Evangelical Awakening

   The Evangelical Awakening was a burst of religious fervor that emerged in the 1730s, generally focused in the Methodist movement that permeated England in the following two decades. The Awakening can be traced to the spread of Pietism late in the 17th century from its center at the University of Halle in Germany. Making common cause with the Pietists were the Moravian Church followers at Herrnhut. Pietism promoted personal religion and a life of devotion and charity.

   in England and the American colonies, Pietism became a mass movement through the efforts of Moravian missionaries, the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, the travels of George White-FiELD, and the development of the Methodist movement by John Wesley and his brother Charles. Hymnody was a significant part of the Awakening; it had been passed from the Moravians to Charles Wesley and Whitefield.

   The Awakening in the American colonies (generally called the first Great Awakening) was absorbed by the existing churches. In England, it led to the formation of the Wesleyan Connexion, led for many years by the long-lived John Wesley, and to several Calvinist Methodist churches overseen by Whitefield and now part of the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom. Methodist global missionary work may be seen as the most significant long-term result of the Evangelical Awakening.

   See also revivalism.

   Further reading:

   ■ Edwin Scott Gaustad, The Great Awakening in New England (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957)

   ■ William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America (New York: Scribner, 1951)

   ■ W. Reginald Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).