so as you can see that was some Hellfire and brimstone preaching now Edwards printed an account of his Revival in a popular pamphlet and other itinerant or traveling creatures began using the same ideas but these preachers abandoned traditional sermons in churches in favor of outdoor tent revivals where they worked crowds into an emotional frenzy now Many religious leaders were suspicious of both the enthusiasm and the message of these revivals the most famous itinerant preacher was George Whitfield who you see on the slide here he was an actor with a dramatic style of preaching who was described as spellbinding and spasm causing Whitfield left those established churches instead pursuing those massive outdoor crowds he thundered against sin and invited all to be born again that is to accept Christ's Grace again not predestination anymore he regularly spoke to crowds of thousands and in one case over 20 000 people in Philadelphia I use a microphone when I lecture to 30 students he has no mic 20 000 people and still does a great job Whitfield originally argued that he agreed with church theology just not its lifeless delivery however gradually Great Awakening preachers broke away from the dominant Theology and they began to preach that all people could be saved if they confessed their sins to God sought his forgiveness and accepted his grace they preach that all people could have a direct and emotional connection with God and while Whitfield started out as an Anglican Minister which is the Church of England he was very influential along with John Wesley in establishing the Methodist Church the both the Baptist and Methodist churches will get their start in the first Great Awakening congregationalist puritan churches were thrown into disarray by the Great Awakening Outsiders weren't allowed to preach but these Outsiders did and they were really exciting So Great Awakening preachers challenged the authority of established churches they emphasized emotions and an individual religious experience by 1742 New England clergy had divided between new lights who believed in this revived faith in the Great Awakening and old lights who thought this was all just a bunch of nonsense the new lights the Great Awakening preachers believed every person could be saved through faith by experiencing a religious conversion and Revival the old light still believed in predestination new light ministers set up new schools to train ministers in their theology schools like Princeton Rutgers Brown and Dartmouth while Yale was still controlled by the old light ministers who denounced those Great Awakening preachers new lights split congregationalist Ministries by appealing to common people who were drawn to practices that they could be more involved in by the 1760s the revivals largely petered out but they had a profound impact on America the Great Awakening permanently damaged the hold of those established churches it resulted in an increased denominational varieties basically there's more Protestant Christian churches now there's all these different denominations of protestant Christianity and this religious diversification remained after the Great Awakening and it led to Greater religious tolerance too because if you have 80 percent of a colony being one particular religion they can treat other people pretty poorly but if no one religion has more than 30 35 percent of a colony then all sudden you really need to start getting along with your neighbors so with so many denominations no single religion or denomination could dominate any particular region the Great Awakening also LED people to have more of a willingness to challenge authority these people had been taught since birth that ministers were chosen by God to instruct them and then during the Great Awakening they stood up and told those very ministers you're wrong Edwards and Whitfield both encouraged individuals to question the world around them to not just accept things as they were and this helped create a greater language of individualism as well and many historians suggest a link between this phenomenon a willingness to challenge authority greater individualism and the Rebellion against England in later decades now the enlightenment was a secular meaning not religious intellectual phenomenon and it was simultaneous with the Great Awakening they overlapped they happen at the same time in fact the enlightenment is part of the reason the Great Awakening occurs people being more influenced by science leaning away from religious explanation caused ministers to fear of sin which is kind of the religious version of a moral failing and science was often seen as Sin throughout human history so the enlightenment was secular it was all about science and reason and rationality the 18th century was called The Age of Reason because of this in the 18th century again is the 1700s so this notion of Reason had its origins in the 1600s in Europe when scientists began to challenge many religiously based Notions through scientific observation Nicholas Copernicus and Johann Kepler theorized that the Earth and all the other planets in the solar system revolved around the Sun despite earlier wisdom suggesting otherwise and slowly the idea of observing the universe as it was took hold pushed forward by people like the philosopher Renee Descartes and scientist Isaac Newton they argued the universe was like a machine governed by natural laws that we could observe if we just looked close enough so during the Enlightenment the idea that there was a natural order to things and natural laws controlling the world spread Enlightenment thinkers relied on secular reason and logic rather than religion to explain the world around them but many of these thinkers still believe the universe had Supernatural Origins they believed in a Creator a God who made the universe they just thought that natural laws could explain the world and Humanity in their day all sorts of Sciences made advancements including political science political theory developed based on the intellectual rational study of natural law to try to suggest ways in which society and government could be brought into harmony if the Age of Reason could identify natural laws finding God himself and his creation maybe Enlightenment thinkers believed they could identify and apply equally binding laws for society politics and government John Locke theorized about a natural political order based on land ownership and he felt land ownership was a natural basis for freedom so we're going to take a look at some of John Locke's most famous political theories there's three big ones that you should know by the end of this video