History Hub - Weebly€¦ · turning the traditional political model upside down and arguing that power was a privilege bestowed by the people on their rulers. They disagreed, in

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Newton’s Cradle to Demonstrate Conservation of Momentum & Energy

History HubCameron Addis, Ph.D.

Enlightenment & Great Awakening

Enlightenment philosophy and Great

Awakening Christianity were very di�erent, but

both in�uenced the American colonies and

American Revolution and both frame our

thinking today.  The Enlightenment — so

named by its own practitioners, who didn’t lack

self-esteem — is best thought of as a

continuation of the Renaissance we discussed in

Chapter 2, with a strong emphasis on the

Scienti�c Revolution, reason, and progress.  Its

practitioners adhered to the scienti�c method

of testing hypotheses through rigorous,

repeatable experimentation.  Ancient Greeks,

inventors of the �rst organized sporting events

(the Olympics), also promoted hard-nosed,

constructive debate and organized competition

in law, politics, philosophy, and science.

 Greeks like Thales, Pythagoras, Hippocrates, and Democritus took things in this analytical direction �rst — testing

their ideas against each other — and Iraqi-Egyptian Alhazen honed the method in the Middle Ages.

The scienti�c method is really about both knowledge and ignorance — not just the ignorance of individuals you

disagree with or the purported ignorance of other societies, but collective ignorance.  It proceeds from the humble

assumption that we really don’t know much — and that all of our supposed knowledge is subject to ongoing

reexamination — to the bold (hubristic?) assumption that we can learn more through careful observation

combined with the application of math and science.  Good scientists have to know what they don’t know; for

instance, physicists don’t know why the Big Bang happened and Charles Darwin didn’t �ll in gray area by

pretending to know about what we now call DNA.  Scienti�c research, in other words, takes for granted the

insu�ciency of old knowledge.  Research rarely plays out in a vacuum, though, instead being enmeshed in politics,

ideology, and economics.  Science and technology fused in the Renaissance when the Florentine Medicis

patronized weapons research by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, leading to advances in optics and physics,

and alchemists helped jumpstart legitimate chemistry by trying to make synthetic gold.  Then, like now, war and

money spurred science, with rami�cations spilling over into medicine, astronomy, and even political science.

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The Alchymist, Joseph Wright of Derby, Derby Museum & Art Gallery

By the late 17th and 18th centuries, the

Renaissance application of reason to the

natural and social world morphed into various

strands known collectively as the Age of

Enlightenment.  No one seems to agree

exactly on what it was, and it cut a wide

enough swath for some historians to blame it

for slavery’s justi�cation while others credit its

emphasis on equality and justice as

contributing to slavery’s abolition.  Likewise,

you could blame/credit Enlightenment science

for both pollution and environmentalism to

combat pollution.  Enlightenment science

ultimately brought us hydrogen bombs and

the missiles to deliver them on.  Yet

Enlightenment philosopher Cesare Beccaria’s

On Crimes and Punishment (1764) helped

convince America’s Founding Fathers to add

the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution

prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.

 Critics describe torture and the death penalty

as “unenlightened.”  America’s founders are

often criticized for failing to live up to the

Enlightenment’s ideals, but that could only

have been possible if the ideals existed in the

�rst place.  Is partially unful�lled idealism

worse than no idealism at all?  Like the

Renaissance and Dark Ages, the

Enlightenment is one of those historical tags that lends itself to biased agenda-driven oversimpli�cations,

highlighting some themes while concealing others.  Yet, people who lived through it were aware of a new age

being ushered in.

The Age of Exploration (Chapter 2) was key to the Enlightenment because it opened up a global inventory of data

to European scientists.  Running overseas colonies required knowledge of the world’s geography, weather,

cultures, economies, etc.  Exploration also brought co�ee to Europe — the signature drink of the Enlightenment.

 Historian Tom Standage points out that co�ee, �ttingly unknown to ancient Greeks and Romans, was the “drink

of clear-headedness, the epitome of modernity and progress.”  Most java of the era was thick, gritty and, by

judgement of a�cionados, downright nasty.  Still, instead of starting o� the day clouding their minds with ale or

wine, scientists, writers, politicians, merchants, and clerks imbibed the Ethiopian plant/Yemeni invention/Turkish-

Ottoman import to “play good-fellows [with] this wakeful and civil drink,” to quote one Englishman from 1660.

