all right now let's switch our focus to something called the great awakening so let's look at this picture right here of uh the time period and by looking at this picture you can hopefully see what is going on you've got this guy standing on a stump or something speaking to a large crowd and by the way he's dressed what do you think he's doing well if you guessed preaching you are correct so the great awakening um let's give it a time period and let's define it so the time period is going to be roughly the 1730s to the 1750s and it was a time of religious revivalism across the colonies and in england so religious leaders during this time feared that the young people weren't quote unquote excited enough about their faith you're going to notice this as we go through american history that there are uh dips and crests in people's religious fervor so preachers are wondering how do we get more people excited about um our religion well preacher's gonna start appealing to people's hearts and emotions instead of their minds okay they're gonna try to stir people up and so what do you think you think this tactic will be effective well this case is going to be very effective okay people a lot of times like to use their emotions more than they like to use their minds benjamin franklin who lived during the time period he wrote never did the people show so great a willingness to attend sermons religion has become the subject of most conversation right so it's going to be very very effective let's look at some key figures from this time period the first one i'm sure you've heard of uh before a man named jonathan edwards who's going to be a preacher from massachusetts and he's going to kind of be the kickstarter of the great awakening in the united states well in the colonies of course we're not the united states yet so uh jonathan edwards who was he well brilliant brilliant guy uh he attended yale university and ivy league university at the age of 13. he's part of the what's called the congregationalist church this is the church that grew out of the puritans okay the puritans are kind of going by this point called congregationalist now so remember calvinism is strong in their beliefs right and remember the anxiety that that brings along sometimes so uh he's going to arrive in northampton massachusetts to become a pastor at a local church and when he got there he was disgusted at the sinfulness of the people and their lack of zeal for god so he decides to fix it all right he's going to write a sermon which you probably read in high school i hope uh titled sinners in the hands of an angry god and in this sermon he's going to kind of like he's gonna scare people and he's gonna preach about hell a whole lot a little bit about heaven but a whole lot about hell and how um uh you know that could be your eternal um location so we often get a wrong picture of jonathan edwards we imagine him as this fire and brimstone preacher who was spitting on people in the front rows but in reality he was actually very calm but his messages were uh on fire here's a excerpt from the sermon centers in the hands of an angry god so let's read this excerpt 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 he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire okay all right well this is not you know lovey-dovey vbs style god here now is it um no he's painting a much different picture however um this is the first part of his sermon where he warns people about hell if they don't get right with god but at the end it's not all bad news he he offers a happy ending here's what he says toward the end and now you have an extraordinary opportunity a day wherein christ has flung the door of mercy wide open and stands in the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners therefore let everyone that is out of christ now awake and fly from the wrath to come the wrath of the almighty god is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation let everyone fly out of sodom haste and escape for your lives look not behind you escape to the mountain lest you be consumed so here um he is offering an escape okay throwing down a rope to get you out of the the pit of hell is according to edwards going into christ right so what are the results of edwards's uh sermons like this this is just one of many sermons where he's going to appeal to your emotion well he's going to have some really really good results massive numbers of people are going to convert to christianity i people claim to have personal conversions like they they they felt god in their presence well seeing how effective this was other preachers are going to follow him they follow his method because they see it gets results so if anyone's had any experience with it think about it is this still a common method today the answer is yes okay there are many churches who focus on this type of sermon but it's not only in religion it's also in uh political discourse too right a lot of times political candidates like when you listen to a debate a presidential debate or something they're not going to try to appeal to your mind they're going to appeal to your heart because it's a lot easier to get you stirred up by appealing to your heart than to your mind let's look at the next guy george whitefield he is an english itinerant preacher so he is from england he is not from the colonies like jonathan edwards was um well what's an itinerant preacher well it's what we would call an evangelist today okay someone who travels around preaching that's what they do for a living they travel so he's going to visit every colony in the united states he's going to come over here and make a trip to everyone okay preaching his messages well he is going to be a fire and brimstone kind of preacher he's a charismatic speaker people love him people are drawn to him um he's very theatrical okay often times in his sermons he's going to start crying he's going to stomp and he's going to scream and apparently so did the people who were there okay the crowd started exhibiting ecstatic behavior rolling on the ground you know crying and shouting themselves and he was a very eloquent speaker one man commented that he would he would kill if he could say the word mesopotamia like whitfield did and spelled whitefield but the pronunciation is pronunciation is whitfield all right so what is the importance of this whole great awakening well it's the first mass movement of the american people what i mean by that well this is the first time that the colonists from georgia all the way up to massachusetts have a common experience before the awakening the 13 colonies were just that 13 separate colonies someone in virginia had very little in common with someone from massachusetts but now they share this common experience and have bonded together this is where we begin to see we the people coming together as americans this is also going to unite people um or give people a common experience of people from all races okay black white genders men and women attend the sermons ages the young and the old and social classes the rich and the poor all come to this so this is going to start weaving together that social fabric that we need once we get to 1776 to come together as one people to fight the british