Do religious awakenings of the past really matter today? What can we learn from people like George Whitefield, John Wesley and William Miller? Will there be another “Great Awakening” in our day? Join Shawn, Jean and special guest Bill Knott as they explore these questions.

<p>Do religious awakenings of the past really matter today? What can we learn from people like George Whitefield, John Wesley and William Miller? Will there be another “Great Awakening” in our day? Join Shawn, Jean and special guest Bill Knott as they explore these questions.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Voice Of Prophecy

Shawn Boonstra

Great Awakenings

Welcome to a brand new day and a brand new episode of Disclosure, the latest radio offering from the good people at the Voice of Prophecy.

My name, Sean Boonstra, the host of this program and I'm sitting here in Loveland, Colorado in our new studio.

I'm sitting here with Jean Boonstra, my wife and by far the more talented half of this marriage.

Jean, I think today we've got a great program in store, don't we?

You know I'm really excited because we get to talk Bible and we get to talk history, 2 of my very favorite topics.

You're the history major in the family and I know that as you were talking about what we'll be talking about today you were lighting up like a firecracker, this is your thing.

And until I became a Christian I hated history.

You can't change what they said, you can't change what they did.

But we are going to do history and we have a special guest, don't we?

Today we have Bill Knott, the editor of the Avenist Review.

It's a good friend I've known now for about 5, 6 years intimately.

As a matter of fact, he's even been so liberal, so generous, as to let me write an article or 2 for the Adventist Review, and I think we've got him on the phone from the Washington, D.C.

Bill Knott, are you with us on the phone?

Hey, Bill, the Adventist Review, that's 1 of the oldest Christian periodicals in the nation, isn't it?

Well, you become 1 of the oldest, and in fact I think the latest data is that we are the oldest because others drop out over time, and so it's a kind of survival thing.

Adventist Review is founded in 1849, which gives us, I think This is 167 years of continuous publication.

Just for the sake of the audience, you have not been the editor since 1849.

I came to this job much more recently, actually in 2007.

Even the old National Geographic only goes back to the beginning of the, and that's not a religious journal, only goes back to the beginning of the 20th century.

1849, Bill, 1 of the things I really appreciate about you is not only your commitment to really high quality Christian journalism, but also your grasp of how religion and our day-to-day life here in what some people call postmodern American culture, how those things intersect and what were some of the things that led up to the world we live in today.

And I know that when you and I talked about coming here on the program, I said you can talk about anything you want to talk about, but I'm hoping, I'm hoping, because I was the history dunce in high school, that our topic today will have something to do with religion in history, and I think I'm right, aren't I?

In fact, 1 of the areas that I particularly have been fascinated by ever since I was a teenager growing up in New England and kind of saturated with the events that I ended up studying professionally is the history of religious awakenings in America.

And that comes not just once or twice, but those revivals, those awakenings, have happened literally before there was a United States and continue right to the present moment.

We're going prior to the establishment of America as an independent nation.

You know, I've heard references to a first Great Awakening and a second Great Awakening.

When historians of religion, and American religion in particular, when they talk about an awakening, Bill, what are they talking about?

They're referring to something more than a local church revival or the fact that for 3 months someone preached in a tent and had an amazing reaction on a local community.

They're talking about something that is more regional, or in some cases national, where there's a generalized sense in the culture that many people, not necessarily a majority, but many people are moving toward religious renewal and religious faith who weren't previously inclined that way.

And so it's really describing a social phenomenon that has been labeled awakening, because most historians believe it can be dated with more or less precision to specific times and in some cases the leadership of specific people.

So this is something that had an impact on the culture as a whole.

It actually becomes formative in the culture of a nation and starts changing the direction that people in general go.

The first Great Awakening, what was that?

I know that our listeners have heard that term a lot.

What exactly was the great first awakening or the first great awakening rather you know most people who study this and write about this identify events beginning in the 17 thirties in new england as the real launch of America's experience of the First Great Awakening.

You have to say it that way, because the First Great Awakening isn't restricted only to the area now known as the United States.

It actually affects all English-speaking regions, Scotland, Ireland, England, the English colonies on the American seaboard, all of them are involved in these events for a period of time beginning as early as 1735 in more limited scope and growing for the next 10 to 15 years until it really became a social phenomenon that operated transatlantically, and they were very conscious of each other's revival experiences on opposite sides of the ocean.

Bill, I find it fascinating, the history of the first Great Awakening in the US because it was it was a formative time for our country as well And as you described this was a transatlantic Movement George Whitfield, of course, he was a British evangelist Sort of described for us what he did and what his meetings were like when he did come to the colonies to share.