 Just as Europeans imported and modi�ed gunpowder, printing, shipbuilding, and math to their bene�t during the

Renaissance, they imported and modi�ed the Arabic co�eehouse during the Enlightenment.  Standage calls

these clubby establishments the “Internet of the Age of Reason,” serving as informal post o�ces, stock exchanges

and forums for ideas ranging from theories of gravity to political rebellion to poetry to commodity prices, along

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with news and gossip.  Dutch merchants who grew co�ee in Java (Indonesia) imported beans to New York in 1660

and co�eehouses assumed a social and political role in colonial America similar to taverns, even though most

Americans drank tea in the home.

Seventeenth-Century London Co�eehouse, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Why was Greek and Roman ignorance about co�ee beans �tting?  Scholars during the Late Renaissance and

Enlightenment started to question all dogma — be it philosophical, scienti�c, political, or religious — building on

rather than just revering and reviving Classical knowledge.  Meanwhile, they continued to import ideas along with

co�ee from Arabia and Persia.  A famous example is Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’ reconceptualization

of the universe (really just our solar system) along the heliocentric model suggested by Abu Raihan al-Biruni (973-

1048 CE) rather than the geocentric version inherited from the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the Catholic

Church.  Biruni, who centuries ahead of his time hypothesized about the existence of the American continent, was

in turn well-versed in Classical scholars like Aristotle and Ptolemy.  In Novum Organum (or New Instrument, 1620),

Englishman Francis Bacon, the era’s most famous cheerleader, beseeched scientists to “start from the bottom-

most foundations — unless we prefer to go ’round in perpetual circles at a contemptibly slow rate.”

While we can safely say that the Enlightenment valued reason and logic, historians disagree on its timeframe and

even what exactly it was.  The Great Awakening, on the other hand, spurs less scholarly controversy.  This religious

revival gave rise to a less exclusive but equally devout form of Protestant Christianity than that of “Old Light”

(Puritan) New England Calvinism.  Like the Enlightenment, Christianity was used both to support and denounce

slavery.  We’ll look at the Enlightenment more closely here in the �rst half of the chapter, then explore the Great

Awakening and American notions of religious freedom in the second half.  Together, these movements laid the

foundation for the American Revolution we’ll examine in the next few chapters.

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Portrait of John Locke, Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1697

Enlightenment Politics The Declaration of Independence and Constitution are products of

the Enlightenment, as the U.S. was created by politicians swept up

in the movement when it was all the rage.  Paris was the epicenter

of the Enlightenment, but its philosophes lived throughout Europe,

the British Isles and small but enthusiastic outposts in colonial

America.  They rejected monarchs’ claim to divine right of rule,

turning the traditional political model upside down and arguing

that power was a privilege bestowed by the people on their rulers. 

They disagreed, in other words, that God chose certain people to

rule over others and instead promoted representative government

— an idea that had been mostly dormant in Western history since

Classical times, but had been reviving in England and a few small

pockets in continental Europe during the Renaissance.  England’s

absolutist monarchy eroded in the 17th century in a series of

revolutions.  This is a vivid and important example of

Enlightenment thinkers reexamining traditional wisdom.

Along with free trade, representative government was a

cornerstone of Classical liberalism.  In England in the late 17th century, physician/philosopher John Locke wrote

about the “natural right” to “life, liberty and estate,” and helped draft the constitution for America’s Carolina

colony.  If these rights sound familiar, they morphed a century later into life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in

Thomas Je�erson’s Declaration of Independence and protection against government denial of life, liberty or

property without due process of law in the U.S. Constitution’s 5th Amendment.  Locke saw it as part of a

government’s social contract to secure such natural rights among men of means (Locke was a major shareholder

in the Royal African slave-trading company).  Other English Radical Whigs, including the anonymous author of

Cato’s Letters, wrote of the “equality of all men.”

British Americans carried on this republican, Radical Whig tradition in the 18th century, most famously Je�erson in

the Declaration.  Locke and Je�erson were concerned with the political representation of middle-class men and

above, but their descendants applied democracy more broadly.  You can see why Enlightenment critics see its

philosophy as merely a self-serving justi�cation for white male hegemony; yet, you can also see how its ideas

contained the seeds of a more universal revolution.  With the republican genie out of the bottle, white male elites

found it increasingly di�cult to explain why they should run roughshod over everyone else.  That’s because, by

the philosophes‘ own standards of justice and equality, there isn’t a good reason.  Enlightenment political theory

was also concerned with balance — re�ected in the U.S. Constitution’s emphasis on checks and balances and

equality among its three main branches.  Politics, like science, was a vehicle for progress and making the world a

better place.  Philosophes had an undying faith in progress.

