The Great Awakening: The Separation Of Church And States

An intense religious movement called, The Great Awakening, occurred in the 1730’s and 1740’s. This movement started in Colonial America, which originally came from a town named Northampton located in Massachusetts. Two preachers whose name’s are, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield both called Northampton home. Between these two men and their belief that the only thing that could save us humans, from the eternal fires of hell, was The Lord’s mercy. This had a massive affect on the colonists of America, due to there spiritual beliefs coming to end for the past century. It not only affected the colonists but contributed greatly to the development of the separation of church and state in America.

To elaborate more on these two men, Edwards was the author of the well known sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” which beliefs were established in the paragraph above. Opposite of Edwards, George Whitefield used his gentle voice to gather the colonists attention, and reportedly made listeners stream tears without saying a word . Whitefield preached of how helpless we all are and there is only one way to be saved, which was by the mighty God. Edwards and Whitefield, and several other “wanna-be’s”, these exceptional preachers took

Religion among the colonies was now becoming less denominational. Attendance at the Church’s were already low; but with the new aspire of personal Religion, the numbers than dropped dramatically. Another name for an Orthodox Clergymen back then, were “old lights.” These “old lights”, disapproved and despised of personal spirituality and refused to take part of it. Many members of Presbyterian denominations packed their bags and went in search of smaller places. Expectedly, the so called "old lights" and the "new lights" had several arguments concerning many issues. These constant disagreements caused the two major denominations to completely spilt, this spilt evoked the breaking of the policy of established