Whitfield is 1 of those characters that towering figure in any time.

Were he living in our century, I suspect he would be a very well-known evangelist today, because he had a personal quality, and some call it a charisma, which absolutely connected with individuals' persons, not necessarily with rank and education, but more typically, people who thought of themselves as common, average people.

They found in Whitefield someone who spoke the language of heart religion, and that worked just as successfully in Britain, where he spoke to 30, 000 people at a time, and groups of 10, 000 in the fields and in mines.

It worked just as successfully in Britain as it did in the United States, where he traveled extensively on about 7 different transatlantic trips.

He did preaching tours through the American colonies and drew enormous crowds of people.

If today an evangelist were to preach and draw the kind of numbers that Whitefield regularly did with his preaching when he was in the American colonies, he would make the cover of every magazine and would be on the evening news regularly because of the great social impact of a man who spoke and was a riveting presence in the pulpit and in the fields wherever he happened to be.

I understand that he really did have drawing power, didn't he?

In fact, the stories tell us, I mean, these are legitimated numbers.

When he spoke on Boston Common in the 1730s, he drew more people to Boston Common than lived in the city of Boston.

30, 000 people gathered there in what was essentially a big field in the center of town then, and to hear this man preach on a platform, and by the way, they could all hear him with obviously no amplification.

He had an amazing voice, and his impact was electric on audiences.

He had been some training as a young man as an actor, and so he brought apparently some of the theatrics of that experience and that training to his delivery, preaching to huge crowds.

In fact, 1 famous Shakespearean actor, David Garrick, is supposed to have said that George Whitefield could get a crowd in tears by simply pronouncing the word, Mesopotamia.

He had an ability with language that everyone in his era considered phenomenal.

He had a personal style that was dramatic, and when he spoke, people sensed that somehow God was talking to their heart uniquely.

In fact, 1 individual has left us an account of what happened when he heard that George Whitfield was coming near.

This is literally a farmer in north-central Connecticut who describes what happens when he hears that George Whitefield is nearby.

He writes, on a sudden, in the morning about 8 or 9 of the clock, there came a messenger and said, Mr.

Whitefield preached at Hartford and Wethersfield yesterday, and is to preach at Middletown this morning at 10 o'clock.

I dropped my tool I had in my hand and ran home to tell my wife, telling her to make ready quickly to go hear Mr.

Then ran to my pastor for my horse with all my might, fearing that I should be too late.

Having my horse, my wife soon mounted the horse and went forward as fast as I thought the horse could bear, and when my horse got much out of breath, I would get down and put my wife in the saddle and bid her to ride as fast as she could, and not stop or slack.

Well, he goes on and on, telling about this enormous excitement as they're trying to get to the place where they hear Whitfield's going to preach.

They get to the Connecticut River, and the river, which normally had the occasional boat crossing it, is covered with dozens of boats, people rushing, leaving their everyday occupations to rush off and hear this famous evangelist preach.

I think everyone involved in public life would take notice of a man who had that kind of effect on a population.

I know what my wife is thinking that's kind of like when sean preaches on the other city shuts down exactly I was yeah I know everybody shows up to hear but here's the thing that I kind of wanna emphasize I'm looking at the historical period were in the mid eighteenth century or the early mid eighteenth century And the assumption a lot of people have is that George Whitefield probably drew a crowd because America was so deeply religious 200 years ago.

After the initial period of colonial settlement, think the Pilgrims arriving in 1620, the Puritan migration that happens from about 1630 to 1660, New England culture, which had started with this very strong religious background and orientation had grown increasingly, some would say moderate, others would say secular.

And in fact, by the early 18th century, the secularity was much more pronounced.

People who study attendance at colonial churches will tell you that by the 1720s and 30s, attendance had dropped quite low as a percentage of the population.

Some maintain that by the 1770s, something like as few as 17% of the population was attending church.

That was after the Great Awakening, but there was this enormous bubble that happened between about 1725 and the outbreak of the American Revolution, in which large numbers of people moved toward religious faith in a way that even secular historians document as a true social phenomenon.

So there's a real reason that they're calling it an awakening.

They've moved from, you know, what was almost a religious wasteland.

And when I compare that to modern America, people are bemoaning the fact that we've moved into what they call the post-Christian phase of America.

But I bet you church attendance, judging by the numbers I've seen recently, is at least double that that it was when Whitefield started preaching.

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Great Awakenings

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