Enlightenment Religion The Enlightenment’s signature religion was Deism, though there were plenty of atheist and Christian

Enlightenment philosophers as well.  Deists were religious, to be sure, but they rejected two central tenants of

traditional religion.  First, in the name of progress, they disagreed that everything important to know was already

known.  That notion is implicit in the very word enlightenment, along with future historical tags like Dark Ages to

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contrast the period behind them.  Second, they rejected Scriptural

revelation and the sovereign, father-�gure model of Judeo-

Christianity in favor of a more impersonal force having created the

universe.  Their revelation was nature itself rather than Scripture,

so science provided the path to the divine.  While Deism is still

around today it’s not widespread or very well known, partly

because it never formed into an organized church.  The closest it

came was the Cult of the Supreme Being or Festivals of Reason

during the French Revolution in the 1790s, but they never gained

traction.  Most Philosophes, after all, weren’t into “cults” and most

French were Catholics, not Deists.

While denying Scriptural revelation, Deists were nonetheless tapping into a strand of Christianity dating back at

least to St. Augustine (354-430 CE) that revered nature.  Within Enlightenment Christianity, there was the liberal

Unitarian branch (now UU) and a thread known as “natural religion” that overlapped with Deism.  Charles Darwin

was a natural theologian as a young man, prior to his daughter Annie’s death, and nearly entered the Anglican

ministry.  Science and rationality, even if combined with a dash of mysticism, gave mankind its best hope for

future progress in the eyes of Deists and natural theologians.  Contrary to the way they’re often depicted in

textbooks and dictionaries, most Deists didn’t believe that God was a mere “clockmaker” who wound up the

universe only to vacate the premises.  Like Thomas Je�erson, many adhered to what might better be termed

pantheism: belief in a divinity infusing and animating all things.  Je�erson wasn’t the only Enlightenment �gure

di�cult to categorize religiously.

The most famous and emblematic scientist of the era, Englishman Isaac Newton, was a Biblical scholar (if not

orthodox Christian) and eschatologist and had more than a passing interest in the occult.  Newton and Locke both

believed in witchcraft, as did Robert Boyle — founder of modern chemistry and a pioneer of the scienti�c method.

 Astronomer Galileo Galilei, telescope pioneer and early proponent of the idea that the Earth revolves around the

Sun, was motivated by a strong sense of wonder and mysticism.  He said that philosophy was “written in the

grand book” of the universe, which “stands continually open to our gaze” and that “The Sun, with all those planets

revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it has nothing else in the universe to

do.”  You may have guessed from that last quote that Galileo enjoyed wine and you’d be right.  He described vino

as “sunlight held together by water.”  Galileo’s predecessor Giordano Bruno may have leaned toward the

heliocentric rather than geocentric view of astronomy not because he was a paragon of reason battling the

irrational Catholic Church, but rather because he thought the Earth had a soul or “Holy Ghost” that powered its

motion.  Albert Einstein said that “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

Enlightenment Science

Isaac Newton was most famous, though, as a scientist.  He built on Copernicus, Bruno, Galileo, and Kepler’s

Renaissance theories of the aforementioned heliocentric, sun-centered universe (solar system) and developed the

theory of gravity to explain the planets’ orbits.  Newton was also the inventor of the re�ecting telescope and co-

inventor of calculus along with German Gottfried Leibniz.  Newton formulated the general laws of motion and

mechanics that dominated physics for the next centuries in Principia Mathematica (1687).  His “cradle” of

pendulums at the top of the chapter demonstrated conservation of momentum and energy.  His optical research

led to prisms that dispersed white light into the colors of the rainbow.  Newton’s work was typical of how 17th and

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Encyclopaedia or a Systematic Dictionary of the

Sciences, Arts and Crafts, Edited by Denis Diderot

and Jean le Rond D’Alembert, 1751

18th-century scientists developed laws to codify nature’s order in the same way the Bible provided a code for

Christianity.  Enlightenment philosophers had faith that scienti�c laws were discernible (or perceptible) and

provided the foundation for laws that governed other �elds like politics and economics.  Put another way, there

was a rhyme and reason to nature that transcended science.  Politicians like Locke and Je�erson based their

beliefs in concepts like natural rights on Newton’s scienti�c principles, as did Scottish economist Adam Smith.

