Asher Sisneros

Asher K. Sisneros

Prof. Dr. Gary North

American Literature

October 28, 2024

The First Great Awakening saw a huge spiritual revival in the United States and parts of Europe. Itinerant preachers went around giving powerful sermons, often calling out church-goers for having counterfeit faith. Their audience was accused of attending church, reading their Bibles, and growing up learning the catechisms and taking the sacraments, but not truly grasping the gospel or having faith for themselves.

Both George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards were two of the most notable revivalist preachers during the First Great Awakening. Whitefield was famous for his ability to project and do so for long periods of time. It is estimated that during his life, he preached approximately sixty hours a week, often to tens of thousands of people at a time. Originally, he studied to be an actor but then applied those principles to spreading the gospel and serving the kingdom of God. Jonathan Edwards was also incredibly productive as a preacher during his life. Like his colleague, Edwards toured the country (and sometimes other countries) preaching. Today, he is remembered most for the so-called “harsh” imagery in his sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741). But what some critics call harsh, supporters call powerful. Edwards’ goal was to move his listeners to understand the gravity of eternal condemnation in Hell. Again, he preached to people familiar with the gospel—to regular church-goers—but those he feared did not truly grasp what was at stake: their souls. Both Whitefield’s sermon Marks of a True Conversion and Edwards’ sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God were preached to unrepentant church-goers. The audience was people familiar with the truth, but unaffected by the work of the Holy Spirit. 

As England began colonizing the New World, the church in America gave birth to the doctrine of the halfway covenant. Traditionally, Calvinists presumed anyone who made a public profession of faith (claimed to be Christian) and lived moral lives (lived like a Christian) was in fact a saved Christian. All those people were considered to be in a covenant with all believers, bound together serving the same Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. There was no reason to believe otherwise because only God can judge the heart. However, the New England Puritans deviated from this orthodox understanding of salvation. Because of the many miracles they witnessed in their life—the visible presence of providence—they presumed these were the marks of true Christianity; that anyone who did not see the visible handiwork of God’s providence in their lives and could not point to a specific instance of emotional conversion was not saved and had not truly converted. This became one of the worst scars on the Puritan legacy. Unfortunately, many Puritan descendants could not point to a particular instance in their life when they felt an emotional transformation—where they went from apostate to saved—because they grew up in converted households. But this emotional transformation was the basis of church membership in New England. Due to their inability to point to a moment in time when they were spiritually transformed on an emotional level, the Puritan children were not given church membership and were considered outside of the covenant (i.e., apostate). To compensate for this clear conundrum, they developed the halfway covenant, which allowed the children to be baptized but still considered them unsaved and thus withheld the sacrament of communion. 

Given this, listeners to Whitefield and Edwards’ sermons would have assumed the sermons were addressing them. Throughout their lives, they were told by their parents and pastors that they were outside of the covenant of grace and unsaved. They were told that without a memory of spiritual—and emotional—conversion, they would not enter Heaven. Thus when Whitefield and Edwards arrived, calling on unbelievers within the church—people familiar with the Bible and unaffected by it emotionally—to repent and recognize the necessity for salvation, of course they would have listened. It should not be surprising at all that they amassed such huge followings. They were byproducts of their era, addressing the deficiencies of their time. Whereas the churches up until that point pointed towards the need for an emotional rebirth, Whitefield and Edwards came, answering that cry and giving sermons that moved people emotionally, calling out those familiar with the gospel for not believing it for themselves. In short, church-goers were, for a century, told they needed an emotional revival. And the Great Awakening preachers came offering just that: sermons that moved people emotionally. 

In conclusion, Whitefield and Edwards are remembered for their powerful sermons that captivated their listeners’ emotions. But they were only serving the necessities of their day. For a hundred years, Puritan descendants were told they needed an emotional conversion. Naturally, men rose and answered that call, giving people what they demanded. That is not to discount the magnitude of everything they did. Edwards and Whitefield were truly incredible men. Maintaining the level of output they did requires immense giftings and, most importantly, conviction. They were godly men moved by the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel. This world would be much better if there were more men such as Whitefield and Edwards. But all that to say, because they were men answering the cry of their day, everyone listening to their sermons listened with an attentive ear and was moved on a deep, emotional level.