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The Second Great Awakening In Connecticut: Critique of the Traditional Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Richard D. Shiels
Richard D. Shiels
Affiliation:
assistant professor of histroy inThe Ohio State University, Newark Campus, Newark, Ohio.
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Extract

As a doddering old man in 1850, Lyman Beecher told his children about the religious conditions at Yale College fifty-five years earlier. His words have become familiar to students of American religious history. The school had been “in a most ungodly state” when he entered as a student in 1795, he recalled. Its president, Ezra Stiles, had been ineffective as a pastor. Immorality and religious skepticism had been rife. Then Timothy Dwight replaced Stiles as president, and religion revived. Dwight's students embraced evangelical Christianity and followed him into battle against rationalists who challenged orthodoxy and politicians who wanted to separate church and state. Dwight transformed religious life at the college and, together with his students, rejuvenated the congregational churches of New England.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 401 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1980

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References

1. Beecher, Lyman, The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, ed. Cross, Barbara M., 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1961). 1:xi, 24, 27.Google Scholar The term “congregational” refers to Connecticut's established churches. These were disestablished in 1818 and became a denomination, taking the name “Congregational” in 1852. See Pearson, Samuel C., “From Church to Denomination: American Congregationalism in the Nineteenth Century,” Church History 38 (1969): 67–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Morgan, Edmund, “Ezra Stiles and Timothy Dwight,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 72 (1957–1960): 100–117.Google Scholar

3. See Cuningham, Charles, Timothy Dwight, 1752–1817 (New York, 1942), pp. 293, 300–304;Google ScholarKeller, Charles Roy, The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut (New Haven, 1942), pp. 17, 25;Google Scholar and Mead, Sidney Earl, Nathaniel William Taylor, 1786–1858: A Connecticut Liberal (Chicago, 1942), p. 27.Google Scholar Only one monograph focusing upon Connecticut religion in this period has been published since 1942, and it repeats Beecher's view. See Berk, Stephen, Calvinism versus Democracy: Timothy Dwight and the Origins of American Evangelical Orthodoxy (Hamden, Conn., 1974), p. 123.Google Scholar

4. Beecher, , Autobiography, 1:24, 27.Google ScholarMorgan, Edmund, “The American Revolution Considered as an Intellectual Movement,” in Paths of American Thought, ed. Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr and White, Morton (Boston, 1963), pp. 11–33.Google ScholarBerk, , Calvinism versus Democracy, pp. x, 90.Google Scholar

5. Keller, , The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut, pp. 32–37.Google ScholarBerk, , Calvinism versus Democracy, pp. x, 18, 90, 161–194.Google Scholar

6. Beecher, , Autobiography, 1:190–193, 251–256.Google ScholarMead, , Taylor, pp. 38–53.Google Scholar

7. Hudson, Winthrop incorporated all three themes in his first survey, The Great Tradition of the American Churches (New York, 1953), pp. 63–79.Google Scholar His second text stopped short of saying the awakening began at Yale, but focused upon Yale nonetheless and presented the awakening as a clerical strategy to counteract infidelity and ideas of disestablishment. Religion in America: An Historical Account of the Development of American Religious Life (New York, 1965), pp. 78–96, 134.Google Scholar F.H. Littell declared that the awakening was “launched by Timothy Dwight of Yale” and “its revivals were planned”; the objective was at least partially political. From State Church to Pluralism: Protestant Interpretation of Religion in American History (New York, 1962), p. 30.Google Scholar William McLoughlin writes that it was Beecher and other Dwight students who initiated the revivals following an earlier phase of the awakening led by Dwight; their intentions were also partially political. Revivals, Awakenings and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977 (Chicago, 1978), pp. 106–122.Google Scholar Cushing Strout finds that Dwight forged revivalism into “a conservative instrument” and that Beecher employed it as a tactic in the fight over disestablishment. The New Heavens and New Earth: Political Religion in America (New York, 1974), p. 114.Google Scholar

