The Great Awakening

Noll marks the birth of Evangelical trends at the publication of Philip Jakob Spener’s Pia Desideria in 1675 [7]. The Pia Desideria was an appeal for reform in the Lutheran churches of Germany [7]. Similar but seemingly independent trends around the same time include John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in 1678 in England and poetry by Congregationalist minister Edward Taylor in colonial America [7]. English poet, John Milton, also published Paradise Lost in 1667 [8]. Paradise Lost is an epic poem about the temptation of Adam and Eve, which includes a description of Hell [8]. Like many before him, Milton includes the Greek rivers Archeron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Styx in his landscape and describes the flaming furnace, the eternal darkness, torture, and sorrow, and the disgusting smell of sulphur [8]. This may, however, be the end of the Protestant interest in landscaping Hell.

The evangelical movement really picked up steam in a series of religious awakenings in the 1720’s and 30’s [7]. Turner places the origin of the first Great Awakening in New Jersey with Presbyterian evangelist Gilbert Tennent [8]. Though, the real life of the evangelical awakenings was in the ordinary people who experienced them [7]. Noll eloquently describes the evangelical movement like so:

“The most overt religious factor in the transformation of Protestantism was the spiritual renewal expressed as a multifaceted protest against ecclesiastical formalism and an urgent appeal for living religion of the heart. The form of Christianity that contemporary Americans recognize as evangelicalism originated in this pietistic revival,” [7].

Evangelicals, tired of the exclusivity born of the Catholic Church and revived in the Puritan movements of the previous century, sought out a personal and accessible Christianity. British historian David Bebbington identifies conversionism, Biblicism, activism, and crucicentrism as the key ingredients of evangelicalism – in other words, emphasis on the new birth in Christ (conversion), the authority of the Bible, active evangelizing, and the redemption of the crucifixion [7]. The evangelical movement also coincided more or less with the Enlightenment, and may have been a response to the extreme emphasis on science and rationalism at the time. Some Enlightenment thinkers considered Hell a coercive device [8]. Such criticisms may have been responsible for the later downplay on Hell.

Leaders in American evangelicalism were Minister George Whitefield and theologian Jonathan Edwards. In 1741, Jonathan Edwards made his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” [8]. This sermon, while mentioning hellfire and brimstone focuses more on the function of hell than its physical nature. At its most descriptive, he says,

“The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them” [4].

He wants to emphasize the imminence of Hell for the sinful, that the souls of wicked men already are damned. Edwards emphasizes the urgency of conversion by describing such imminence, and reminding his listeners that, while most men will convince themselves of their secured salvation, most men, in fact, go to Hell [4]. He invokes in his defense divine justice, which “calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins,” [4]. Further, for Edwards, Hell seems to exist in the souls of the damned, rather than externally (or perhaps both). He says, “if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into a fiery oven, or a furnace of fire and brimstone,” [4].

Unlike earlier authors, the damned, for Edwards, are simply “the unconverted” as opposed to a long list of particular sinners (e.g. adulterers, the envious, the greedy). This reflects the emphasis on conversionism that Bebbington would later observe. Edwards also frequently quotes the Bible (maybe a third of his sermon is direct quotes), showing the emphasis on Biblicism.

It seems that for evangelicals, unlike their Christian ancestors, while Hell may be a very real place with very real threats, its landscape and topography are less important than its service in God’s plan.