Enlightenment scientists’ passion for categorizing, collecting

and cataloging knowledge found its extreme expression in

British and French modi�cations of the encyclopedia.  Ephraim

Chambers Cylopaedia (or Universal Dictionary of Arts &

Sciences, 1728) and Diderot and D’Alembert’s 1751

Encyclopédie (1751) exceeded ancient and medieval

compilations in their breadth and sophistication.  Contributors

included luminaries such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and

Montesquieu.  Because of its secular emphasis and

denunciations of ecclesiastical power, the Catholic Church

banned its 28 volumes but they were delivered to subscribers

in secret.  The Wikipedia entries linked to terms in these

chapters are modern-day manifestations of the Enlightenment

as are many of the courses one takes in school, and the way

those courses are divided up into various topics and “ologies”

(from the Greek logos, for study of).

Carl Linnaeus’ biological taxonomy is a good Enlightenment

example of an attempt at all-encompassing knowledge.  The

Swedish botanist took it upon himself to catalog all life forms

under categories of family, genus, species, etc.  While modern

biologists have re-arranged his categories and don’t tra�c in

families of species, his conceptualization of life forms as being

related on a Tree of Life was the basis for Charles Darwin’s

theory of natural selection later in the 19th century.  Darwin’s

grandfather Erasmus, a contemporary of Linnaeus, was an early evolutionist.

Another example of Enlightenment categorizing was the study of elements at

the University of Heidelberg, in Germany.  Among the students was Russian

Dmitri Mendeleev, who is credited with developing the Periodic Table of

Elements familiar to anyone who’s been in a lab or science classroom.  The

table not only lists known elements, it predicts and explains their qualities

based on its particular arrangement.  Like Linnaeus’ taxonomy, Mendeleev’s

19th-century original was arranged di�erently than today’s Periodic Table. 

Enlightenment scientists didn’t just dig deeper into biology, chemistry, and

physics, they cataloged their �ndings so that others could challenge and build

on their theories as part of a worldwide e�ort.  If the Enlightenment had a

modern creed, it might be that extraordinary claims require extraordinary

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Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, 1769 evidence, even if its proponents made plenty of their own unsubstantiated

claims.

Table of the Animal Kingdom (Regnum Animale) from Carolus Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae, 1735

Penn’s Woods & Quakerism The Enlightenment’s main American satellite was Philadelphia, port and capital of Pennsylvania, the most

religiously tolerant and scienti�cally oriented colony.  “Penn’s Woods” was a relative latecomer among the

colonies, but the region north of Maryland and west of the Delaware River made up for lost time by becoming one

of the most important.  William Penn, who had been arrested in England for practicing Quakerism with the Society

of Friends, but whose father was a creditor of King Charles II, founded the colony after the English Civil War. 

Because of his family connection, Penn went from being imprisoned to being awarded a tract of land in America

larger than all of England — quite a reversal of fortune.  Given Penn’s noisy advocacy of religious freedom in

England, it’s possible that Charles II gave him land in America just to get rid of him.  That way he could pay o� his

debt and get an agitator out of his powdered wig at the same time.

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Penn wasn’t typical of early Quakers, or “Children of Light,” insofar as he was born into the upper class.  The

denomination’s founders were from remote parts of northern England — so remote that not only were they

illiterate themselves, they weren’t even within range of trained ministers.  Consequently, they argued that

Christianity could not only do without an established church, be it Catholic or Anglican, but that one didn’t need

Scripture either to be blessed with the inner light caused by Christ’s cruci�xion and resurrection.  This was a bare

bones form of Protestantism that Martin Luther never imagined.  Classic Quaker meetings have no ministers or

planned sermons; Friends meditate and rise when moved to speak.  Outsiders called the Society of Friends

“Quakers” because their bodies would sometimes convulse or shake when enraptured.

Penn made his historical presence felt even before he left England.  One of his trial juries refused to convict him

when the Lord Mayor of London charged him with violating the Conventicle Acts dictating conformity to the

Church of England.  The judge then went after the jury but an ensuing trial and counter-suit resulted in English

judges losing their right to imprison juries for awarding what judges deemed to be incorrect verdicts.  Penn thus

indirectly caused a major change in legal history even before founding an important American colony.  Imagine

how di�erent trials would be if juries had to worry about being imprisoned by judges.

In America, Penn turned the New England Puritan model of homogeneity inside out by inviting anyone interested

to enjoy a “Holy Experiment” in religious pluralism.  Pennsylvania was diverse ethnically as well as religiously.

 Philadelphia was Greek for “city of brotherly love.”  The Middle Colonies were the �rst to attract large numbers of

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non-British European settlers, including

Dutch who founded New York, Swedes who

founded Delaware and parts of New Jersey,

and Germans and Moravians who came to

Pennsylvania.  Quakers were the �rst

Christian abolitionists in America and tried to

respect Indians within Penn’s borders. 

Indians reciprocated by not killing “Broad

Brims” in battles with Whites, a reference to

Quaker’s distinct hats.  Though white

Pennsylvanians ultimately succumbed to

disputes among themselves and struggled to

maintain peace with Indians along the

frontier, they built a prosperous colony on

the strength of Delaware Valley wheat and

Philadelphia’s inland deepwater harbor.

 They’d grown successful in England, as well,

founding Barclay’s and Lloyd’s banks and

Cadbury chocolates, and in�uential enough politically that some historians suspect their rise was what motivated

the gentry to overthrow Cromwell’s republic and restore the crown to Charles II.

Historian Barry Levy described how, despite their small numbers — no more than 1% of Christians for most of

their history — Quakers had a disproportionate impact.  They were paci�sts, which got them in trouble during

times of war but helped spark the modern ideal that war, even if sometimes necessary, should be avoided if

possible (hawks talk about using war to maintain or restore peace).  They advocated progressive child-rearing and

equality for women ahead of their time; contemporary European men joked in popular culture about beating their

wives and children.  Quakers argued that children should be cultivated, persuaded, and talked to rather than just

having their “wills broken” like draft animals with intimidation and physical punishment.  While some parents

today might violate that ideal, it’s not only out-of-date to beat one’s children but also illegal.  Quakers helped

de�ne motherhood as the “ethical center of American socialization,” yet also believed that women had an equal

role to play in the public realm.  Future reformers Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, and Jane Addams

were all born Quakers.  After owning slaves themselves through the mid-18th century, Quakers spearheaded

abolitionism well into the 19th century and emphasized egalitarianism.  They believed in simple, unpretentious

clothing and architecture.  Quakers called everyone Mr. and Mrs. regardless of wealth and shook hands rather

than bowing or do�ng caps to superiors.  In fact, they didn’t believe in rank to start with among mortals, though

they also shook hands to feel the pulsing of the Light in others.  To this day, Americans use Mr. and Mrs. for rich

and poor alike and people of all economic classes commonly greet by shaking hands.  Quakers also believed that,

since humans could carry the Light and “radiate God’s word,” they should never lie or engage in any uncouth or

ungodly behavior, including haggling for prices.  Thus, this relatively small religious denomination invented set

prices for goods and egalitarian handshakes, and helped to abolish slavery and launch the women’s movement

and widely accepted, modern ideas of raising children.

Benjamin Franklin Pennsylvania was also home to Benjamin Franklin, who exempli�ed the Enlightenment spirit as well as any

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American.  Franklin �ed Puritan Boston as a teenager, �nding refuge

in comparatively cosmopolitan Philadelphia.  He was a printer by

trade — most famous for his own fact- and wisdom-�lled annual Poor

Richard’s Almanack (PDF) — and a true polymath with multiple

interests and a strong curiosity.  Franklin rejected the traditional

interpretation of lightning being a manifestation of God’s anger as

being lazy and superstitious, choosing instead to investigate the real

cause using science.  He arrived at the theory of lightning being

caused by electricity and even developed a tool to control its

destructive force through his modi�cation of the lightning rod

(lightning strikes were a common cause of �res and, without

pressurized water hoses, people had no e�ective means to douse

�res).  Franklin laid the groundwork for batteries by storing electricity

in a Leyden jar, developed the concepts of positive and negative

charges, coined the terms conductor and electrician, and hoped that

humans would someday be able to harness electrical energy for their own purposes.

Franklin also invented bifocals, the Franklin stove, the glass harmonica, daylight savings, the post o�ce, and

theorized about how the Gulf Stream from the Caribbean warmed Europe.  He pioneered demographics in his

study of colonial Americans’ migration patterns.  Franklin asked questions and, when confronted with practical

problems, he furthered progress by inventing new solutions.  For instance, his brother’s catheter was

uncomfortable, so he invented a more �exible one.  If that’s not practical, what is?  He was constantly researching

and coming up with new medical ideas, some useful others less so.  Franklin helped transform Philadelphia into

the �rst true city in America, with a hospital, �re and police departments, libraries, and paved, numbered and lit

streets.  Franklin established the colonies’ �rst volunteer �re department there in 1736.  Philadelphia’s grid street

system in�uenced cities throughout America and it started the �rst medical colleges in the colonies, named for

Penn and Je�erson.

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Franklin’s Deism was typical of the Founders, as was his Enlightenment politics.  Since America was born at the

height of the Enlightenment, the Revolution presented its founders with an opportunity to ensconce

representative government in a country starting from scratch.  Through republicanism, along with its

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Masonic Square & Set of Compasses

endorsement of science and technology, the Enlightenment lives on in contemporary America.  While Je�erson

was wrong that orthodox faiths would soon give way to Deism or Unitarianism, people of all faiths live in a

technologically advancing world and share at least some subconscious belief in the scienti�c method.  Few among

us would rush to a church instead of a hospital if injured or sick, and no one is advocating replacing First

Responders with ministers on the other end of 911 calls.  We drive cars and trucks and live in homes and talk on

phones invented and improved on by application of the scienti�c method.  But gone is the philosophes’ blind faith

in progress as a uniformly good thing since people today realize that science will never solve all our problems and

can even create new ones of its own like pollution, carcinogens, overpopulation, and weapons of mass

destruction.

Freemasonry While Deists never established a formal denomination or church of their

own, some of their emphasis on Enlightenment progress made its way into

the Freemasons, a fraternal society that traced its origins to stonemason

guilds.  The “G” in the Masonic Square & Compass symbol stands for “Grand

Architect of the Universe” — a Deist way to describe God.  But Masons were,

and are, an organization that includes people of many faiths, including

Christianity, bound together by monotheism and a commitment to

community service.  Many Americans were suspicious of the organization

because of their secretive meetings, rituals, and codes, but their ranks

included Founders like Franklin and George Washington and dozens of

future prominent politicians, inventors, entertainers, and theologians.  A

cursory glance at this list makes one wonder if there aren’t more famous

American Masons than there are famous American non-Masons.

In addition, Masonic imagery worked its way onto American currency and iconic structures like the Washington

Monument and Statue of Liberty, a gift of French Masons to America to celebrate the Union’s victory in the Civil

War.  The political structure of Masonic lodges, with their system of checks-and-balances and one-man-one-vote,

is similar to the U.S. Constitution — likely because they both developed during the Enlightenment.

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Jonathan Edwards

The Great Awakening While Enlightenment philosophers were disproportionately represented among the Founders and in Masonic

Lodges, and Enlightenment politics is built into our Constitution, few Americans were attracted to Enlightenment

religion.  Traditional religion or religious indi�erence were far more common in the 18th century among farmers,

craftsmen, shopkeepers, and slaves, and Christianity experienced revolutions of its own known collectively as the

Great Awakening.  Historians usually refer to the First and Second Great Awakenings in reference to big bursts in

the 1730s-40’s and 1790’s-1850’s.  The First took place mostly within the old Congregational denominations of

New England while the Second was associated with tent revivals and missionaries around the country and

launched new denominations.

The strictness and elitism of the Puritans’ Elect of God predestination-

oriented Calvinism weren’t destined to survive the 18th century in its

original form, at least not administered by ministers delivering erudite “Old

Light” sermons to a passive audience.  It was too stu�y and complicated

even for New England, least of all the frontier and rest of the country.  Many

Americans couldn’t read let alone dive into John Calvin’s Commentaries. 

Puritanism was too exclusive.  What was the attraction if you couldn’t prove

to insiders that you, too, were among the Elect?  To put it crassly, American

Protestantism was in need of a little rebranding after the �rst few

generations of Puritans had served their purpose.  In New England, the key

bridge between the older Calvinism and more emotional, less formal “New

Light” variety was Jonathan Edwards.  Despite appealing to the masses,

Edwards was an intellectual who embraced Enlightenment science and his

books and sermons are still read today at colleges and divinity schools (Yale

Collection).  Edwards was one of the most in�uential Christian theologians in

American history.

But the most popular and dynamic of the new ministers was George White�eld, who preached throughout the

colonies outside of churches, in the streets.  While Ben Franklin didn’t share White�eld’s religious views, he

appreciated the social role of religion in supporting society’s moral fabric and published White�eld’s sermons,

helping to trigger the Great Awakening.  Others were less enamored, as suggested by the engraving below where

two women named “hypocrisy” and “deceit” support White�eld.  The jester’s sta� and monkey in the bottom right

corner indicate that this artist viewed Great Awakening ministers like showmen in a carnival.

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Enthusiasm Display’d: or, the Moor Fields Congregation, Publish’d by C. Corbett, 1739, Library of Congress

But their theology was substantive.  John Wesley, the English founder of Methodism, argued against

predestination in favor of Arminianism, the idea that salvation came through good works.  With its emphasis on

free will and salvation, Methodism was the most popular denomination in America by 1830.  Jonathan Edwards

downplayed Arminianism and promoted the Calvinist idea of salvation coming through inner re�ection and God’s

Grace in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: a Sermon” (1741).  The upshot was that the Fire-and-Brimstone

aspect of Puritan Jeremiads lived on, but Protestant Christianity opened itself up to all comers in the 18th and 19th

centuries, becoming more heartfelt and user-friendly.  In the upgraded Calvinism 2.0, new converts could be

saved and evangelicals carried that message to followers of German and Dutch Reformed churches, Scottish

“New-Side” Presbyterians, and Anglo-American Baptists and Methodists.  The Greek root of the word evangelical is

connected to the idea of good news, or bearer of good news.

The new faiths had a democratic or egalitarian bent, with no respect for hierarchies like the Church of England,

which they viewed as “Catholic Lite,” or even the formal organization of the Old Light Puritan Congregations or Old

Side Presbyteries, with their insistence on college-educated ministers.  Their preference, especially at �rst, was for

informal tent revival gatherings where swarms of people communed and shared born-again experiences similar

to the Puritans’ regeneration.  Barton Stone’s camp meeting at Cane Ridge, Kentucky attracted tens of thousands

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of people, a signi�cant number given the sparse population of the frontier.  The Methodists didn’t have any

churches at �rst; their Circuit Riders rode around on horses and slept on the ground.  Christianity had come a long

way from the Vatican since Martin Luther �rst nailed 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in 1520.

In the early 19th century, dozens more new denominations spun out of the Second Great Awakening, including

Pentecostals, Disciples of Christ (part of the Restoration Movement), Seventh-day Adventists, Cumberland

Presbyterians, Millerites, Jehovah’s Witnesses (later in 1870s) and, most famously, the Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) – by far the most successful denomination invented in America, and the fastest

growing in the world today.  The Puritans’ old Congregational Church lives on today, too, mainly in the form of the

post-1957 United Church of Christ.  The Second Great Awakening reinvigorated the mainstream evangelical faiths

popularized in the First Great Awakening of the 18th century.

Religious Freedom Denominational growth in the early U.S. re�ects well on the religious freedom Thomas Je�erson and James

Madison ensconced in the Constitution’s First Amendment, that forbids Congress from making any “law

respecting a religious establishment or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  That explains the unlikely allegiance

between Baptists and the non-Christian Je�erson after the Constitution of the new country kicked in.  Politics

“makes for strange bedfellows” as the saying goes and, in the case of the Mammoth Cheese, the Baptist

congregation from Cheshire, Massachusetts so appreciated President Je�erson that they sent him a block of

cheese weighing 1,230 lbs.  Nine hundred bovines contributed to the gigantic block of coagulated milk.

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Recreation of Mammoth Cheshire Cheese Sent to Je�erson

Why would Christians bestow so much coagulated milk on an in�del?  Because, in spite of his own unorthodox

faith, Je�erson’s consulting role on the First Amendment helped provide New England Baptists legal protection in

a region where they otherwise might have been outlawed.  It’s safe to say that scarcely a single reader viewing this

textbook espouses religious beliefs that wouldn’t have been outlawed somewhere by somebody at some point in

time.  That’s why Je�erson and Madison thought that, far from hindering religion, separation of church and state

would bene�t religion in the long run.  History provides an interesting perspective because today many people

assume that supporters of church-state separation oppose religion when often they just oppose government

involving itself in religion.  Those are two very di�erent things.  Je�erson and Madison’s viewpoint “�ips the script,”

suggesting that it’s advantageous for religion — all religions in the long run — to disassociate from politics (not

issues, necessarily, but from legal political grounding).

Today’s church-state debates are a key part of our culture wars, especially those regarding the proper place of

Christianity in public schools.  “Separationists” argue that it has no place whatsoever and that any inclusion

violates the First Amendment rights of non-Christians or Christians who don’t want the government in that part of

their lives.  It’s simple: keep religion out of the public sphere and keep it a private a�air.  As Je�erson put it, his

neighbor’s religion neither “picked his pocket nor broke his leg.”  No one wants to override the First Amendment

altogether, but some Christians want to partially break down the church-state barrier and argue that the

Constitution doesn’t actually say anything about separating church and state.  Contrary to a popular

misconception, the phrase separation of church and state isn’t in the Constitution.  But it does come from a very

reliable and important interpreter of the First Amendment: its virtual co-author Je�erson.  Like the Cheshire cow

farmers, another group of New England Baptists sent Je�erson a thank you letter for his role in establishing

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religious freedom.  In his response, the Letter to the Danbury [Ct.] Baptists, the new president explained how the

framers intended to separate church and state.  What about the First Amendment’s primary author, James

Madison?  In this 1819 letter, Madison wrote that even Virginia’s clergy had bene�ted from “total separation of

church and state.”

