported stationery solicited my custom, others proposed supplying me with books, and I went on swimmingly (Autobiography. Part One).

Franklins Autobiography

 The thirteen virtues; new meaning of rationalization of conduct; Franklins utilitarianism; Franklins strategy: first make your fortune, gain status, and then do good works for society; Franklin turns the national covenant (focused on obedience to God) into a secular one (focused on freedom, property, and equality); Originator of the rags to riches story in American literature; credited with having articulated the American Dream; Max Weber sees Franklin as an exemplary type of the spirit of capitalism in his 1905 study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Franklins Ethics and the American Dream

Franklins list of 13 virtues

Temperance:Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation Silence:Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversations Order:Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time Resolution:Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve Frugality:Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; that is, waste nothing Industry:Lose not time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions Sincerity:Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; speak accordingly Justice:Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty Moderation:Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think you deserve Cleanliness:Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation Tranquility:Be not disturbed at trifles or accidents common or unavoidable Chastity:Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation Humility:Imitate Jesus and Socrates

I determined to give a Weeks strict Attention to each of the Virtues successively. Thus in the first Week my great Guard was to avoid every the least Offence against Temperance, leaving the other Virtues to their ordinary Chance, only my first Line marked T clear of spots, I supposd the Habit of that Virtue so much strengthened and its opposite wekend that I might venture extending my attention to include the next (...)

Benjamin Franklins (Ideal) Schedule

The Self-Made Gatsby (from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925)
JAY GATSBYS SCHEDULE AS A 16-year-old YOUNG MAN (September 12, 1906)
Rise from bed 6.00 AM Dumbbell exercise & wall-scaling 6.15 6.30 AM Study electricity, etc. 7.15 8.15 AM Work 8.30 AM 4.30 PM Baseball & sports 4.30 5.00 PM Practise elocution, poise & how to attain it 5.00 6.00 PM Study needed inventions 7.00 9.00 PM GENERAL RESOLVES No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable] No more smoking or chewing Bath every other day Read one improving book or magazine per week. Save $ 5.00 [crossed out] $ 3.00 per week Be better to parents (110)