8. Morgan, , “The Revolution as an Intellectual Movement,” pp. 19–20.Google Scholar On Bellamy, see Anderson, Glenn Paul, “Joseph Bellamy (1719–1790): The Man and His Work” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1971).Google Scholar On Emmons, see Birdsall, Richard, “Ezra Stiles and the New Divinity Men,” American Quarterly 17 (1965): 248–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Ferm, Robert L., A Colonial Pastor: Jonathan Edwards the Younger, 1745–1801 (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976), pp. 84–88;Google ScholarKnapp, Hugh, “The Early Career of Samuel Hopkins and the End of the Awakening Style,” Bulletin of the Connecticut Historical Society 39 (1974): 54–64.Google Scholar See also the Letter from Edwards to Benjamin Trumbull, 10 April 1770, in Trumbull Papers, Yale University, Box 2.

10. Trumbull, Benjamin, Illustrations on the Counsel of God⃜ (Springfield, 1783), p. 19Google Scholar (emphasis added).

11. Sprague, William B., Annals of the American Pulpit: Commemorative Notices of Distinguished American Clergymen of Various Denominations, 6 vols. (New York, 1859), 2:68.Google ScholarBackus, Charles, Qualifications and Duties of the Christian Pastor⃜ (Boston, 1795), pp. 8–12.Google Scholar Minutes of the Mutual Improvement Society, in Trumbull Papers, Yale University, Box 22.

12. Backus, , Qualifications, p. 18.Google ScholarStrong, Nathan, Sermon preached at the ordination of Ichabod Skinner⃜ (Hartford, 1794), pp 9–15.Google Scholar Timothy Dwight, “Sermon delivered at the Ordination of Rev. Lockwood,” Dwight Family Papers, Yale University. Trumbull, , Sermon Delivered at the Ordination of Thomas Holt⃜ (Worcester, Mass., 1790), pp. 15–16;Google Scholar and Sermon Delivered at the Ordination of Aaron Woodward⃜ (New Haven, Conn., 1794), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

13. Strong, Nathan and Flint, Abel, The Hartford Selection of Hymns (Hartford, 1799).Google Scholar Timothy Dwight, “On Levity with Respect to Sacred Things: Sermon delivered in 1790,” Timothy Dwight Family Papers, Box 5.

14. Letter of Waldo, Daniel in Sprague, , Annals, 2:68.Google ScholarBackus, Charles, Discourse … at the Funeral of Mr. John Howard.… (Springfield, 1785).Google Scholar

15. In a report to the New Haven County Association, 24 June 1771, Trumbull urged others to join him in efforts for a revival. The inscription on his sermon Illustrations on the Nature and Importance of an Immediate Choice of God (New London, 1791)Google Scholar reveals that he delivered this sermon “in North Haven and several other places” and then published it “with a view to awakening and conversion of sinners.” He may also have worked for revival in 1763–1765, when many New England towns were awakened. Admissions in his church rose only slightly in this period, and in 1767 Trumbull wrote a letter to the North Haven Church and complained of “my unsuccessfulness among you.” See Trumbull Papers, Box 22. The sermon notes cited are numbered 245, 250, 255, 260, 265, 270, 275, 279, 286, 289, 292, 294, 295, 302, 308, 312, 316, Box 9. Most of these were delivered on more than one occasion from 1763 to 1812.

16. On Backus, see Sprague, , Annals of the American Pulpit, 2:64–68.Google Scholar On Dwight, see Cunningham, , Dwight, pp. 107–110.Google Scholar On Strong, see Walker, George L., History of the First Church in Hartford, 1633–1883 (Hartford, 1884), pp. 333–366.Google Scholar On Trumbull, see “North Haven Church Records⃜” Connecticut State Library.