While interpreting original intent of Constitutional framers is a suspect enterprise most of the time, future

Supreme Court justices were con�dent in applying the church-state separation idea because Je�erson and Madison

penned it themselves.  Thus, you should think for yourself about the Texas State Board of Education’s decree in

2010 that the First Amendment “didn’t intend for separation of church and state.”  Here’s who thinks it did: it’s

author, co-author/chief consultant, most trained judges, historians, and political scientists.

Finally, what’s most ironic about America’s church-state separation is that it inadvertently enabled religion to

infuse politics more than in most countries.  Permit me to explain.  All denominations and ideas were free to

thrive or die out in America’s free religious marketplace.  The national government, at least — and states after the

14th Amendment — neither collected taxes for, favored nor outlawed any denomination.  Diverse theologies

�ourished that could be widely interpreted, especially after the invention of steam-powered printing presses

allowed for more sermons, pamphlets, and Bibles.  In that uncensored marketplace, religion was (and is) used to

argue both sides of political debates.  For instance, Christianity was the primary ideological force behind both

slavery and abolition.  Liberals and conservatives employed Christianity to argue for and against Franklin

Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s.  God rewards the rich in Prosperity Gospel while Jesus favors the poor through

the Social Gospel.  Political scientist James Morone points out that today’s evangelicals warn their �ocks that to

cast a “blue” (Democratic) vote would be a sin against the Almighty, while black churches bus their mostly

Democratic congregations to voting booths.  In the few Western countries even more religious than the U.S., such

as Croatia and Ireland, virtually no one makes any connection whatsoever between religion and politics.  Perhaps

that’s because, in the long run, moral principles don’t sit well alongside the realities of political power,

compromise, and expediency.

Conclusion

While Christians and Enlightenment philosophers each had faith, the nature of their respective faiths di�ered. 

Christians emphasized faith in Scripture while philosophes put their faith in science, nature’s God, and secular

progress (natural theologians bridged the gap between them).  Evangelicals and Quakers mustered a more

signi�cant challenge to slavery than their Enlightenment counterparts despite attempts to abolish slavery during

the French Revolution.  Yet, most Christians didn’t challenge slavery either, at least in the 18th century. 

Nevertheless, Christians and philosophes both demanded religious liberty and they shared a disdain for political or

religious leaders who claimed superiority over others by virtue of divine right.  As such, neither accepted the basic

premise of why the king of England, supported by the Church of England, had any inherent right to rule over the

American colonies.

Historian Nathan Hatch referred to this period in religious history as the democratization of American Christianity,

implying that the increasingly democratic politics of the time paved the way for the growth of denominations. 

Still, it’s di�cult to see which came �rst, the chicken or the egg, as far as democratic religion or democratic politics

(having already discussed co�ee, wine, and cheese in this chapter, I thought we’d toss in some chickens and

eggs).  Despite their di�erent takes on reason and faith, Great Awakening Protestantism and Enlightenment

politics reinforced each other as twin streams that fed into the American Revolution.  Americans of both stripes

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understood what Je�erson and Franklin meant when they suggested that the motto for the new country’s Great

Seal read: “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”  It never caught on as the o�cial motto but, in 1801, the

Cheshire Baptists inscribed it in their Mammoth Cheese.

Interpretation of the �rst committee’s design for the reverse of the Great Seal of

the United States in 1776, which was never used. This was Benjamin Franklin’s

design, originally suggested for the obverse, but the committee chose Pierre

Eugene du Simitiere’s design for that side. This interpretation was made in 1856

by Benson J. Lossing.

Optional Reading & Viewing:

Je�erson’s Religious Beliefs (Monticello)

Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Yale Univ.)

Exploring the Republic of Letters (National Endowment for the Humanities)

Art & Identity in the British North American Colonies (Metropolitan Museum of Art) Lisa Gensel, “The Medical World of Benjamin Franklin” (Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine) Jersey Devil: The Real Story (Center for Skeptical Inquiry) — An Interesting Side of Benjamin Franklin