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The term Great Awakening can refer to several periods of religious revival in American religious history. Historians and theologians identify three or four waves of increased eligious enthusiasm occurring between the early 18th century and the late 19th century. Each of these "Great Awakenings" was characterized by widespread revivals led by evangelical Protestant ministers, a sharp increase of interest in religion, a profound sense of conviction and redemption on the part of those affected, an increase in evangelical church membership, and the formation of new religious movements and denominations. The Awakenings all resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal guilt and of their need of salvation by Christ. Pulling away from ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made religion intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual guilt and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality. It brought Christianity to African-American slaves and was an apocalyptic event in New England that challenged established authority. It incited rancor and division between old traditionalists who insisted on the continuing importance of ritual and doctrine, and the new revivalists, who encouraged emotional involvement and personal commitment. It had a major impact in reshaping the Congregational church, the Presbyterian church, the Dutch Reformed Church, and the German Reformed denomination, and strengthened the small Baptist and Methodist denominations. It had little impact on Anglicans, and Quakers. Unlike the Second Great Awakening, that began about 1800 and which reached out to the unchurched, the First Great Awakening focused on people who were already church members. It changed their rituals, their piety, and their self awareness.〔Sydney E. Ahlstrom, ''A Religious History of the American People'' (1972) is a standard history〕 == First Great Awakening == (詳細はFirst Great Awakening began in the 1730s and lasted to about 1743, though pockets of revivalism had occurred in years prior, especially amongst the ministry of Solomon Stoddard, Jonathan Edwards's grandfather. Edwards's congregation was involved in a revival later called the "Frontier Revivals" in the mid-1730s, though this was on the wane by 1737.〔Ahlstrom, Sydney E., ''A Religious History of the American People'', Yale University Press, 1972, p. 283〕 But as American religious historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom noted the Great Awakening "was still to come, ushered in by the Grand Itinerant", the great British Evangelist George Whitefield. Whitefield arrived in Georgia in 1738, and returned in 1739 for a second visit of the Colonies, making a "triumphant campaign north from Philadelphia to New York, and back to the South." In 1740, he visited New England, and "at every place he visited, the consequences were large and tumultuous." Ministers from various evangelical Protestant denominations supported the Great Awakening.〔Thomas S. Kidd, ''The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America'' (2007)〕 In the middle colonies, he influenced not only the British churches, but the Dutch and Germans.〔Ahlstrom, p. 285〕 Additionally, pastoral styles began to change. In the late colonial period, most pastors read their sermons, which were theologically dense and advanced a particular theological argument or interpretation. The leaders of the Great Awakening, such as James Davenport, Jonathan Edwards, Gilbert Tennent and George Whitefield, had little interest in merely engaging parishioners' intellects; rather, they sought a strong emotional response from their congregations that might yield the workings and experiential evidence of saving grace. Nathan Hatch argues that the evangelical movement of the 1740s played a key role in the development of democratic thought.〔Nathan O. Hatch, ''The Democratization of American Christianity'' (1989).〕 , as well as the belief of the free press and the belief that information should be shared and completely unbiased and uncontrolled. These concepts ushered in the period of the American Revolution. This contributed to create a demand for religious freedom. The Great Awakening represented the first time African Americans embraced Christianity in large numbers. In the later part of the 1700s the Revival came to the English colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Great Awakening」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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