17. “An Address of the General Association to the Good People of Connecticut,” in Trumbull Papers, Box 22. Narratives of the earliest revivals are in the Connecticut Evangelical Magazine, 8 vols. (Hartford, 1801–1808), vols. 1–3.Google Scholar

18. CEM, 1:1.

19. The list of trustees is in the Twenty-Seventh Annual Narrative of Missions Performed Under the Direction of the Trustees of the Missionary Society of Connecticut (Hartford, 1826).Google Scholar Twelve were chosen in 1798. Joshua Williams replaced Jonathan Edwards, Jr., who left the state in 1799. Biographical information is found in Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut.… 2 vols. (New Haven, 1861);Google ScholarDexter, Franklin Bowditch, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Yale College, 6 vols. (New York, 1885–1912);Google Scholar and Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit. The Records of the Connecticut Missionary Society are in the Congregational House, Hartford, Connecticut.

20. The editors are listed on the title page of each issue of the CEM.

21. Twenty narratives, two written by editors of the CEM and eighteen by others, appear in the CEM, vols. 1–3.

22. Stiles's list of New Lights is in The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, ed. Franklin B. Dexter, 3 vols. (New York, 1901), 3:273–274.Google Scholar

23. Keller, , The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut, pp. 34–36;Google ScholarMead, , Taylor, pp. viii–ix.Google Scholar

24. Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut, 1:144–147, 298–340. Minutes of the Mutual Improvement Society, 1779–87, Trumbull Papers, Box 22. On the prayer circle, see Griffin, Edward Dorr, Sermons … to which is prefixed a Memoir, ed. William, B. Sprague, 2 vols. (New York, 1839), 1:51–52.Google Scholar

25. Walsh, James, “The Pure Church in Eighteenth Century Connecticut” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1967), p. 218.Google Scholar

26. Cuningham, , Dwight, pp. 102–108.Google Scholar

27. Mead, , Taylor, pp. 38–54, 76–95;Google ScholarPurcell, Richard, Connecticut in Transition, 1775–1818 (Washington, D.C., 1918), pp. 307–331;Google ScholarScott, Donald M., From Office to Profession: The New England Ministry, 1750–1850 (Philadelphia, 1978), pp. 18–36.Google Scholar Keller rejects the political interpretation of the awakening; see Keller, , The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut, pp. 55–69.Google Scholar

28. Purcell, , Connecticut in Transition, pp. 30, 301–303, 318–331.Google ScholarMead, , Taylor, pp. 38–54.Google ScholarKeller, , The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut, pp. 56–62.Google Scholar

29. Beecher, , Autobiography, 1:190–193.Google Scholar

30. See CEM, vols 1–8 passim.

31. CEM, vols. 1–3 passim. Circular fasts are described in CEM, 1:380, and in Yale, Cyrus, The Godly Pastor: Life of the Reverend Jeremiah Hallock of Canton.… (Boston, 1830).Google Scholar

32. American Mercury, 2 July 1801; 10 April 1806. Connecticut Courant, 19 March 1816.

33. Hooker, Horace, “Congregational Home Missions in Connecticut,” in Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut, 1:163–180.Google Scholar Trumbull, an editor of the CEM, sent a copy of the first issue to an editor of the EM and acknowledged receiving issues of the EM. See Trumbull's letter, which omits the name of the addressee, dated 15 September 1800, in Trumbull Papers, Box 5.

34. Hooker, , “Congregational Home Missions in Connecticut,” 1:163–180.Google Scholar

35. Trumbull, Benjamin, A Complete History of Connecticut, Civil and Ecclesiastical.…, 2 vols. (New London, Conn., 1898), 1:238, 240–242.Google Scholar

36. Noll, Mark, Christians in the American Revolution (Washington, D.C., 1977), pp. 49–79.Google ScholarThe Mercury, 15 July 1803.

37. Backus, , Sermon preached in Long Meadow at the Publick Fast⃜ (Springfield, Mass., 1788), pp. 7–13;Google ScholarDwight, , Discourse in Two Parts Delivered July 23, 1812 (New Haven, Conn., 1812), p. 21.Google Scholar

38. Birdsall, Richard, “The Second Great Awakening and the New England Social Order,” Church History 39 (1970): 345–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar